Walk past it in The Crossroads and you probably will have no idea what’s inside - an old firehouse, centuries old, housing the icons of the advertising world.
If they could talk you'd know their voices.
“They’re great!”
“Ho Ho Ho – Green Giant!”
Characters created to tell a story and pitch a product have been around for more than 100 years. Many have taken their place in American pop culture.
McGruff the Crime Dog was created by a New York ad executive. He was traveling from Los Angeles back to New York and landed in Kansas City for a at KCI airport in 1980.
"He came up with the line, 'Take a bite out of crime,' which said let's have a dog," remembered Jeff Bremser, the creative director for Bernstein-Rein Advertising Agency.
Bremser interviewed many of the creators behind the bigger than life characters like the Aflac duck. The company wanted to keep the name, Aflac, which stands for American Family Life Assurance Company. It’s not the easiest name to remember. But the ad creators just started mumbling the name - Aflac, Aflac, Aflac - AFLAC!
“Eventually, they started to sound like a duck! So Aflac was born,” laughed Bremser. A duck became the company’s iconic messenger. And it worked.
In 1965, Pillsbury introduced the doughboy, originally named "Poppin’ Fresh." It was a character mimicked after Casper the Ghost, which moves just like the dough escaping the signature tube container. Television in the 60s used a lot of Claymation type production.
Bremser explained, "I think the mother [in the commercial] punched her finger in the doughboy’s tummy and he giggled and that took like five days to shoot."
Around 2,000 pieces make up this collection started by the co-founder of the Kansas City advertising empire Bernstein-Rein.
In his office on Kansas City's Madison Avenue sits one of his biggest hits. He created the Happy Meal for McDonalds in 1977 after watching his son Steve stare at a cereal box at breakfast.
He chuckled, "Every day you don’t talk to me you just read the box. He said well, it's something to do while I'm eating. That triggered the thought in my mind."
His son Steve now helps run the agency.
A few years ago he spotted a few of these pieces in a small Miami collection, which sparked the idea to assemble them from all over the world into national advertising icon museum.
PHOTOS | Ad icons you can see here in KC
"No one has the collection complete like we do here in Kansas City," said Bernstein.
Right now the museum is only open by appointment and this is only part of it. Bernstein plans to build a bigger space to showcase all the pieces that conjure up memories that span generations.
"These characters make it a much better connection because there's a story for everything."
For more information about the museum and the collection, you can contact:
http://advertisingiconmuseum.org/
Telephone: 816-960-5254
Email: lesliestrube@advertisingiconmuseum.org
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Mike Marusarz can be reached at mike.marusarz@kshb.com.
