Milky Bars (1937) featuring the whip-crackaway whippersnapper himself. No sign of Big Chief Milky Bar, introduced in 1977 ‘for ethnic balance’.
Milky Bars (1937) featuring the whip-crackaway whippersnapper himself. No sign of Big Chief Milky Bar, introduced in 1977 ‘for ethnic balance’.
Though pre-dating Alan Parker’s much admired all-juvenile Bugsy Malone casting policy by some two decades, the Milky Bar ads were surely made by marketing men both short on imagination and long on memory. A few short scenes were recycled and remade every few years for a new generation of chocoholic tots. To the tune of a honky-tonk saloon bar piano, and the repetitive mantra of the titular song’s rhyming couplets, the ‘strong and tough’ Milky Bar kid would save faux Frontiersmen from some minor inconvenience or other before declaring, ‘The Milky Bars are on me,’ at which point a cheering crowd of sugar-crazed urchins would surge forward to grab the proffered treats.
That said, this was not chocolate as any British child had experienced it before, largely comprising cocoa butter (without the requisite powder), milk solids and vanilla, stretched out into a waxy, sugary tablet. Whiffing faintly of distant Common Market subsidies, it could appeal only to the most immature of tastes; the creamiest milk, maybe, but the plasticiniest bar by far. Inevitably, the Milky Bar kid himself was as puny and pallid as the product he was paid to endorse, all alabaster skin and wire-rimmed specs, though eternally youthful thanks to a sequence of lead actor changes that would put Doctor Who to shame. The fortunes of each much heralded gunslinger would wane as the voice broke, the freckles faded and puberty inflicted an inescapable and implacable grip on his hormonal system. Cue the difficult transition back to normal life and a future career in loft conversion, panel beating or haulage, alongside the perennial tabloid ‘off the rails’ headlines. For the most unfortunate, that early, illusive taste of fame was as much a curse as a blessing.
Meanwhile, the campaign rolled on with such bandwagon-jumping anachronisms as ‘the Milky Bar kid out in space’ (defeating evil green overlord Zartan with a laser-deflecting silver platter) and 1987’s circus-themed Buttons launch, though quite what recondite career path led the Milky Bar kid from cowboy to big top ringmaster went unremarked upon.
The return of the space cowboy. The Milky Bar Kid faces the final frontier, and some unconvincing aliens, in a telly ad circa 1982.