HE HASN'T HAD A BOWL SINCE 1991.
The only ad newsletter willing to admit that the silly rabbitt has only tasted Trix five times.
Here’s what people get wrong about the Trix Rabbit: he hasn’t eaten much Trix.
By General Mills’ own count, five times in sixty-five years. 1968. 1976. 1980. 1987. 1991.
Most of those because General Mills ran a Mail in your vote promo. Should the Rabbit finally get a bowl?
The kids said yes.
They always said yes.
It was never even close.
And every time, General Mills aired the commercial where he finally gets the cereal, let it run and quietly reset the whole thing. Next campaign, he has nothing again.
He doesn’t just lose. He wins big time, by popular vote and then they take it all back.
If ever there was a case for election tampering this is it.
His last bowl was in 1991. He’s been trying to eat Trix since 1959.
Trix launched in 1954 without a mascot. Just colourful corn puffs and over 46% sugar, in three colours, marketed to children.
A few years in, someone at General Mills experimented with a hand puppet rabbit to introduce sponsored TV shows.
The puppet appeared on Captain Kangaroo. Nobody remembers the puppet.
Joe Harris remembers.
Harris was a copywriter and illustrator at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample. On August 4, 1959 he drew the Trix Rabbit from scratch and coined the “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids” line.
He debuted in a simple line-drawn commercial called “Rabbit and Carrot.” The Rabbit saw Trix. The Rabbit wanted Trix. The kids stopped him. The end.
Here’s the part of the Harris story that surprises most people.
Asked on a Friday to take a run at it, Harris blew off Saturday, blew off Sunday, and sat down around 11 p.m. Sunday night. Drew a rabbit. Decided the rabbit would always be denied.
Done.
He did all of it — art, script, the line — which annoyed the copy department. The interoffice memo praising him opens, near verbatim: painful as it is to admit that someone outside the copy department can come up with a campaign idea and write it as well. A backhanded compliment that doubles as the rare ad-history document putting an art director’s name on the work.
So Harris got credit for creating one of the most famous figures in cereal history who never gets anything. By design. “The subtle idea,” he said, “is that keeping something away brings people to say, why don’t they give it to him. You have to withhold resolution.”
He meant it. Years later, when General Mills finally let the Rabbit win, Harris, long off the campaign, was disgusted. Caving, he said, “destroyed the tension.”
Harris left to start Total Television, Saturday cartoons that were really General Mills cereal in 22-minute doses. King Leonardo. Tennessee Tuxedo.
And Underdog.
The campaign structure has never changed.
The Rabbit wants Trix. The Rabbit disguises himself. Children discover the ruse. “Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids.”
The Rabbit leaves without cereal. Roll credits. Sixty-five years of it. If you read my earlier newsletter this week, that is a platform.
They also merchandised the losing. In 1965 General Mills sold a Trix pillowcase. The picture on it was a scene from a commercial where the Rabbit dreams about eating Trix. He fails in the dream. They printed the rabbit’s subconscious defeat on something children sleep on. Such a diabolical brand move.
In 1986 and 1987, Bugs Bunny showed up to help. The Rabbit in a Bugs disguise, the scheme failing as usual. But watch those spots: the kids happily share their Trix with Bugs. Who is also a rabbit. The rule was never “rabbits can’t have Trix.” It’s that this rabbit can’t. Not the species. Him. Outrageous Trixism.
In a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode, Carlton Banks delivers a sincere lament about the Rabbit’s plight. The writers thought the audience would understand immediately. They were right.
In 2015, General Mills reformulated Trix with natural colours. No artificial dyes. The cereal went from six vivid colours to four muted ones that looked like they’d been left in a window. Consumers revolted. Not about nutrition. About colour. They wanted the neon back. General Mills held for a year.
In 2017 they brought the artificial colours back alongside the natural version.
Customers chose the fake ones. Unanimously. Emphatically.
There’s a footnote to the colour war. To promote the natural version, General Mills ran a national casting call for a real rabbit to put on the box. A two-pound Holland lop named Cinnabun won.
Fifty-seven years in, a rabbit finally got the Trix box. Just not that one.
The Rabbit was involved in none of this. He just wanted to eat some cereal.
Carlton Banks understood.
Here’s the one that should be illegal.
1968 was a vote year for the Rabbit. The kids said yes for the first time and he finally got a bowl. It was also a vote year for everyone else. Nixon. Humphrey. Wallace. A real election.
General Mills ran both. The kids’ ballot about the cereal. And a push in the company newsletter telling General Mills employees to check their registration and get to the polls.
Same rabbit. Same year. One vote was theater with the ending already written. The other one picked a president.
The mascot whose whole job is losing a rigged election was their get-out-the-vote strategy
THE AD LESSON
Every brand chases resolution. The before-and-after. The problem solved by the product. The satisfied customer grinning at the camera.
Trix has ran the opposite play for 65 years and only blinked 5 times.
The Rabbit doesn’t get the cereal because the wanting is the cereal. His failure is the franchise. Hand him a bowl and there’s no reason to tune in next week, which is exactly why, the few times they caved, they quietly took it back.
Joe Harris said it before any of them: you have to withhold resolution. Then he watched the brand forget it, let the poor guy win, and it made him furious.
The lesson isn’t be cruel to a cartoon. It’s that desire you satisfy is spent and desire you sustain is an asset. Most marketing can’t help itself. It sprints to the happy ending and then wonders why nobody shows up for the sequel.
Trix never gave anyone the ending. Sixty-five years later it’s still on the shelf and the Rabbit’s still hungry.
TGIF COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: TRIX RUM PUNCH
The most democratic drink ever invented. You make it in a bowl. Everybody gets a cup. That’s the whole point — punch predates the cocktail, it’s communal by design, nobody mixes you your own.
There’s a formula older than the recipe: one of sour, two of sweet, three of strong, four of weak. Sailors ran on it. Every kid’s birthday party serves the no-rum version out of a giant plastic bowl with a ladle.
Which makes it the drink for this issue. Punch is the one thing on the table built so everyone gets some.
Everyone but you-know-who.
2 oz white rum
1 oz dark rum
1/2 oz orange curacao
1 oz lime juice
1/2 oz grenadine or if you want to kick it up a notch: cherry liquor.
2 oz pineapple juice
2 oz orange juice
Build over crushed ice. Stir.
Orange slice if you’re feeling festive. Cherry if you’re feeling more fancy.
Umbrella, mandatory.
Colorful. A little tart. Fruit-flavored and faintly neon — which, if you think about it, is just Trix you’re allowed to have.
Not him.
Serving instructions? Best drinking it while watching these 147 Trix vintage ads.
The Drink Cart is the newsletter version of sitting at a really good bar with someone who thinks too much about advertising and won’t shut up about it. Subscribe to get it on Wednesdays and Fridays.