Coppertone girl
Encyclopedia
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
sunscreen
Sunscreen
Sunblock is a lotion, spray, gel or other topical product that absorbs or reflects some of the sun's ultraviolet radiation on the skin exposed to sunlight and thus helps protect against sunburn...
, owned by Merck
Merck & Co.
Merck & Co., Inc. , also known as Merck Sharp & Dohme or MSD outside the United States and Canada, is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The Merck headquarters is located in Whitehouse Station, New Jersey, an unincorporated area in Readington Township...
, formerly Schering-Plough
Schering-Plough
Schering-Plough Corporation was a United States-based pharmaceutical company. It was founded in 1851 by Ernst Christian Friedrich Schering as Schering AG in Germany. In 1971, the Schering Corporation merged with Plough to form Schering-Plough. On November 4, 2009 Merck & Co...
. Coppertone is the sister brand to Bain de Soleil
Bain de Soleil
Bain de Soleil is a brand of sunscreen produced by Merck, formerly Schering-Plough Consumer Health Care. It is affiliated with the Coppertone brand...
, which is targeted to adult females.
It dates to 1944, when pharmacist
Pharmacist
Pharmacists are allied health professionals who practice in pharmacy, the field of health sciences focusing on safe and effective medication use...
Benjamin Green invented a lotion to darken tans. The company became famous in 1953 when it introduced the Coppertone girl, an advertisement showing a young blond girl in pigtails staring in surprise as a Cocker Spaniel
American Cocker Spaniel
The American Cocker Spaniel is a breed of sporting dog. It is a spaniel type dog that is closely related to the English Cocker Spaniel; the two breeds diverged during the 20th century due to differing breed standards in America and the UK...
sneaks up behind her and pulls down her blue swimsuit bottoms. Accompanying the ads was the impish slogan, "Don't be a paleface!"
The original Coppertone logo was the profile of an Indian chief. In 1953 Tally Embry Advertising in Florida was hired, and their ad men created the concept of the little girl and the pup. An artist named Joyce Ballantyne Brand
Joyce Ballantyne
Joyce Ballantyne was a painter of pin-up art. She is best known as the designer of the Coppertone girl, whose swimming costume is being pulled down by a dog.-Early life and career:...
re-drew the little girl in 1959 when the original artwork was destroyed in a fire. She was then working for Grant Advertising in New York. She purportedly used her daughter, Cheri, as her model, although her drawing closely resembled the original artwork A series of mechanical billboards was constructed across the United States, whereon the motorized dog and swimsuit bottoms rocked up and down perpetually. Though most of them are long since gone or have stopped moving, one such billboard
Coppertone sign
The original plastic, metal and neon Coppertone girl sign was designed and made in 1958 by Tropicalites, a sign company owned by Morris Bengis...
of the then Coppertone Girl still stands in Miami Beach — dog, pigtails, swimsuit, and all. About 1965, Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster
Alicia Christian "Jodie" Foster is an American actress, film director, producer as well as a former child actress....
made her acting debut as the Coppertone girl in a television commercial, when she was three years old.
In 1993, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the sunscreen, a contest was held on the sandy beach of Disney's Polynesian Hotel in Orlando Florida to find "The Coppertone Girl", since Cheri Brand had grown up by then. The contest was hosted by Regis Philbin
Regis Philbin
Regis Francis Xavier Philbin is an American media personality, actor and singer, known for hosting talk and game shows since the 1960s. Philbin is often called "the hardest working man in show business" and holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a television camera...
along with Cheri as one of the judges. The winner was picked based on the contestant's maturity, congeniality, eloquence, confidence, and how well she resembled the cartoon. The winner was four-year-old Alexis Durgee. She was chosen out of over 100,000 models and twenty remaining finalists. Afterwards she appeared on Sally Jessy Raphael Show with Cheri Brand and Dalton Orband, the winning Coppertone Boy. Alexis went on to model for Coppertone and Water Babies advertisements through the following year and was shot in several Coppertone commercials.
At the turn of the 21st century, Coppertone revised drawings of the Coppertone Girl so that they would be less revealing. Some recent versions show only the girl's lower back, as opposed to her buttocks, or wearing a T-shirt, a hat, and holding a bottle of Coppertone while the puppy is shown pulling on her shirt.