What can you really do with a ten-second ad spot?
Quite a bit if you happen to have Jim Henson’s zany sense of entertainment and plenty of caffeine.
Long before the Muppets, Henson made a name for himself in small sips for Wilkins Coffee, using characters named Wilkins and the ill-fated Wontkins. The clearly caffeine-deprived Wontkins needed some serious convincing to try the product, which Wilkins served up in a series of short, violent spurts.
The ads ran from 1957 to 1961, and as Henson noted:
“Till then, advertising agencies believed that the hard sell was the only way to get their message over on television. We took a very different approach. We tried to sell things by making people laugh.”
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