Wilkins and Wontkins were two hand puppet characters created by Jim Henson and employed in Television adds to sell Wilkins brand coffee. They are notable for a few reasons. First, Wilkins is an obvious precursor to Kermit the Frog. Second, the commercials are wild in their tone. Third, they make me want to buy a defunct Coffee brand.
The commercials were very formulaic. Wilkins offers Wontkins some Wilkins brand coffee or makes some remark in favor of it and Wontkins declines, disparages it, or dismisses coffee altogether. Then something bad happens to Wontkins. This can range from minor inconveniences to the outright lethal. Sometimes Wontkins tribulations are directly caused by Wilkins and sometimes he's just around asking dangerous questions. In either case the message is clear: drink Wilkins Coffee or else.
The commercials were running in the late fifties and early sixties. They are all ten seconds long and two seconds of that has to be a can of Wilkins coffee. Eight seconds to advocate coffee with brutality. Puppets wrecking other puppets over coffee drinking is not a marketing ploy that I could have come up with. Wilkins actions are malicious but his tone is always cheery and airy as though hurting others for their drink preferences was the most natural thing in the world. It makes you wonder if the coffee is so good as to inspire that level of dedication or so bad that you have to threaten people into drinking it? This Punch and Judy show was the origin of the Muppets? How? Why? Who approved this?
Dig into the particulars of any point in history and you find these strange nuggets of cultural weirdness that remind you that no matter what the zeitgeist was people were still making whatever silly thing they wanted and the talented ones somehow spun that into TV commercials. This makes me think there was a lot more to Jim Henderson than we'll ever know.
IRON NODER XVI: MORE STUBBORN-HARD THAN HAMMER'D IRON