Yesterday I read that MetLife is firing Snoopy. No! Say it ain’t so!

A few months ago, The Most Interesting Man in the World lost his job to a younger, scruffier, replacement. Sigh. My heart is broken. Can you have a crush on a character from a commercial? Yup. You bet.

Oh, and have you noticed that the Verizon ‘Can You Hear Me Now?’ guy is now hustling for Sprint? He’s my new hero – going to work for a competitor when he lost his job!

Who’s next?

The Cave Men were sent back to the dark ages a long time ago, and I read an article this morning that Flo may soon be given her pink slip. Is the Aflack Duck in danger, too? What about the Geico gecko? Maybe Flo, Snoopy, the duck and the lizard (hmm…sounds like the beginning of a joke, doesn’t it?) should just play musical chairs among the insurance companies – but they’d better watch out for Mayhem, who is lurking around the corner.

Many of you are too young to remember the commercials that seemed like long-running soap operas. Since I don’t get to watch a complete show very often, these were stories I could keep up with. Remember James Garner and Mariette Hartley, flirting over Polaroid cameras? And the Tasters’ Choice romance lasted seven years….longer than some marriages. Taster’s Choice asked television viewers to decide the ending when they redeemed special discount coupons. The decision was to be announced in an issue of Soap Opera Digest in Feb, 1998. I felt cheated because there was no final commercial dramatizing the decision. I don’t recall the ending – do you?

We can’t talk about commercial characters long gone without mentioning Mr. Whipple (Dick Wilson, 1916-2007), who scolded me for squeezing the Charmin; Madge the manicurist (Jan Miner, 1917-2004), the eternal gossip, who kept my hands smooth and young looking with Palmolive dishwashing soap; Josephine the Plumber ( Jane Withers, b.1926 – still here!) who introduced me to Comet Cleanser; and the Maytag repairman (Jessie White, 1917-1997). Boy, am I old….

I was comfortable with the newer commercials, though. Flo and Snoopy and The Man. It’s going to be a strange, strange world out there without them. I wonder what’s coming next?