Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Golden Plunger Awards

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  THE FAMOUS FOR 3 WORDS AWARD

  Clara Peller and Wendy’s

  “Where’s the Beef” Commercial

  A feisty octogenarian put some sizzle into a simple

  ad line and made it into the history books.

  CAUSING A COW-MOTION

  Tuesday, January 10, 1984, was the first time Americans heard the phrase “Where’s the beef?” It definitely wouldn’t be the last. Almost instantly, the question asked by a 4’10”, 83-year-old shrill-voiced actress named Clara Peller, in a commercial for fast-food giant Wendy’s, became a popular catchphrase. And even though the commercial featured two other senior ladies trying to order a burger at a fast-food restaurant, Peller was the attention-getter.

  A POWERFUL STATEMENT

  The ad is deliciously simple compared to some of today’s commercials. In it, three senior ladies, whose heads barely reach the counter of a restaurant that bills itself as the “Home of the Big Bun,” are less than impressed by the hamburger they’ve ordered. Two of the women marvel at the size of the fluffy bun, but Peller asks three times, “Where’s the beef?” (Peller’s only other lines in the ad are “Hey” and “I don’t think there’s anybody back there.”)

  “Where’s the beef?” became such a recognizable catchphrase that Peller recorded a single of the same name (with Nashville shock jock Coyote McCloud). More famously, the phrase took on new meaning in the 1984 Democratic presidential candidate debates, when Walter Mondale used it against Gary Hart. (A decision that bumped Mondale up in the polls, too). “Where’s the beef?” was licensed in a major merchandising deal and emblazoned on T-shirts, underwear, coffee mugs, and towels.

  Not bad for a commercial that almost didn’t make it on the air. Just one week before it was scheduled to run, Wendy’s got cold feet when test audiences reacted negatively to the ad. The ad copywriter had to talk the Wendy’s team into sticking with his vision. And it paid off. Annual revenues for Wendy’s jumped 31 percent after the spots began airing, and the fast-food chain moved from fifth to third place in the industry. In 1988, the ad spot was named a “Clio Classic” at the annual Clio Awards, the most prestigious prize given in the advertising industry.

  THE TEAM BEHIND THE FLUFFY BUN

  Wendy’s had wanted to bump up its sales in the early 1980s, so the company turned to a 41-year-old copywriter named Clifford Freeman, employed by the Madison Avenue advertising agency of Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. Freeman had created several ads that used humor to make their point (like “Sometimes you feel like a nut; sometimes you don’t” for Mounds and Almond Joy). Wendy’s was betting that his approach could give them a bigger bite of the market.

  What Freeman came up with was called “Fluffy Bun,” even though the world would forever remember it as “Where’s the beef?” Freeman wrote the simple line before he knew which actress would deliver it. He left the job of hiring to director Joe Sedelmaier.

  Sedelmaier was famous in the ad business, too. He was the guy behind a 1980s Federal Express commercial featuring the fastest talker in the world, and he had a knack for picking out nonactors and “personalities” instead of professional actors for his spots. It was Sedelmaier who cast the little-known Peller based on her work in a previous commercial for a truck-rental company called Jartran. (In that commercial, Peller played a woman moving her belongings—which included a lot of pet rabbits—while her husband slept.)

  A STAR IS BORN

  Peller was a Russian native who’d come to the United States as a girl. She’d worked as a beautician and manicurist for 35 years and had only decided to give acting a try after she retired. She made her commercial debut for Jartran in 1983, but it was the Wendy’s spot that made her a household name. Peller’s lack of theatrical training shows in the spot; she looks a bit confused and out of sorts. But it didn’t matter. Her presence and grouchy delivery of her short lines were comedic gold.

  She made only the actor’s union scale—$317.40 per day—for the first Wendy’s commercial, but for her follow-up commercials for the chain—a total of 10 in all—she reportedly made $500,000. She was quoted later as saying, “I made some money, which is nice for an older person, but Wendy’s made millions because of me.”

