One of the first of the fully realized TV personalities was Speedy Alka-Seltzer Speedy was created by Bob Watkins for his friend Chuck Tenant, the two of them army buddies during World War II. After the war, Watkins became a commercial artist; Tenant got a job with Wade Advertising in Chicago and was assigned to handle the Miles Laboratories account. When Miles wanted a new campaign for its Alka-Seltzer Tenant called his old friend, asking for some sketches for a suitable ad character. It took Watkins three hours to come up with Speedy (originally called "Sparky"). Speedy created the paradigm that others would follow throughout the fifties--the ever-cheerful little fellow offering a solution to your problems, especially if your problems included indigestion or a hangover. Speedy was so ingratiating that only a Grinch could object to the lad. Speedy appeared until the mid-seventies, when he was replaced by a series of award-winning ads including "Man vs. Stomach."

A favorite chubby character is Big Boy, who was named after the double-deck cheeseburger Bob Wian sold at his small restaurant in Glendale, California. Wian's fat kid and the Big Boy sandwich were such hits that soon Wian had restaurant chains all over California. In 1984, the Marriot Company, who bought the franchise in 1967, held a vote to determine whether Big Boy should retire. Big Boy won by a huge margin and is still in use today. Big Boy also represents another type of character: the mischievous boy. Boys between the ages of six and twelve are used as ad characters to sell everything from potato chips (Chesty Boy) to scouring pads (Chore Boy). Often slightly mischievous, these characters are always healthy looking. They appeal to men and boys because they see themselves in the characters.

Literal characters, like people, are products of their times. Chiquita Banana took her cue from Carmen Miranda, a popular Brazilian singer-dancer who appeared in several Hollywood musicals in the forties. Carmen is best remembered for the outrageous production number "The Girl in the Tutti Frutti Hat," in Busby Berkeley's film The Gang's All Here. Originally Chiquita Banana was created to inform people about the proper methods to eat and store bananas. "Never," she reminded us, "put bananas in the refrigerator": an admonition that goes largely unheeded. Chiquita Banana was a huge hit, but there was another problem still facing United Fruit Company. In the store, one banana looks pretty much like the next. The company needed a way to distinguish its bananas from all others. It solved the problem by attaching a tiny sticker to every piece of fruit it sold. Today this is a common practice among fruit sellers, but at the time it was considered a radical and, to some, outrageous solution. Behind Chiquita Banana is a company with a sinister past. The United Fruit Company was not averse to helping overthrow the governments in Latin American countries whenever the existing governments threatened to increase or impose import duties on its bananas. In 1954, after Guatemalan leader Jacobo Arbenz Guzman threatened to nationalize United Fruit's banana plantations, the company helped the CIA sponsor a revolution. From its practice of foreign intervention we get the expression "banana republic." In 1969, United Fruits became United Brands. After an ugly affair with the suicide of the company president and a scandal involving bribe money paid to the Honduran president, United Brands changed its approach. It has worked hard over the last twenty years to turn its image around by demonstrating more cooperation with the governments of the Central American countries from which it imports its produce. In 1990, United Brands became the Chiquita Fruit Company, enlisting the perky character to help improve its image.