The Character Shop: One of the ones that got away...

Let's say you run a soft-drink/tea company, and you want to differentiate your product. Your product uses natural additives such as Ginseng, Guarana, Yerba Mate, Chamomile and Rose Hips. Cool idea: make characters out of each of those ingredients! Yeah! And give them different personalities: Guarana is always a little over-stimulated, Chamomile is sweet and light, Ginseng comes from a root, so let's make him really earthy...

No, screw that; let's represent our product with Geckos instead. That way nobody will confuse our product with anything else. Yeah, scrap those Plant Puppets. Let's go with Geckos.

And so the job died. A week before they were to shoot. Sculptures were created and painted for presentation, and approved. Molds were made. An actual skin was cast of one of the puppets, but then the phone call came:..."Mr. Big just came back from vacation.Wants to scrap the whole concept. It's over. Cancelled."

Had the puppets been finished, they would have had silicone skins, internal armatures, and been worked from behind, Bunraku style, with a hand in the mouth, animatronic eyes, and rod-operated arms and legs.

But you will never see Guarana, Ginseng, Rose Hip, Chamomile or Yerba Mate strut their stuff. Instead, for a Super Bowl spot, a bunch of CGI geckos danced and slurped the product. PLUS, as a bonus (as if you needed any more star power than CGI Geckos!) a famous lady (not known for her dancing ability) danced with them. Because you also want your product associated with someone notorious for throwing things at her personal assistants...

Hey, maybe they'll do a 2010 Superbowl spot using their Geckos! Because they are the only nationally advertised product with Geckos, right? Oops!