  When all was said and done, Peller was a celebrity, making appearances on Saturday Night Live and in the 1985 movie Moving Violations. She continued to get commercial work as well, but when she proclaimed, “I found it!” in a Prego spaghetti sauce commercial in 1985, Wendy’s had a beef with her. She would no longer star in any more ads for the chain. William Welter, an EVP for Wendy’s, told the New York Times, “Unfortunately, Clara’s appearance in the [Prego] ads makes it extremely difficult for her to serve as a credible spokesperson for our products.”

  In 1987, exactly one week after her 85th birthday, Peller passed away. But her legacy lives on in American pop culture.

  FACTS ABOUT WENDY’S FOUNDER DAVE THOMAS

  • He got the idea for the distinctive Wendy’s square hamburgers from Kewpee, a restaurant in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

  • In the 1960s, he owned several Kentucky Fried Chicken locations in Columbus, Ohio, but sold them in 1969 to start his own hamburger chain. He said there weren’t any good burger places in Columbus.

  • His two-year-old daughter Melinda could only pronounce her first name as “Wenda.” Thomas fashioned it into “Wendy” and named his burger restaurant that.

  • Thomas dropped out of high school at age 15, but earned a GED at the age of 60.

  • From 1989 to 2002, Thomas was Wendy’s commercial pitchman, appearing in more than 800 commercials.

  THE “VIDEO MADE THE RADIO STAR” AWARD

  “Take on Me” by a-ha

  The third time was the charm for this catchy hit—thanks to a

  groundbreaking video that rocked the music video world.

  OFF THE HOOK

  It took a while for the world to take to “Take on Me.” Luckily, the Norwegian band a-ha had a record company that believed the group was destined for stardom thanks to the band members’ matinee-idol good looks and the vocal range of lead singer Morten Harket. The trio (Harket, guitarist Paul Waak-taar Savoy, and keyboardist Magne Furuholmen) moved to London in the early 1980s to try to get a record deal and finally succeeded in late 1983 when Warner Bros.’ U.K. division signed them. They released “Take on Me,” a catchy pop song about the nervousness of falling in love, in the fall of 1984, but the song lacked a hook. Its midtempo beat was overpowered by synthesizer effects that distracted listeners from Harket’s powerhouse voice. The familiar chorus of “Take on me/Take me on/I’ll be gone/In a day or two” was there, of course, but the energy of the song was plodding.

  Nevertheless, Warner Bros. still felt they had a potential hit band on their hands, and they wanted to recoup the initial investment they’d made in the group. They hired producer Alan Tarney, who’d had success working with such 1970s artists as Cliff Richard and Leo Sayer, to remix “Take on Me,” along with some other songs on the album. Tarney’s direction for the song worked. He rearranged the synthesizer line, bringing it to the forefront to create the hook that would make the song immediately recognizable. He also sped up the tempo, creating a tune that would have the potential to entice people onto the dance floor.

  IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED . . .

  Still, a second release of the single didn’t change matters. Outside of Norway, sales of a-ha’s album Hunting High and Low were tanking. This time around, though, the American section of Warner Bros. Records had an idea. When the band had visited their offices, all the women had gone crazy for the three band members, Harket in particular. Warner Bros. wasn’t going to let that opportunity get away. They convinced their British counterparts that the song needed just one more thing—a good video.

  In the spring of 1985, everyone would be humming along to Harket’s almost glass-shattering chorus and reciting the song’s simple lyrics (“Talking away/I don’t know what I’m to say/I’ll say it anyway”). But ultimately, it was
the medium of television that would get the message of “Take on Me” across and help it achieve sales of nearly 10 million copies worldwide.

  REANIMATING A HIT

  A performance video for the original version of “Take on Me” had already been filmed, but Warner Bros. was looking for something new, different, and captivating. Director Steve Barron had worked on movie sets for years and had already made an impact in music videos with Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean,” the Human League’s

  “Don’t You Want Me,” Culture Club’s “Do You Really Want to Hurt Me,” and others. In 1985, he was ready to break out of the mold of traditional music videos (which usually had slim budgets that left little room for creativity). “Take on Me” was given £100,000—an enormous budget at the time, especially since the band was unknown and had a sketchy track record. But Warner Bros. believed the investment would pay off. Barron went to work creating a story that mixed live action and animation.

