Little Mikey is a fictional boy played by John Gilchrist (born February 2, 1968) in an

American television Television is one of the Mass media in the United States, major mass media outlets in the United States. In 2011, 96.7% of households owned television sets; about 114,200,000 American households owned at least one television set each in August ...

commercial Commercial may refer to: * (adjective for) commerce, a system of voluntary exchange of products and services ** (adjective for) trade, the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money * a dose of advertising ...

promoting

Quaker Oats The Quaker Oats Company, known as Quaker, is an American food conglomerate based in Chicago, Illinois. As Quaker Mill Company, the company was founded in 1877 in Ravenna, Ohio. In 1881, Henry Crowell bought the company and launched a national ad ...

' breakfast cereal

Life Life, also known as biota, refers to matter that has biological processes, such as Cell signaling, signaling and self-sustaining processes. It is defined descriptively by the capacity for homeostasis, Structure#Biological, organisation, met ...

. The ad was created by art director Bob Gage, who also directed the commercial. It first aired in

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, ...

. The popular ad campaign featuring Mikey remained in regular rotation for more than 12 years and was one of the longest continuously running commercial campaigns.

Original commercial

The commercial centers on three young brothers eating

breakfast Breakfast is the first meal of the day usually eaten in the morning. The word in English refers to breaking the fasting period of the previous night. Various "typical" or "traditional" breakfast menus exist, with food choices varying by regi ...

. Before them sits a heaping bowl of Life

breakfast cereal Breakfast cereal is a category of food, including food products, made from food processing, processed cereal, cereal grains, that are eaten as part of breakfast or as a snack food, primarily in Western societies. Although warm, cooked cereals li ...

. Two of the brothers question each other about the cereal, prodding each other to try it and noting that it is supposed to be healthy. Neither boy has any desire to taste it ("I'm not gonna try it—''you'' try it!"), so they get their younger brother Mikey to do so ("Let's get Mikey"), noting that "he hates everything". Mikey briefly contemplates the bowl and after tasting the cereal, begins to eat it vigorously as the brothers exclaim, "He likes it! Hey Mikey!" Mikey's brothers were played by Gilchrist's actual brothers, Michael (on the left in the spot) and Tommy. John is the middle child of seven children born to Tom and Pat Gilchrist of the Bronx..

Reception

The commercial was very popular and won a

Clio Award The Clio Awards, also simply known as The Clios, is an annual award program that recognizes innovation and creative excellence in advertising, design, and communication, as judged by an international panel of advertising professionals. The awar ...

in 1974. It has often been included in retrospectives of classic television ads. In 1999, ''

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, vi ...

'' ranked it the No. 10 commercial of all time. Despite its age, a 1999 survey found that 70% of adults could identify the spot based on just a "brief generic description."

Sequels

A series of "Today's Mikey" ads aired in the 1980s, with Gilchrist bemusedly reprising the character as a college student. In 1996, Quaker Oats commissioned director Rick Schulze, of Industrial Light & Magic Commercial Productions, to digitally composite a bottle of

Snapple Snapple is a brand of tea and juice drinks which is owned by Keurig Dr Pepper, based in Plano, Texas, United States. The original producer of Snapple, a company that was known as Unadulterated Food Products, was founded in 1972. The brand achieved ...

, then a subsidiary of Quaker Oats, into the original Life ad, via longtime

ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, New York. This time, however, in an ironic twist, Mikey likes some of the product's flavors while disliking the others. Life's ad agency,

Foote, Cone & Belding FCB (previously Foote, Cone & Belding) is one of the largest global advertising agency networks. It is owned by Interpublic Group and was merged in 2006 with Draft Worldwide, adopting the name Draftfcb. In 2014 the company rebranded itself as F ...

, in Chicago, revived the Mikey character for two campaigns in the late 1990s. In 1997, Quaker Oats initiated a nationwide search for the "next Mikey", settling on 4-year-old Marli Hughes out of more than 35,000 applicants. She also appeared in a TV commercial, "Better Life" directed by Howard Rose, where she is seen telling her classmates how she won the contest and traveled to New York to do some TV shows. She adds that as the new Mikey she gets to eat as much Life cereal as she wants. In 1999, Quaker Oats remade the commercial word for word with an all-adult cast acting like kids. Mikey is portrayed by New York-based actor Jimmy Starace. In 2024, Mikey was brought back in a commercial titled "Mikey's Morning". Played by Hudson Uebelhardt, he sings about his chaotic morning, which is made sweeter with a bowl of Life.

Afterward

For many years, Mikey was the subject of an

urban legend Urban legend (sometimes modern legend, urban myth, or simply legend) is a genre of folklore concerning stories about an unusual (usually scary) or humorous event that many people believe to be true but largely are not. These legends can be e ...

that purported that he had died after consuming

Pop Rocks Pop Rocks, also known as popping candy, is a type of candy owned by Zeta Espacial S.A. Pop Rocks ingredients include sugar, lactose (milk sugar), and flavoring. It differs from typical hard candy in that pressurized carbon dioxide gas bubbles ...

and Coke, supposedly causing a fatal stomach rupture. In fact, the actor who played Mikey, John Gilchrist, is still alive as of January 2025. ''

Snopes ''Snopes'' (), formerly known as the ''Urban Legends Reference Pages'', is a fact-checking website. It has been described as a "well-regarded reference for sorting out myths and rumors" on the Internet. The site has also been seen as a source ...

'' later reported that the combination of Pop Rocks and Coke would do little more than produce a "hearty belch". According to Gilchrist, the legend became so widespread that his own mother received a phone call from another woman to offer condolences for the death of her son, to which Mrs. Gilchrist replied, "He just came home from school!" In 2011, Gilchrist became the director of media sales for

MSG Network The MSG Network (MSG) is an American regional cable and satellite television network, and radio service owned by Sphere Entertainment -- a spin-off of the main Madison Square Garden Company operation (itself a spin-off of local cable provid ...

. He has said that he has no clear memories of filming the original commercial since he was only three and a half years old.

References

External links