Viva Towels

Inhoud

A sponge recommends his cousin, a kitchen roll, which can absorb liquid as well as he can.

Convincing

When you tell someone that you have just been approached by a sponge, it will cause a perplexed reaction. Yet in this clip, it is an original natural sponge that introduces to the (TV) viewer its ‘cousin’: the Viva kitchen roll. The kitchen roll as a kitchen helper was more common in the United States than in Europe in the mid-1960s. For this reason, it was thought necessary to compare the absorbent capacity of this paper to that of a sponge.
In this film, a convincing character. Joop Geesink's staff proved with productions like this one that truly anything could be brought to life.

Simplicity

This film is strong because of its simplicity in image and message. The voice is brought to life well by Cor Icke's animation. Keeping the set ‘empty’ benefits the message.
As with all films of the time, a commercial starts with 1 second without sound. This has a technical reason of analogue filming. That time is used to show an ‘ordinary sponge’ standing next to the packaging. Suddenly, it gets eyes and a mouth and starts speaking. The ‘ puppet ’ from the Viva commercial is composed by gluing several original natural sponges underneath. A wire frame is hidden on the inside. This was needed to animate the mouth and eyes. All the wires came together in a base, which was invisible to the camera. 

Trivia - Come back

The webmaster of this site, Arie den Draak and his brother Hubert, were active from the mid-1970s as amateur animation filmmakers and then from the mid-1980s professional stop-motion filmmakers. Their inspiration was clearly drawn from Dollywood films.
At that time, a connection with the then Toonder-Geesink studios in Nederhorst den Berg (NL) and thus contact with several employees was established. This contact went so well that besides his own work as an animator, Huibert took care of many animations of Loeki de Leeuw as well as several commercials for Toonder-Geesink studios. When Huibert and Arie, as younger hobby filmmakers, were able to look behind the scenes of Geesink Studios a bit more often, puppet maker Harry Tolsma was still working there, despite his advanced age. This man had been on the studio's staff since 1947, implementing numerous technical improvements in the production of stop-motion puppets. He was enthusiastic about the ambitions and achievements of the Den Draak brothers and a bond of friendship developed. In the following years the brothers came to the home of the now-retired Harry Tolsma. He transferred a lot of professional knowledge to Arie den Draak. If the opportunity arose, he made puppets or set components for the Den Draak Film Productions, by now a formidable competitor of Geesink Studios.
The ‘Sponge doll’ had been at home all these years in the studio of its creator, Harry Tolsma, who liked the Den Draak brothers' plan to make another appearance of this figure in a movie. It became an intro to the showreel of the then animation studio ‘Den Draak Film Productions’ of the aforementioned webmaster and his brother. This page shows the original commercial and then the homage from 1990.
The original film (1965) was animated by Cor Icke. The 1990 homage / remake was animated by Huibert den Draak animated. On this he later said, ‘The sponge was made of a natural product. Its elasticity was greatly reduced because the sponge had been drying out in the cupboard for decades. If the animation had been done as I had envisaged, the sponge would probably have torn.