On a dark and spooky Halloween. In the mid 1990s. Pizza Head, a sentient slice of pizza, has just finished trick-or-treating.
He’s dressed as a pirate. And he wants one thing, and one thing only, the new stuffed crust pizza.
Drink Cart Side note: Stuffed crust pizza is elite and should be one of the eight marvels of the world. Fight me on that fact.
Anyway, the spot’s narrator has other plans. Just one more house.
The house has a mummy. A creepy painting. A sarcophagus. Every face on every wall belongs to Steve, the dreaded pizza cutter.
At the top of the stairs waits “Count Steve”. He turns into a bat, grabs Pizza Head and flies off into the night while Pizza Head screams to be put down.
The narrator signs off cheerfully. See you next time.
That’s the whole premise of a real Pizza Hut commercial from the mid-90s. It sold stuffed crust pizza and toys by kidnapping or destroying the mascot, the aforementioned Pizza Head. What a time to be alive.
MR. BILL SOLD HIMSELF TO PIZZA HUT
If Pizza Head looked and felt familiar (and that means you’re old like me), there’s a reason.
Walter Williams was a kid from New Orleans who found a Super-8 camera at 17 and decided med school was not for him. Relatable.
In 1975 a brand-new show called Saturday Night Live put out a call for home movies. Williams sent in a clay man named Mr. Bill, who spent every episode getting squashed, stretched and flattened by Mr. Hands.
The first Mr. Hands was Vance DeGeneres. Yes, Ellen’s brother. He later sued Williams for part ownership of the clay man. That must have been fun.
Then in 1993 Pizza Hut called. Goodby Silverstein & Partners had the Pizza Hut kids account. Williams created a new character for them, a slice of pizza with a face made of toppings. He directed more than 20 spots over four years for them.
So Pizza Head wasn’t a Mr. Bill rip-off. It was a Mr. Bill rip-off made by the actual creator of Mr. Bill. Somebody at Goodby should have gotten a Cannes Lion just for that deal.
THE EVIL STEVE NEVER SAYS A WORD
The format was a fake kids’ show called The Pizza Head Show. Pizza Head was the host. Cheerful. Eager. Totally doomed.
Steve was the pizza cutter. He never spoke. Every episode he showed up in a new disguise — an alien, a vampire, a blind date named Stevette. Pizza Head tried to warn us. The narrator never believed him.
Each spot opened on a model Pizza Hut restaurant. It usually got destroyed by the end. Pizza Head never had a family. He suffered alone, on a loop, for four years of Saturday mornings.
EVERY BEATING CAME WITH AN OFFER
Here’s how it worked. Pizza Head suffers. Then a price flashes on screen.
Pizza Head to the Rescue: a Marvel Comics pack for $2.99 with a cup, a comic and a card.
The limited edition Pizza Head trading cards I found on eBay might be my next big addition to the collection.
Pizza Head Shoots Hoops: a rad Streetball for just $4.99.
Pizza Head Fouls Out: an autographed bat and ball for $5.99. Obviously a favourite with the co-starring Jack Russell.
Pizza Head’s Star Wars: one of three Star Wars posters with a kids’ pack. Pizza Head bails on a TIE fighter attack and runs for home yelling “I’m going back to Pizza Hut where it’s safe!” The Death Star blows up the Pizza Hut.
Some spots sold the grown-up menu. In Pizza Head’s Alien Adventure, aliens called the “Stevians” abduct him and turn him into Stuffed Crust Pizza Head.
Pizza Head’s Magic Show launched the Triple Decker. A mythical item I’d never had the chance to try. Pizza Head’s Check Up promised more pepperoni. Pizza Head’s Big Night reminded parents that Tuesdays were Kids Night.
Some had no promotion at all. Pizza Hut paid to destroy its own mascot just for the brand clout.
You got 25 seconds of pure weird storytelling and then 5 seconds to offer up toys, stuffed crusts and anything else. That’s how you move cheese and bread.
PIZZA SLICES DOWN
Nobody would sign off on this today. The mascot’s whole job was to suffer like C-3P0 and R2-D2, and the kids watching were in on it.
It made sense in the 90s. This was the decade of Ren & Stimpy and Beavis and Butt-Head. The people writing the jokes grew up on Mr. Bill and Looney Tunes and SNL after midnight. The people laughing were eight. Gen X took its late-night irony and sold it back to millennial kids, with a toy.
Years later Williams mailed a Mr. Bill tape to a friend’s son. The kid watched it and called it “a Pizza Head take-off.”
Twenty years of Mr. Bill. Erased by four years of ridiculous pizza ads.
The Pizza Head Show wrapped around 1997. That’s also the year PepsiCo, which had owned Pizza Hut since 1977, spun it off along with Taco Bell and KFC. Pizza Head didn’t survive the divorce.
Before Pizza Head, the brand had Pizza Pete, a mustached cartoon chef from the 60s who got retired when the red roof took over.
After Pizza Head, no more mascots.
It’s funny that this year Pizza Hut got sold again, for the first time since Pepsi bought it. Right before the deal closed, it started going by simply “Hut” for football season.
Somewhere, Steve is smiling. Silently.
COCKTAIL OF THE WEEK: SLEEPY HOLLOW
In The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, a hapless schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane gets tormented by a headless horseman and becomes a Halloween classic. Irving strongly hints the horseman is just Brom Bones, Ichabod’s arch rival, in a disguise.
Irving basically wrote The Pizza Head Show 173 years early.
This cocktail version dates to the early 1930s, right around the end of Prohibition, and it’s named after Irving’s haunted valley. It’s gin, apricot, lemon and mint. A little sweet and much friendlier than it sounds.
A classic cocktail named after a valley haunted by a man who lost his head, for a mascot who was only a head who was just a pizza slice.
2 oz gin
1/2 oz apricot liqueur
3/4 oz lemon juice
1/2 oz simple syrup
8 to 10 mint leaves
Lightly muddle the mint in a shaker, then add all the other good stuff and shake with ice. Fine strain into a rocks glass over crushed ice and garnish with a lemon wheel. If you’re like me and don’t have apricot liqueur, apricot brandy totally works.
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I’m going on a show. The narrator says it’s safe. Pizza Head heard that too, probably.
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