Saturday, May 20, 2017

Remember the Lite Line "mouse"? (1980)

We all know that mice love cheese. Rather than obtain a license to use, say for example, Speedy Gonzales, Borden opted to create their own rodent(s).

What they did was hire an anonymous actress, and dressed her in a grey & white mouse bodysuit to do a series of spots for Lite Line cheese. As the brand name implies, this has fewer calories than regular sliced cheese.

In this 1980 spot, Borden's ad agency upped the babe quotient by adding a few extra "mice" at the end.



Unfortunately, Lite Line is not around anymore, and, for that matter, neither is Borden, which discontinued Lite Line and other food products a few years back, while other familiar brands, such as Wyler's juice mix and Cracker Jack, were sold off to other companies. Wise potato chips was spun off into its own company.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I loved those LITE-LINE commercials as a kid. I am not sure just how many commercials Borden made with the mouse lady, or exactly when they stopped these commercials. This particular commercial from 1980 is particularly well done. The set with giant dice, thimble, wine cork for chairs as well as a spool of thread for a table were a cute idea. Also a bottle cap for a light fixture, matchbox for a bed, and a stopwatch for a wall clock were a neat idea. Someone had to do a lot of work to make the set which also includes the view of the outside room with tacky wallpaper and a red-plaid wingback chair. The mouse lady's costume is a cute unitard with a sexy French Maid's apron in the beginning, and her friends at the end of the commercial have similar unitards, but different colors. Such a cute commercial, it's a shame that it only lasts thirty seconds.

hobbyfan said...

I think there were maybe a half dozen or more, I'm not sure. The decor, of course, was borrowed from any number of Tom & Jerry or Speedy Gonzales cartoons that had shown the mouse's domain.