Wow! Here’s an ad where people are all thanking Charlie (That’s Star-Kist’s Charlie the Tuna of: “Sorry, Charlie!” fame.) for the high quality of Star-Kist SeaSations entrées (!). Um, how is Charlie responsible for the reputed high quality of Star-Kist products? By not being in them? Remember: Charlie was the tuna who was always and forever being rejected time and time again from being killed and having his carcass canned and sold by Star-Kist. So, um, are people now crediting Charlie somehow for the quality of the Star-Kist tuna? He doesn’t deserve any credit for their purported high quality, because it’s not his doing!
Really, the opposite is true here: he tried his absolute best again and again to ruin the quality of the Star-Kist tuna! (I will provide evidence of this claim in the form of a commercial, one of a plethora of such Star-Kist ads from the past, which clearly demonstrates Charlie’s wanton disregard and contempt for the quality-control standards of Star-Kist tuna, and all for selfish purposes!) And he did it all just so he could satiate his own selfishly suicidal desire to be in the Star-Kist tuna, I suppose because he thought it would make him a star! (What a sublime, farcical satire upon our celebrity-obsessed culture! He became a star by being refused and rejected again and again and again instead! Oh, the irony! I guess it’s kind of like when the runners-up on American Idol become the big successful stars, and the winners fizzle out and become instant has-beens.)
Well, given that Star-Kist has an ad where people are thanking Charlie (the tuna with demonstrably bad taste) for the taste of their line of SeaSations entrées, it’s really no surprise that some of these products have apparently been discontinued since the running of this ad. Oh, well. That’s why it’s better to know what people remember your mascot for, and not to try to change it without first rehabilitating said mascot’s image! Because anyone who remembers Charlie from the Star-Kist advertising knows: that guy’s the bottom of the barrel! You can’t take the guy known for being a reject with bad taste and then use him as the mark of quality for your brand! It simply will not work. (We know he likes Star-Kist tuna, but he doesn’t make the tuna, nor does he make their other products. And there’s a separate problem with Charlie’s stamp of approval: Charlie doesn’t have particularly good taste himself, as demonstrated in so many Star-Kist ads from yesteryear, so then doesn’t it follow to think that if Charlie likes it, it may be bad? Plus, it seems like Charlie wanted to be in Star-Kist because it was famous for its quality, not necessarily because he knew what it tastes like; after all, if Charlie eats Star-Kist tuna products, or even knows what they taste like, then doesn’t that make him {Gasp!} a cannibal?)
But, had they run an ad campaign where they showed Charlie cleaning up his act, where after becoming tired of being rejected again and again, he decided to better himself and go to culinary school, where he became a chef of the highest order, then they could have done this easily, and it would have worked beautifully and been a really fun way of introducing the brand’s new line of products too! They briefly could have told Charlie’s story, from the reject scam artist, all the way to the haute cuisine chef, and then said this new line of entrées is the product of all of Charlie’s hard work, validating him as a success after all! And then they could say that this all goes to show you that anyone can become anything they set their sights on through hard work and dedication, and it would send an encouraging message to dejected people in these tough economic times. (But it doesn’t work to use Charlie as a mark of quality without re-branding Charlie as a success first!) (Oh, and plus, he’d still be a cannibal, and with his sophisticated foodie taste for delicacies mixed with his cannibalism, he would come across as a Hannibal Lecter-type, wouldn’t he? {Unless he didn’t taste the tuna part of his cuisine, that is.} But I suppose they could simply say that Charlie never was a loser or a scam artist, but rather, that he was simply an actor playing those roles in their old ads, and he is, in fact, a star with great taste! {But that would mean he would be encouraging the murder and distribution of his own species of fish as food, like some aquatic Soylent Green huckster, and that would make him a traitor to tuna!})
Here’s the cluelessly Charlie-crediting and -congratulating culinary cuisine commercial:
And here’s a spot from the 1970s which clearly shows Charlie attempting to subvert Star-Kist quality control and ruin the taste of the company’s tuna by virtue of being in it himself!:
And here’s an earlier post of mine covering in greater detail this legacy of Charlie, the Star-Kist mascot:
