Buzz
When Robert Skollar became part of the General Foods marketing team at Grey Advertising in 1988, it didn’t take long for him to discover the unexpected perks of the job. As the mastermind behind the Kool-Aid ad campaign, Skollar inherited the famous Kool-Aid Man—a lively pitcher of sugary drink that had been the brand’s mascot for over ten years.
One of the most memorable moments, Skollar recalls, happened one late night when he decided to try on the Kool-Aid Man’s fiberglass costume. It felt like being trapped inside a giant holiday ornament. “You can’t hear anything in there,” Skollar tells Mytour. “You just cross your fingers and hope you don’t trip.”
Another notable incident occurred when Skollar got swept up in the trendy New York tradition of lavish kids’ birthday parties. He asked Richard Berg, the voice behind Kool-Aid Man’s iconic “Oh, Yeah!” catchphrase, to wear the costume and make a special appearance at his son’s sixth birthday. (Berg typically only recorded the line.) “It was the voice in the costume, which was a first,” Skollar says. “And half the kids were absolutely terrified.”
Thankfully, that was far from the usual response. Debuting in 1975, Kool-Aid Man quickly became one of the most cherished figures in advertising, achieving a level of fame that sometimes surpassed even Ronald McDonald. He earned his own video game, comic book, and even had a dedicated museum exhibit in Hastings, Nebraska.
Not bad for a character that started out as just a floating head.
By the time advertising guru Marvin Potts created a conscious pitcher of Kool-Aid in 1954, the powdered drink mix had already been on store shelves for 27 years. Created by Edwin Perkins in Hastings, Nebraska, as a cost-effective alternative to glass-bottled beverages—expensive to transport—what was then called “Kool-Ade” quickly became a popular way to flavor water.
When Perkins sold the brand to General Foods in 1953, their advertising firm Foote, Cone & Belding experimented with various TV ads. Potts’s concept—a large, round pitcher of Kool-Aid with animated eyes and a mouth, dubbed Pitcher Man—was the biggest hit. (According to company legend, Perkins was inspired by seeing his child draw a smiley face on a fogged-up window.)
In the 1960s, Kool-Aid shifted to using celebrity endorsers like The Monkees and Bugs Bunny, pushing Pitcher Man to the background. “I think they realized Bugs was overshadowing the whole campaign,” Skollar recalls. “Kids would remember him but forget the ad was for Kool-Aid.”
The issue was resolved in 1975, when Alan Kupchick and Harold Karp at Grey Advertising created the concept for Kool-Aid Man, a new take on Pitcher Man. Although his face no longer moved, the addition of arms and legs gave the character a much more dramatic flair. It also allowed him to engage in outrageous acts of property destruction.
Skollar remembers that the iconic scene of Kool-Aid Man bursting through the wall wasn’t exactly planned in advance. “From what I’ve heard, someone on set suggested that Kool-Aid Man really needed an unforgettable entrance, and then maybe a producer suggested he break through the wall.” Breakaway bricks were set up, and the character’s fiberglass shell—“the same material used for a Corvette Stingray,” Skollar recalls—became a wrecking ball in action.
Though he wasn’t officially called Kool-Aid Man at the time, the character played a big part in boosting sales of the drink mix. “It became a sensation,” Skollar says. “Here was a 50-year-old product, not particularly convenient or healthy, yet it became huge.”
As Kool-Aid Man’s popularity grew, so did his chances to expand. The brand got its own Marvel comic—The Adventures of Kool-Aid Man—along with an Atari 2600 video game. The game could be redeemed with 125 points earned from buying Kool-Aid, which was roughly equivalent to 62.5 gallons of sugary drink. (Alternatively, you could mail in $10 with 30 points.)
When Skollar took over the campaign in 1988, the instructions were clear. “It was basically: Don’t mess it up,” he says, “and make it feel more current.”
Skollar drew inspiration from Pee-wee’s Playhouse and the Peter Gabriel music video for "Sledgehammer" to imagine an entire Kool-Aid Man world—one filled with chaotic energy that would thrill kids and baffle adults.
“Most kids' ads had a storyline at the time,” he recalls. “This one didn’t. It was just pure surrealism.”
This surreal, Lynchian version of Kool-Aid Man wasn’t the 7-year-old character from previous ads; he was now 14—old enough to shred on guitar and catch some waves. Gone were his days of being bare, now he rocked jeans and trendy shirts. Skollar believes that these high-energy ads helped usher in a new era of kids’ advertising, driven by fast, MTV-style cuts.
However, not all of Kool-Aid’s efforts were focused on the hyperactive youth. The drink mix was no stranger to controversy, having once been linked to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where cult leader Jim Jones persuaded his followers to drink Kool-Aid and Flavor Aid laced with cyanide. There was also the issue of Kool-Aid promoting the addition of large amounts of sugar for flavor.
“We launched a campaign aimed at moms, ‘Having Kids Means Having Kool-Aid,’” Skollar says. “We reassured them they could control the amount of sugar in their drinks. We also emphasized that Kool-Aid had Vitamin C.”
Under Skollar’s leadership, Kool-Aid sales surged to third place in the soft drink market—trailing only Coke and Pepsi.
Slaven Vlasic/Getty ImagesSkollar continued to oversee the Kool-Aid campaign until 1994, when the account was handed over to Ogilvy & Mather. Over time, the fiberglass costume was replaced with nylon, and computer-generated effects began to refine his appearance.
Skollar had started experimenting with CGI early on but ultimately opted for the analog costume. “There was something special about that rawness, that awkward pitcher crashing through walls,” he explains.
One of the original costumes from 1975 resides in the Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Hastings, Nebraska, standing as a tribute to the character’s lasting popularity. Skollar recalls that research once showed over 90 percent of kids could recognize Kool-Aid Man just by sight.
The situation wasn’t always the same with adults. “I recall a time we were shooting an ad where Kool-Aid Man was strolling over a hill at sunset, holding hands with a young girl,” he says. “A junior brand executive taps me on the shoulder and says, ‘We can’t see his face. How will we know who he is?’”
