Jollycos

Who has not at one time or another met a hearty uncle who came down to breakfast rubbing his pink-and-pearly hands together and blustering, "Well, well, well! Good morning, good morning! Have you used Pears soap?"

That uncle and his matutinal greeting were inspired by one of the earliest and most successful advertising campaigns ever conducted. Another clever publicist once started every one saying, "Have you a little fairy in your home?" And once upon a time, the pinnacle of witty suggestion could be scaled by pointing at a pretty girl, a dashing yacht or a sore throat and ejaculating, "Ask the man who owns one!"

The infancy of the Age of Advertising was a day of great phrases. Lately advertisers and their copywriters have grown more subtle and sophisticated. About two years ago the Procter and Gamble Co. introduced, in the white-space areas of their Ivory Soap displays, the piquant menage of a family called Jollyco, whose members soon became as well known and beloved as the great funny folk--the Gumps, the Katzenjammers, Barney Google and that young patriarch of the comic sheets, Little Nemo.

There was Mr. Jollyco, who was the soul of politeness and geniality when feeling pleased but who invariably referred to the bathroom as "my bathroom" when anything, the Ivory Soap for instance, was missing. There was Mrs. Jollyco, a model wife and mother with a most engaging conversational manner, and so tactful that she did not offend Mrs. Folderol of Vanity Fair one bit when she told her that washing Baby Folderol with any soap but Ivory was bound to irritate his tender skin and was, in short, pure folderol. There was old Dr. Verity, who backed her up on this. The doctor had a son, Phil.

Bobby Jollyco, Sally Jollyco, Tee-wee Jollyco (the baby), and Julia (the maid) were all "sold" on Ivory and helped to sell others. All were treated with ingenious ingenuousness as real characters with continuous histories, the copy being so well written that the Jollyco doings read like bits of Dickens or Thackeray, with Ivory Soap mentioned quite casually. The public became so interested that thousands of letters poured in: "Send Bobby Jollyco to boarding school. . . . Have Teewee make mud pies. . . . When can Sally Jollyco go to dancing school?. . .etc., etc."

But the Procter and Gamble Co. wound up the Jollycos for some reason, probably because it knew that too little of a good thing is better than enough.

And the Jollycos could always be brought back again, as indeed they were, very cleverly, last fortnight. In the new series of Ivory Soap advertising displays, the vignets discovered Sally Jollyco Verity and her happy bridegroom, Phil, in Paris. Jollycophiles read the fine, unobtrusive print with delight:

They were on their wedding trip--Sally and Phil--and having the grandest time imaginable. We met them wandering among the fascinating shops of the Rue St. Honore.

"What French frivolity have you got in that package?" we asked after the greetings were over.

"Why, it's--" began Sally.

"Wait, Sally," and turning to us Phil continued, "What do you think this girl's done? All morning I've been trying to buy her a present. I tried earrings, brooches, beads, laces, lingerie, perfume and everything else this sacred city holds. Not a thing would she take until she got to a drug store, and then she made me go in and buy her four cakes of Ivory Soap!"

"Wouldn't you think he'd have guessed, after I'd been out of Ivory for three days?" asked Sally, smiling. "Besides, four cakes of Ivory over here cost nearly as much as a string of pearls, and we've just got to economize!"