It's an amusing coincidence that at the same time Mad Men, a TV series that chronicled American advertising's golden age, was ending, two U.S. corporate institutions announced they were dusting the cobwebs off a couple of corporate mascots in order to introduce them to a new generation of consumers.

I hope the director was going for a "last thing a kidnap victim sees before her abductor closes the car trunk lid on her" vibe, because he nailed it. (McDonald's)

As part of a campaign for its new Sirloin Third Pound Burger, McDonald's introduced a younger, thinner, stubblier Hamburglar. The character, known for his questionable fashion sense and uncontrollable kleptomania when it comes to McDonald's hamburgers, had been on a 13-year sabbatical. But now he's back with a look and personality that answers the question, what would a sex offender look like if he dressed up as a McDonaldland character?

KFC, however, went one better by announcing it was bringing back a corporate mascot who has been dead for almost 35 years. Not career dead, but literally dead. The fried chicken chain did exercise restraint in restoring its founder to his former glory. Instead of trying to reanimate the Colonel's finger-lickin' good corpse with a secret blend of herbs, spices and zombie-creating voodoo potions, KFC hired Saturday Night Live alumnus Darrell Hammond to impersonate the pitch man as a way to invigorate its brand. 

If video had been invented in the 1800s, this is what it would've looked like when the South announced it was seceding from the Union. (KFC)

 

Why the renewed interest in resuscitating old corporate mascots? Apparently, these colorful characters lends compainies a certain aura of authenticity, a quality a new generation of consumers finds more important than its elders' generation does.

What other mascots should follow the Hamburglar and the Colonel and come out of retirement?  

  

The Cavemen (Geico)

 

Employed: 2004-2012

Over the years, the car insurance company has a knack for deftly juggling multiple mascots and campaigns—the Gecko, Maxwell the Pig—without diluting its brand identity. So bringing back these popular characters without disrupting its current campaigns would be easy.

Of course, the company should remember the lessons from the past: too much of a good thing can be bad. Just because people dug a 30-second Cavemen spot doesn't mean they'll dig watching those characters for 30-minutes. Even if one of them is a young Nick Kroll.

 

The Noid (Domino's Pizza)

 

Employed: 1986-1995; brought back for limited charity and Facebook events in 2009 and 2011, respectively

Given how much this pizza franchise has been trying to distance itself from its past (such as dropping "pizza" from its name in 2012 while at the same time agreeing with customers about how shitty its pizza has been), it's safe to assume that Domino's is doing everything within its power to avoid dredging up anyone's memories of its Noid.

But this mascot helped set the cultural tone for decades. He prepped us for the Hypercolor-Zuba '90s … TO THE EXTREME!, shaped the flying toaster screensaver aesthetic of the early Internet and predicted emoji-domination in the 21st century. That's quite the résumé for a guy forced to collect unemployment now.

 

Old Joe (Camel Cigarettes)

 Critics worried young boys would follow the example set by Joe Camel and try to smoke cigarettes through their scrotums. (R.J. Reynolds Tobacco)

 

Employed: 1987-1997

It's not like bringing back the Marlboro Man (those actors are dead, only four having died from smoking-related diseases). Joe Camel's the cool, fun side of a lifetime of nicotine addiction brought to you by an industry with no moral misgivings of hooking customers in their teens.

If most smokers pick their cigarette brands by 18, how will they know they've picked the right brand without Joe Camel to tell them? 

 

Little Mikey (Life Cereal)

 

Employed: 1972-1984 for the initial campaign, with follow-ups popping up throughout the '80s and '90s.

It's surprising the cereal hasn't already tried to revisit this iconic campaign in the 21st century. A grown-up John Gilchrist, the actor who played the original Mikey at the age of 3, could be sitting at the kitchen table with his son, serving him Life cereal and seeing that, "He likes it! He likes it!"

Better yet, the commercial should have Gilchrist eat Pop Rocks and wash them down with a Coke unharmed, re-enacting the popular urban legend of how the actor accidentally died. 

 

Sprongmonkeys (Quiznos)

 

Employed: 2004

There's something fascinating watching new, emerging lumps of pop culture make their way into the mainstream. It's like accidentally watching the first drunken sex tape your boss made with his wife: They're messy and uncoordinated, the production values are sketchy, and even though you know you should turn it off, you keep watching, because there's something seductive about the raw passion in their dirty, twitchy coupling.

The Spongmonkeys spots had that feel—a repulsed Salon reader called the mascots "drug-addled, castrato hamsters"—in those innocent dawn times before YouTube, Tumblr GIFs and feels. A contemporary campaign would be hard-pressed to recapture that same spirit, but indulging in a little guilty nostalgia every now and then isn't a terrible thing.

