Don’t get me wrong, I understand the need to redesign product packaging and update brand mascots like our beloved Twinkie the Kid. Savvy marketeers work day and night to keep the brand representative fresh and hip for all of the three foot tall crème-filling mongers at play on shiny plastic-mold tanbark-free playgrounds. This noble work while tedious is critical to acquiring new addicts customers. Refreshing old brand mascots and their outdated fashions, fonts and color schemes also creates new sales opportunities for marketing the newly retro and oh so collectible character on everything salable from t-shirts to shot glasses. The part that I don’t find fluffy and sweet is when the made over mascot ends up looking like a cross between Clay Aiken and metrosexual rodeo star as is the case with the Twinkie the Kid make under. Granted Twinkie’s image has never been on par with oh say the Marlborough Man, but the latest incarnation has everyone at Layercake.net thoroughly disenchanted. For the love of golden sponge cake, Twinkie, what have they done to you?

Take a gander at the before and after makeover of Mr Koolaid:

Another makeover while not so recent was certainly a step in a somewhat fashionable direction. I’m referring to the clothing of the Koolaid Man. Like most brand mascots The Koolaid man is not in fact a man and in this case he is a pitcher of red Koolaid. And until the early 70’s he didn’t even have his Koolaid filled limbs. He does not prance around in the snow so you won’t find a pair of flat front chinos and a cable knit sweater on his Gap wish list. Nor is Mr Koolaid a high fashion pitcher model, you won’t see him sauntering down the catwalk in D&G any time soon. Even the aforementioned Twinkie the Kid only sports strictly work related accessories like a neckerchief, cowboy boots and a hat, no pants. So I never really considered the fact that apparently, my entire childhood was bombarded with nude images of an unclothed Koolaid Man. The horror. Now that he is clothed I am suddenly aware that while he does not have Koolaid filled “parts” if you will allow me to be so graphic, for all those years, he was naked. And somewhere along the crystallized sugar path of Mr Koolaid’s life he was shamed into putting on clothing. It started out slowly just a pair of white tennis shoes, naturally all of that running through paper walls could be tough on Koolaid filled feet. And then the arrival of the tropical print shirt brought images of a younger, redder Mr. Hawaiian Punch. And now Mr. Koolaid (perhaps I should refer to him heretofore as LL Koolaid), is completely hip-hopified. Next we will be told by the marketeers that all along, Mr Koolaid has in fact been sippin’ on gin and juice. Er, low carb juice of course.