15 Comic Book Ads Starring or Featuring Bears
1. “Pepsi the Pepsi-Cola Cop” (Pepsi-Cola, 1946)
Sure, crawl halfway inside a hollow tree trunk when you spot a bear, that makes total sense. Long before Pepsi solved racism with the help of Kendall Jenner and some thirsty riot squad officers, the beverage company used two other agents of the law to hawk their wares. In comic ads and short animated commercials for movie houses, Pepsi the Pepsi-Cola Cop and his bumbling partner, Pete, would get themselves into situations where — much like Popeye and his cans of spinach — they needed a swig of Pepsi-Cola to boost their strength and save the day. Why police officers? Your guess is as good as mine, though I bet the blue color of their uniforms that was similar to Pepsi’s colors (and in stark contrast to Coca-Cola’s red-and-white branding) might have had something to do with it. One thing’s for sure: the actual strength-boosting effects of drinking Pepsi were slightly exaggerated in these ads. “When th’ going’s tough/And you’ve lots to do/PEPSI-COLA is the drink for you!”
2. “On a camping trip in the northwest…” (Grape-Nut Flakes, 1946)
Every great hero has a weakness. Superman has kryptonite. Green Lantern has the color yellow. Martian Manhunter has fire (though to be fair, isn’t fire everyone’s weakness?). Volto… is not a great hero, true, but that doesn’t mean he can’t have his own weakness. Specifically, he needs to periodically recharge his magnetic powers with bowls of Grape-Nuts cereal. Another one of his weaknesses that the bear in this short adventure tale apparently sussed out was his need to touch his arm and say “Volto!” to activate his powers. Not only does he need Joe and Jimmy to save him from “the grizzly’s death grip” with a well-aimed rock to the bear’s noggin, he gets so wrapped up in thanking Joe that both men almost miss Jimmy’s life-and-death struggle with the same bear happening right behind them. Nothing another bowl of Grape-Nuts cereal can’t fix, I suppose. Sometimes Volto attracts and sometimes Volto repels, but no matter what he’s doing in that moment you can be sure that, wherever he is, Volto sucks.
3. “Captain Tootsie traps killer bear with invisible light” (Tootsie Rolls, 1948)
Created by C.C. Beck and Pete Costanza of Captain Marvel fame, Captain Tootsie is a hero who always needed to consume a Tootsie Roll for a sudden boost of energy to perform whatever heroic task he needed to do. From the Public Domain Super Heroes wiki: “He had a sidekick, a boy named Rollo, and two other young cohorts named Fatso and Fisty (the three of whom, along with the Captain himself, made up the Secret Legion).” I wonder if anyone at Tootsie Roll Inc. ever voiced concerns about having a mascot named “Fatso” selling candy? At any rate, Captain Tootsie proved popular enough to last for several years as the face of Tootsie Roll, even scoring himself his own comic series in 1950 that lasted for two issues. Take that, Volto!
4. “Escaped bear… and a bare escape!” (B.F. Goodrich and Hood Rubber Co., 1949)
According to Parks Canada — the only online source worth consulting when it comes to professional bear safety tips — your best bet is to avoid encountering bears in the first place by staying on marked trails, traveling in groups, making noises when you’re in bear country, and leaving the scene immediately if you find evidence of a bear’s presence. If all that fails and you still lock eyes with a bear without any means to defend yourself (like bear spray), they advise you to stay calm, back away slowly, speak so that the bear understands you’re a human, and make yourself or your group appear bigger than you are.
In very plain text on their website: “Never run! Running may trigger a pursuit.” My guess? Ol’ Sprintin’ Jim here figures he doesn’t have to worry about outrunning the bear, he just needs to stay ahead of the kids. So he can get to the ranger station first and call for help, of course. Jim’s a big hero that way. Like Captain Tootsie, Volto, and other advertising comic-strip mascots back in the day, Jim appears to be a fellow who only exists to hang out with youngsters and experience pulse-pounding adventures while hawking the advantages of the product he’s paid to promote. There are worse ways to make a living.
