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Home > Index > Advertising Mascots (People) > Coppertone Girl
       
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Ladies' Home Journal - 1958 Coppertone AdCoppertone 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
 

Carmen Electra as the Coppertone Girl - ESQUIRE  MAGAZINE

Jim Carrey as the Coppertone Girl - ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE

Carmen Electra John Carrey
 
 


             

 

                    
 

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