 

PC and Mac (Apple)

 

 

Employed: 2006-09

A single, one-time-only commercial, airing once during the Super Bowl, à la Apple's Ridley Scott-helmed 1984 spot. David Fincher directs John Hodgman (PC) and Justin Long (Mac) in an adaptation of Ed Norton and Brad Pitt slugging it out for the first time in Fight Club. Maybe they'll be trying to sell iPads or Genius Bar T-shirts. Who knows? Does it really even matter at this point, because right now you're starting a Kickstarter campaign to make this ad happen.

 

Jacko (Energizer Batteries)

 

Employed: 1988

Men at Work. Crocodile Dundee. Outback Steakhouse. A Current Affair bottom-feeder reporter Steve Dunleavy. For a brief time in the 1980s, America was in love with anything remotely related to Australia. People were adding "g'day" or "put another shrimp on the barbie" to conversations with the same reckless abandon in which they wore Melanie Griffith, Working Girl-grade shoulder pads or Don Johnson pastel T-shirts. That fascination with all things from the Land Down Under led to the brief reign of Austrailian-rules footballer Mark "Jacko" Johnson as a brash and atonal battery pitchman.

Was this a particularly good idea? No. Is anyone really proud about these circumstances? Of course not. But consider this: Jacko's U.S. flame out (Energizer axed him in the States after a year, but he was still used in his home country) led to the company adopting in 1989 its ubiquitous pink bunny, a mascot that, like the product it shills, keeps going and going and going … That's why it might be nice for the two to share a commercial together, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis reunion-style.

 

Big Orange Couch (SNICK/Nickelodeon)

 

Employed: 1992-1999

Never has a gaudy piece of furniture commanded the attention of a single generation like the Big Orange Couch. Want to send a Millenial to the floor in a nostalgia seizure? Run a video loop of Larissa "Alex Mack" Oleynik tending to her Tamagotchi and sipping an Ecto-Cooler while she's sitting on the Big Orange Couch, the mascot for Nickelodeon's Saturday night programming for almost a decade.

 

Wendy the Snapple Lady (Snapple)

 

Employed: 1993-95

Wendy Kaufman, the woman who would be queen of '90s soft drinks, has one of those feel-good stories about how she landed the Snapple gig. She worked at the company in an office role and was tapped to do the commercials after the company's ad agency learned Kaufman was responding to customers' fan letters. 

Since those ads, Wendy has had an on-again, off-again relationship with Snapple. It seems every time ownership of the drink manufacturer changes hands, the new owners decide to either fire or rehire Wendy. That's not how you treat a woman who helped boost a small company's annual revenue from $23 million to $750 million in just two years. 

Currently, Snapple is using Nick Cannon and Jimmy Fallon to hawk its bottled teas and juices. Now would be the perfect time for Wendy to take those two jabronis on in a lip-sync battle.

 

Frank Bartles and Ed Jaymes (Bartles & Jaymes Wine Coolers)

 

Employed: 1984-1991

To paraphrase Margaret Cho, the 1980s were such an "Oh, Mickey, you're so fine" kind of time, an 867-5309 kind of time. And yes, the decade also was a "… and thank you for your support" kind of time.

That commercial catchphrase elevated David Rufkahr and Dick Maugg, the actors who portrayed the soft spoken, fictional pseudo-vintners, to minor celebrity status in the '80s, when the wine cooler was the craft beer of its time. Sadly, a revival with both men will never happen; Maugg died of a heart attack in 1996. But when Zima makes its triumphant comeback—and mark my words, it will—let's hope the product's ad execs have the good sense to contact and hire Rufkahr as the drink's new mascot. 

Fun Fact: This ad campaign was developed by advertising legend Hal Riney, and he used it as his mic drop, retiring from the industry after creating it. 

 

BONUS: Marky Mark (Calvin Klein)

 

Employed: 1992

Technically, Mark Wahlberg was a celebrity spokesman for Calvin Klein, not a mascot. But we're going to let that slide, given how this campaign has resurfaced recently.

The designer evoked its famous black-and-white TV spot, replacing the artist formerly known as Marky Mark with the artist currently known as Justin Bieber (and the Saturday Night Live cast member known as Kate McKinnon did a dead-on parody of it this season). People have been taking sides over who did it better. Naturally, Wahlberg's wife had her husband's back on Twitter, but Paper magazine proclaimed the Biebs as champion in this battle of the boxer briefs.

Could this be enough to push Wahlberg to strip down to his Calvins again? Given that he said working on the 1992 shoot was his most embarrassing moment and Kate Moss suffered a nervous breakdown because of it, the chances of Wahlberg dropping trou for a TV commercial are pretty unlikely.