  The video’s story opens with comic-book art of a motorcycle race. A cartoon version of Harket fights off the attacks of his competitors to win the race fair and square. The scene then shifts to a woman in a café who’s reading the comic while a waitress serves her coffee. Suddenly the woman notices movement on the page. An animated Harket winks at her, and then his hand pops through the table to invite her into his world. She follows, and their flirtation begins.

  The couple’s happiness is short-lived, however. The waitress believes the woman has left without paying her bill, and she crumples the comic and throws it in the garbage. Meanwhile, the thugs from the motorcycle race return with wrenches in hand to beat Harket. The couple runs away, and Harket pushes the woman back into the real world, where she emerges in the trash. She grabs the comic, runs from the restaurant, and hurries home to finish reading to find out the fate of her new love.

  She reads on and feels helpless when she sees that Harket has been beaten savagely and may be dead. As her tears fall, she sees him awaken to struggle against the boundaries of the comic book, a scene that also plays out in the hallway of her apartment. As Harket crashes against the walls, his body transforms from animation to real over and over again. As the song ends, Harket emerges, sweaty but flesh and blood, and the two embrace.

  LOVE BITES

  The video was partially shot on a soundstage and at a real restaurant, Kim’s Café, in the Wandsworth section of London. The woman in the video was played by Bunty Bailey, an actress, dancer, and model. Romance sparked for Bailey and Harket on the set, but it didn’t last. After dating Harket, Bailey appeared as a backup singer in the video for Billy Idol’s hit “To Be a Lover,” which reached #6 on the Billboard charts in 1986.

  Things didn’t work out much better for the fictional lovers in “Take on Me,” either. The video for the follow-up song, “The Sun Always Shines on TV,” opened with the couple staring into each other’s eyes when Harket begins to switch back to his comic-book form. He doubles over in pain while Bailey helplessly watches, and then he runs off. A strong burst of light follows, and “The End” pops up on the scene.

  THE TAKE ON “TAKE ON ME”

  For its animation, “Take on Me” relied entirely on rotoscoping, a process in which live-action film is projected onto a surface and traced by an animator. Barron asked the record company for three months to work on the video (most were produced in a couple of days), and he got it. Lead animator Michael Patterson and 13 other illustrators embarked on the painstaking process involving more than 2,000 drawn images for the video.

  The video’s tumultuous finale was an homage to the 1980 movie Altered States, which starred William Hurt as a man who evolves and devolves in an attempt to learn the meaning of life through sensory deprivation. The ending of the movie features Hurt violently switching between humanity and primordial sludge while his wife watches helplessly.

  THE FINAL CHAPTER

  Shortly after the release of the new video for “Take on Me,” the song became a hit around the globe. It went to #1 in the United States and became the second best-selling single of 1985. (“We Are the World” took the top spot.) At the 1986 MTV Video Awards, a-ha won Best New Artist, and “Take on Me” won the following awards:

  • Most Experimental Video

  • Viewer’s Choice, Best Special Effects

  • Best Concept Video, Best Cinematography

  • Best Direction

  • Best Editing

  Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing,” which used state-of-the-art computer animation with some rotoscoping thrown in to tell the song’s story, won Video of the Year. Barron couldn’t have been too disappointed in that, though: he also directed the Dire Straits video.

  ANOTHER GREAT MUSIC VIDEO

  “Buddy Holly” by Weezer (1994)

  The alternative rock band is seamlessly spliced into actual footage of Happy Days. In the clip, the band, dressed in 1950s sweaters and nerdy glasses, play at Arnold’s Diner as Fonzie wins a dance contest.

  THE TANGLED UP IN BLUE AWARD

  Jeans We Can Live Without

  From humble origins to haute couture, blue jeans have seen it

  all . . . and clothed nearly everyone—even Uncle John. But

  some of the newest blue jean trends are enough to make

  even a dedicated denim-wearer say “no thanks.”

