Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, 6th Edition

1A BRIEF HISTORYOF WHY EVERYBODYHATES ADVERTISING: AND WHY YOU SHOULD TRY TO GET A JOB THERE.

I GREW UP POINTING A FINGER GUN at Mr. Whipple. You probably don't know him, but he was this irritating guy who kept interrupting my favorite television shows back in the day.

He'd appear uninvited on my TV, looking over the top of his glasses and pursing his lips at the ladies in his grocery store. Two middle-aged women, presumably with high school or college degrees, would be standing in the aisle squeezing rolls of toilet paper. Whipple would wag his finger and primly scold, “Please don't squeeze the Charmin!” After the ladies scurried away, he'd give the rolls a few furtive squeezes himself.

Oh, they were such bad commercials. The thing is, I'd wager if the Whipple campaign aired today, there would be a hundred different parodies on YouTube tomorrow. But back then? All we had was a volume knob. Then VCRs came along and later DVRs, and the fast-forward buttons became our defense. We can now just tell Whipple to shut the hell up, turn him off, and go get our entertainment from any number of other platforms and devices.

To be fair, Procter & Gamble's Charmin commercials weren't the worst thing that ever aired on television. They had a concept, although contrived, and a brand image, although irritating—even to an eighth grader.

If it were just me who hated Whipple's commercials, well, I might shrug it off. But the more I read about the campaign, the more consensus I discovered. In ...