Sunny Jim

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"Sunny Jim", depicted on an early box of Force Cereal

"Sunny Jim" was a cartoon character created in 1902 in the United States by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken for an advertising campaign designed to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake.

Rather than selling the benefits of eating wheat, which she presumed customers already knew, Hanff's ads merely told stories such as this one:

Jim Dumps was a most unfriendly man,

Who lived his life on the hermit plan;

In his gloomy way he'd gone through life,

And made the most of woe and strife;

Till Force one day was served to him

Since then they've called him "Sunny Jim."

The jingle does not say what, exactly was wrong with Jim Dumps, or what, specifically it was in Force that cured him. It was a good example of what is now called "selling the sizzle rather than the steak."

The campaign was wildly successful at promoting the character of Sunny Jim. Printer's Ink stated that “No current novel or play is so universally popular. He is as well-known as President Roosevelt or J. Pierpont Morgan.” It is debated whether or not the campaign was successful at selling the cereal itself. The cereal company turned their advertising account over to a different firm which did not approve of humor in advertising, detested the ad campaign, and more or less abandoned it. In the United States the cereal itself followed a convoluted path involving many corporate mergers. The last owner stopped producing the cereal in 1983.

Both the cereal and Sunny Jim had greater success in Great Britain, where Force cereal is still available as of 2006 and the box still features a picture of Sunny Jim.

The ads featured slogans such as "Better than a Vacation,” and “A Different Food for Indifferent Appetites.” Rhymes included

"Whatever you say, wherever you've been,

You can't beat the cereal, that raised Sunny Jim!"

and

High o'er the fence leaps Sunny Jim

Force is the food that raises him

The latter rhyme became a familiar catch-phrase, as in the Andy Partridge song 1000 Umbrellas:

One million salt seas

Recalled from school atlas

Alas would be filled to the brim

Sunny Jim couldn't jump it

[edit] Sunny Jim Peanut Butter

A brand of peanut butter known as Sunny Jim was manufactured in Seattle, Washington by the Pacific Standard Foods company. During the 1950s the brand accounted for nearly a third of all peanut butter sold in the Seattle area. The company was sold in 1979 for $3 million to the Bristol Bay Native Corp. The apple-cheeked trademark character had no connection with the Force cereal Sunny Jim. The company was founded by Germanus Wilhelm Firnstahl who modelled the character on his son, Lowell. A large sign on the factory building made the "Sunny Jim building" on Airport Way South a familiar landmark to motorists passing on nearby Interstate 5, until the building burned in 1997.

[edit] Other uses

Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons (1874-1966) was a famous thoroughbred horse trainer.

James Callaghan, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1976 to 1979, was nicknamed 'Sunny Jim' for his optimistic forecasting to the public.

By the 1920s, "Sunny Jim" had become a popular sobriquet; it is used in the UK as a patronizing insult and in the U.S. ironically for someone who is being grumpy.

A character named Sunny Jim appears in the comic book series The Adventures of Tintin, making his debut in Tintin and the Picaros as the costume designer for the Jolly Follies.

General Alexander A. Vandegrift, 18th Commandant of the Marine Corps, was known as "Sunny Jim," a nickname given to him by his mentor Smedley J. Butler [1]