Beech Nut - Yipes! Stripes!

Content

TV commercial for Beech-Nut chewing gum with a striped fruit flavour. Stripy fantasy animals swing through the screen and sing the praises of the gum. It ends up as a cosy and cheerful mess.

Trivia

The fantasy animal figures were like childlike drawings and could be found on the chewing gum packaging and in advertisements. A zebra, elephant, cat and a mouse appeared in several commercials. At the time, it was a commercially daring experiment to replace the sung slogan ‘Buy Beech-Nut – Buy gum!’ and replace it with ‘Yipes! Stripes! Stripes!’ With this slogan, the zebra went solo. The reason why the zebra was chosen for the packaging is obvious. It was the link to the stripes in the chewing gum. The zebra also appeared later as a cartoon character. To jog your memory of the classic advertising slogan, it is said once more at the end: ‘Buy-Beech Nut, buy gum!’

Evolution

You can find several Beech-Nut commercials on this website. This series is far from complete, but it gives a good idea of the development of the advertising formula. The concept grew over the years into what you see here. In the first commercials from the mid 1950s, an animation was made based on a melody. The films were successful and became increasingly playful and cheerful. This commercial lasts just half a minute. This is very short compared to other Dollywood films. A similar message was often told in 2 minutes. Television airtime is considerably more expensive than cinema. Viewers also became increasingly accustomed to the relatively fast pace at which commercial films are presented. The striped animals return on this website in a black-and-white TV commercial. It shows that the creative, but tightly directed chaos can be even greater. This will certainly appeal to the imagination of (young) audiences.