5. “Bear trapped!” (Ray-O-Vac, 1950)
Guys! Come on! What did I just say? You never run away from a bear! Give credit to the Ray-O-Vac folks, though; at least we’re told this is a wounded bear trying to beat down this door to maul Mac and Ray, making it clear this isn’t your typical bear behavior. Though I have to wonder just how wounded this bear really is, if it’s still trying to claw its way inside a cabin “several hours later.” I mean, at some point you’d think it would just wander off to find some honey or berries that are easier to get at, no? At any rate, I hit the internet again to find out if shining a flashlight in a bear’s presence will make it go away, and the definitive answer is…. maybe. From Backpacker.com’s “Ask a Bear” column: “It will most likely only work once. Unless something happens to reinforce the light (i.e., you yelling, banging pots, etc.), I’ll learn to call your bluff. You might get a few more scares out of me by altering the pattern of lights, but eventually I’ll figure out that there’s nothing to them.” Good to know.
6. “Larry learns about live wires” (Gillette Bicycle Tires, 1950)
Starting around the late 1940s, comic publishers started attracted a lot of unwanted attention from parents’ groups and morality crusaders looking for easy answers to the question of why their kids were acting up. It certainly couldn’t have had anything to do with a lot of them dealing with the trauma of losing loved ones during the war, or the fact they were the first generation to grow up in constant existential fear of nuclear annihilation; no, no, it had to be those evil comic books. This is when you start to see a lot of the Golden Age superheroes start to retire, and the ones left standing joined the rest of their comic-book colleagues in leaning hard into “educational” messaging. Apparently, this trend also affected the ads in the comics; how else to explain why a talking polar bear shilling bicycle tires would offer lifesaving advice to dumbass kids like Larry who didn’t know enough to stay inside during a windstorm? The connection between a polar bear and bicycle tires wasn’t that far-fetched; from its beginnings, the Gillette tire company featured polar bears in its marketing to symbolize the “Chilled Rubber Process” that set its tires apart from the competition, and made them more resistant to extreme temperatures… or as Larry would say to anyone within earshot, “sturdy and strong.” Larry was weird that way.
7. “Captain Tootsie in the north woods” (Tootsie Roll, 1951)
Good gravy, Captain Tootsie, leave these poor animals alone already! At least this strip doesn’t end with the bear getting shot by our hero? Even though being stuck in a cage you can barely move in doesn’t seem that great, either? That’s progress, I guess. You know, I’m just going to say what we’re all thinking: I don’t care how many of those Tootsie Rolls you jam in my mouth, there ain’t no way I’m finding the energy needed to dig a hole in the dirt deep enough to trap a grown bear. Also? Never trust anyone with a shovel who invites you to go on a hike in the woods. Free advice, from me to you.
8. “Operation Giant” (Post Sugar Crisp, 1953)
“As a cereal it’s dandy! For snacks it’s so handy! Or eat it like candy!” Ah, the good old days when cereal makers flat out admitted they were selling bowls of milk-drenched candy to the American public. Post introduced Happy Jax in 1948 and renamed it Sugar Crisp the following year; by either name, it was one of the most sugar-laden cereals on the market in the 1950s, with a pancreas-screaming sugar content of 51% by weight (only Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks, at 55%, was higher). The connection between bears and “golden honey flavor” is an obvious one, and this trio of overly cute cubs enjoyed about a decade of stardom (including the 1951 song “Dandy, Handy and Candy” by Rosemary Clooney) before a more mature (and more memorable) spokesbear sent them packing (see below). And while the bear-eat-bear nature of the cereal mascot business certainly makes for fascinating conversation… I can’t stop thinking about the giant in this ad. We’re all on the same page here, right? As in, this guy is totally not wearing any clothes? Because that’s one very strategically placed speech balloon in the second panel.
9. “Have fun with gum!” (Dubble Bubble, 1954)
I don’t care that it’s a bear, sharing your bubble gum like that is just plain gross. Here we have yet another person in the woods blatantly ignoring Parks Canada’s advice about running from bears (honestly, people, do you think the parks people don’t know what they’re talking about?), but everything turns out all right in the end because the one kid who somehow didn’t notice all the running and screaming saved the day by letting the bear “borrow” his bubble gum. The first Dubble Bubble kids were a pair of twins, Dub and Bub, who first appeared on gum wrappers in 1930, but by the 1940s a new gang of kids had crowded them out. As shown here, siblings Pud (in the striped shirt and hat), Tim, and Sis were often joined by their friend Butch on their gum-chewing adventures, and I hope at least one of those adventures involved Pud having a frank discussion with his parents: “So… Mom, Dad, have you ever heard of this thing called the Urban Dictionary? Because I’d really like to talk about where my name came from.”
10. “Don’t be afraid to speak up!” (DC Comics public service announcement, 1955)
Now more than ever, it’s important to remember: “Don’t Be Afraid to Speak Up!” This public service announcement starring some of DC’s funny-animal stars was one of many that ran in DC books in the 1950s and ’60s; aside from offering lessons on courage and civil rights, they would talk about safety, bullying, prejudice, the value of an education, treating people from different cultures with respect… you know, all that good, wholesome “The More You Know” and “One to Grow On” stuff that us kids of the ’80s lapped up like sponges during our Saturday morning couch sessions. A topic these PSAs never touched on, though? Why some of the animals in these strips (like Peter and Wolfie) are walking around wearing clothes while others, like the nameless bear here, make do with nothing but a scarf. But I guess if we started getting into that we inevitably end up talking about all the times Donald Duck was shown cooking a turkey for the holidays and that’s just not a rabbit hole anyone should go down.
11. “Goldilocks and the Grouchy Bears” (7up, 1958)
This ad might be a little confusing to anyone who’s not fluent in “beatnik,” the language of the anti-establishment subculture of the 1950s that would influence the “hippies” and “hipsters” of later generations. Not everyone who identified with the beatnik movement wore black clothing, hung out in coffeehouses to snap their fingers, and said things like “groovy” and “daddy-o” to distinguish themselves from the “squares,” but it didn’t take long for mainstream types — always on the lookout for the next “cool” thing — to co-opt their style and language for marketing purposes. Case in point: this 7up ad that rewrites “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” to make the point that “Nothing does it like Seven-Up!” Calling someone who breaks and enters into your home to steal your soda pop “strictly from Coolville” seems an odd way to treat a home intruder, but at least this ad joins Tootsie Roll and Sugar Crisp in reminding us that a constant sugar high is the only way to get through life.
12. “I always keep Tootsie Rolls handy” (Tootsie Rolls, 1959)
Captain Tootsie’s time as a corporate mascot was pretty much done by the mid-1950s, and the company flailed around looking for its next big ad idea (even the official Tootsie Roll website jumps from 1954 to 1968 when talking about the company’s history). It would get there eventually, with the 1970 “How Many Licks?” campaign for its Tootsie Pops and the classic jingle “The World Looks Mighty Good to Me” in the ’70s, but in the meantime it was definitely hit and miss. One of the longtime selling points for the candy was the burst of energy it supposedly gave a hungry body; even the U.S. Army cited that as the reason why Tootsie Rolls were included in G.I. rations during World War II. But by the late ’50s the company was leaning more on nostalgia with taglines like “America’s favorite candy” and also… limericks? And ski champ polar bears? Sure, why not.
13. “This is a Beaverbear” (Kraft, 1960)
“Bob?” “Yeah, Fred?” “Can you… explain your ad idea? I’m not sure the rest of us get it.” “Well… I took the phrases ‘hungry as a bear’ and ‘busy as a beaver’ and I put them together to create a beaverbear who really likes eating caramels. Because he’s hungry, see?” “Bob?” “Yeah, Fred?” “Is everything okay at home?” At least it’s not as weird as the other ad in this campaign starring a “kangarooseal” who keeps all her Kraft caramels in her pouch (considering what kangaroo pouches are used for, no one should think of them as places to store candy). Even the tagline — “Kraft puts more YUM-IN-UM than anyone” — doesn’t make sense: how do you squeeze a three-letter word inside a two-letter word? Bizarre. I want to stop talking about this ad now.
14. “It’s a treat you can’t beat!” (Kellogg’s, 1961)
I just love the idea of calling a cereal “OKs.” “How does it taste?” “It’s… okay.” From the MrBreakfast.com website: “The cereal pieces came in the shapes of the letters ‘O’ and ‘K’ and were said to taste similar to Cheerios. In fact, most cereal historians believe OKs cereal was a failed attempt by Kellogg’s to nab some of the market from General Mill’s very popular Cheerios.” When the cereal hit grocery shelves in 1959, its mascot was a burly smiling Scotsman named Big Otis, because of the, er, obvious connection between Scotland and oats. But not too long after Yogi Bear’s show debuted, Kellogg’s quickly changed course and signed him up as the cereal’s spokesbear. Again from Mr. Breakfast: “Yogi was usually pictured flexing his biceps, appearing much more muscular than he did in cartoons.” I’m sure he was buff in the cartoon, as well, what with all the running he did to avoid Ranger Smith. Despite Yogi’s star power, sales of Kellogg’s OKs turned out to be the opposite of okay, and the cereal was discontinued in 1962. But it wasn’t all for naught; when the company’s product development team was put to the task of creating another cereal that could be made using the same equipment that made the Os in OKs, in 1963 they came up with the far more successful Froot Loops. Probably by following their nose. It really does always know.