  BLUE JEANS HISTORY—THE SHORT VERSION

  The Dongarii Fort in India gave birth to dungarees; the Genoese fabric industry gave birth to blue de Gênes (one theory for the original “blue jeans”), and textile work in Nîmes, France, led to a material that became known as “de Nîmes,” or denim. Then, in 1873, a tailor named Jacob Davis and a merchant named Levi Strauss teamed up and got a patent for their copper rivets sewed onto the stress points of denim dungarees. Popular blue jeans were born.

  Once used exclusively by sailors, laborers, and cowboys, jeans have become universal outerwear. But lately, some new trends in denim have emerged that stink . . . and may even have some toxic side effects.

  FOREVER IN BLUE JEANS

  Jeans have been popular with everyone from California gold miners to today’s CEOs. One reason is that they continue to look clean for a long time between washings and don’t show dirt or stains as easily as other types of pants do. But one of the latest trends in blue jeans is “raw denim” jeans, which pushed the bounds of cleanliness. Raw denim is the fabric that comes right off the production line: it’s unwashed, untreated, stiff, and dark blue. The benefit of raw denim is that, if someone wears it long enough, it should completely conform to his or her body, creating a nearly custom fit. Some raw jeans aficionados even put objects (wallets, pens, calculators) in their pockets so the outlines of the objects will remain visible in the denim as a style feature.

  But even the most devoted dirty-denim fan might balk at the recommended care instructions on raw jeans: “Do not wash for six months.” One company that makes the jeans, A.P.C., actually encourages no washing for a whole year. At the end of 12 months, A.P.C. designers recommend that you take your unwashed jeans to the ocean, give them a good dip and scrubbing with sand, and then rinse with fresh water and dry them in the sun. As for cleanliness and odor control, one fan sprinkles his jeans with baking soda and puts them in a plastic bag in the freezer—the cold kills bacteria and the soda absorbs odors.

  DENIM COUTURE

  In Japan, the latest trend is custom-made jeans. Yoropiko Denim, designed by Martin Ksohoh, features tailor-made, decorated denim, complete with jeweled buttons (sometimes made of rubies, emeralds, diamonds, and sapphires) and large pieces of embroidery fashioned from ultra-soft kimono thread.

  Ksohoh’s denim jeans and jackets have become favorites of hip-hop stars like S.A.S. (brothers Sean and Melvin Williams) and Dizzee Rascal. And each piece is a work of art that takes hours to create—and hours to earn. A pair of Yoropiko jeans costs anywhere from $475 (for plain denim with your choice of gems) to $995 (for embroidered denim) and up (for custom designs).

  DISTRESSING THE EN
VIRONMENT

  Raw denim and custom-made jeans may be extravagant, but recently a popular form of treating denim has come under fire for being environmentally unfriendly. Stonewashed jeans were really popular in the 1980s and 1990s, and many people still like them because the jeans are soft from the first wearing, look good, and can be customized with all sorts of frayed threads, holes, slashes, and worn bits. But some of the processes that make denim more comfortable for wearers are polluting land and rivers in central Mexico—specifically the Tehuacán valley, where more than 700 clothing manufacturers process jeans to sell to U.S. companies.

  Once called the “city of health,” Tehuacán used to be best known for mineral springs. Today, toxic runoff from the denim plants has poisoned the area. The water in Tehuacán’s irrigation canals has turned blue and is so full of toxins that it burns seedlings and sterilizes farmland. And much of the dirt along the canal’s banks is an ashy gray.

  There are alternatives. Some smaller companies like Edun and Fair Indigo offer organic and fair-trade denim that’s processed in environmentally friendly ways.

  FAVORITE FABRIC

  Today’s denim often contains Lycra and other fibers, but it’s typically an all-cotton fabric. The natural fiber and the strong weave make leftover denim useful for all sorts of things:

  • Recycled denim can be made into pencils—sure, they’re blue, but the lead is still charcoal gray.

  • Recycled blue jeans, known as “Cotton Batt,” have become a new eco-friendly choice for insulating homes. Cotton even has a better insulation value than fiberglass.