You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Tootsie Pops

The Promotion:

The Pitch:
So good, even animals who really shouldn’t be eating candy can’t resist a bite.

This ad is indisputably a classic. Premiering in 1969, it’s continued to air for decades (albeit in a shortened form) up to the present day. Yet, I have a hard time putting my finger on what makes it work so well.

It’s a minute long commercial that builds up to one, mostly-just-okay joke. The art and animation, while certainly distinctive, aren’t anything mind-blowing. And there’s not a particularly strong or unique gimmick to the thing.

Yet, it works. I know it works, because as a kid I too would often try to count how many licks it took me to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize this was a hopeless task – not because of Tootsie Pops’ supposed irresistibility, but because:

(a) No two licks are ever going to take exactly the same amount of candy off the Tootsie Pop

and

(b) I eventually found that the difference between reaching the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop and merely getting the candy coating down to an incredibly thin, transparent skin was too fine a distinction for my naked eyes to make.

So, no big analysis of the commercial this time around, because I don’t know what makes this one good – I just know that it is.