15. “Stick with Yogi Bear” (Lepage’s, 1965)
True story: Yogi’s endorsement contract with the Lepage’s glue people is the reason why Quick Draw McGraw quit the show and didn’t talk to Yogi for 40 years. Believe it… or don’t. In 1965, Lepage’s introduced a “Yogi Bear and Friends” line of white paste that came in containers shaped like the heads of Hanna-Barbera characters. These were joined by characters like Tacky Tiger, Pasty Pup, Sticky Bear, and Mighty Jumbo (an elephant) that were unique to the Lepage’s line-up. Unless you have a time-traveling DeLorean that can take you back to 1965, you’re out of luck if you want to enter the contest and win a trip to Disneyland for you and your mom and dad (your siblings can go pound sand, I guess), though it’s kind of weird that the Hanna-Barbera gang would be offering a trip to Disneyland as a prize. But if I’m being honest, I’m more intrigued by the kid in the ad; specifically, what the hell is he doing there? Were Yakky Doodle or Augie Doggie too busy to say “HEY THERE!” for their corporate masters? My theory: some VP at Lepage’s demanded his kid get put in the ad just to shut him up. Pampered kids of the glue barons, don’t get me started.
16. “Cool, delicious and full of fun!” (Icee, 1981)
As the legend goes, the Icee company got its start in Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1958 when a local Dairy Queen owner named Omar Knedlik started storing bottles of soda pop in the freezer after his drink machine broke down. The sugar in the carbonated drinks kept them from freezing solid, but they came out all slushy… which his customers, who started lining up for a taste, didn’t mind a bit. Sensing he had a hit on his hands, Knedlik tinkered with an ice cream maker to re-create the frosty brew and hired a local artist, Ruth Taylor, to help with the branding. She came up with the “Icee” name and the idea of a polar bear cub mascot, and the rest is history. Later, the cub was aged up to resemble a full-grown polar bear who wore a red turtleneck with the letter “I” — a nice wink at customers who might wonder just how icy an Icee can get if even a polar bear needs a little extra insulation to drink it.
17. “Growling grizzlies” (Hostess, 1981)
Ah, those classic comic-book Hostess ads. Starting around 1975, the makers of Twinkies, Fruit Pies, and other fine packaged snack products came up with the idea of running ads that were one-page comic strip stories featuring established comic characters using Hostess products to save the day. In a Marvel or DC book, for instance, you might see Hostess ads in which Batman or Spider-Man defeat villains by throwing Twinkies at them to distract them from their evil schemes; in this ad, Sabrina uses the magic of Hostess Fruit Pies (plus a little magic of her own) to… wait, why did she toss the Fruit Pies at the bears? She’s a witch; she could have tied them up with her magic regardless of whether they were distracted by real fruit filing and light tender crust. And she “zaps” them in full view of the normie girls she’s led on a hike into the woods? A hike that doesn’t end with even one of these delightful urchins getting pushed into an oven inside a conveniently located gingerbread house? I think the coven is going to have a word or two with you about that, Sabrina.
18. “Sugar Bear and the Bumbling Bees” (Post Super Golden Crisp, 1988)
“So why did you guys change the name of your cereal?” “Well, times changed and we didn’t want to remind America’s parents that we were feeding their kids bowls of sugar.” “Okay, so why is he still called Sugar Bear?” “Uh…” Though still called Sugar Crisp in Canada (take that, so-called land of freedom!), the name of Sugar Bear’s cereal of choice in the U.S. was changed to Super Golden Crisp in 1985 (and later just Golden Crisp). Not long after that name change, Sugar Bear starred in a TV ad with the Bumbling Bees out to steal his cereal that was also made into a full-page comic ad. Just like Captain Tootsie and Pepsi the Pepsi-Cola Cop, all Sugar Bear needs is a taste of his favorite treat to give himself a “vitamin packed punch” and it’s game over for whichever sneaky type is trying to steal his cereal. Though when you really think about it, Sugar Bear, how did you procure that honey for your cereal in the first place, hmmmm…? “Can’t get enough of that Sugar Crisp…”
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