Underdog was flying across Saturday morning television screens when actor-comedian-singer Wally Cox was hired to pitch Procter & Gamble's Salvo detergent. Salvo was introduced in 1958, but left shelves sometime in the 70's or 80's. The fact that these were tablets, rather than the standard powder or liquid detergent, predates the popular pods that are available now.
Yes, despite his slight build, Wally was actually quite the athlete, as seen in The Adventures of Hiram Holliday a few years earlier. It's a pity he was taken too soon.
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This was a whole ad campaign, which ran for about five years, give or take, with Wally Cox singing the praises of Salvo in all day parts.
I definitely remember that a number of the later spots were in color, so you got to see Wally Cox's brown sack suit in all its glory; the story goes that he purposely wore ill-fitting clothes in order to conceal his natural muscularity (Tony Randall, who co-starred with Cox in Mister Peepers, once described him as being "built like a small gorilla.")
I've heard that what brought the spots to an end was when Cox actually took off his shirt in one of them; when he did the flex in his tee shirt, the sight of Cox's muscle so threw the ad guys that they killed the campaign (or so the story goes).
Sounds to me like the ad guys were, like, jealous?
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