Coppertone
Girl - In 1959, a 3-year-old girl in pig-tails named
Cheri Brand posed for a family snapshot in the backyard of her
Bronxville, NY home and soon became Little Miss Coppertone®,
a symbol of summer and poster-girl for the long-running Coppertone
sunscreen ad campaign whose famous slogans proclaim
"Don't be a Paleface!" and "Tan -
Don't Burn."
The Coppertone ad campaign was based on drawings created by
Cheri's mother, Joyce Ballantyne Brand, a commercial artist (who
also drew the Pampers baby in 1977). She was paid $ 2,500 for the
artwork based on her little girl. Cheri Brand once said "Everybody
has their baby pictures in their family album with their diapers
falling off, I just happened to have mine on a billboard" (and a
few million bottles of suntan lotion).
The dog depicted in the ad
pulling down the pants of the little girl to reveal her derriere's
tan-line was based on a neighbor's cocker spaniel. As of 1993,
Cheri Brand, then 37, worked as a health club manager in Ocala,
Fla. (People Weekly 8/23/93).
A popular belief that Jodie
Foster was the original Coppertone girl is misleading. Foster did,
however, get her start
in showbiz for a Coppertone suntan-lotion ad in 1965. She was
three years old at the time and appeared in the ad as a toddler on
a boat accompanied by her family.
On August 26, 2002 Jay Leno on NBC's THE TONIGHT
SHOW did a spoof of new products including an update of Little
Miss Coppertone. This time, the bottle displayed the image of an
old woman with sagging skin and grey hair getting her bathing suit
pants pulled off by a precocious pup.
In
fact, a real Coppertone ad campaign using a beautiful grown model
(Jennifer Fon) had previously aired on TV spots in Great Britain
and Europe.
TRIVIA NOTE: Photographer Herb Ritts posed
comedian/actor Jim Carrey in an reenactment of the famous
Coppertone beach scene for the front cover of the July 13, 1995
Summer Double Issue of Rolling Stone magazine ("Jim Carrey
- Bare Facts and Shocking Revelations"). A black dog named
Poundcake pulled down Jim's pants as he looked sideways (right
hand to chin) with a surprised look on his face. Esquire
magazine ran a similar parody with Carmen Electra
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| Carmen
Electra |
John Carrey |
