Kool-Aid Man

Steam

Kool-Aid, a brand of powdered drink now owned by Kraft Foods, was developed in 1927 by inventor Edwin Perkins. The word Kool is a variation of cool and aid of the suffix -ade, as in lemonade or Gatorade.

The Kool-Aid Man’s first iteration was as the Pitcher Man in a 1950s advertising campaign as pitcher of Kool-Aid with a smiley face. By the mid-1970s, Kool-Aid Man had evolved into a life-sized anthropomorphic character who became famous for his destructive antics. Over the following decades, dozens of popular television advertisements featured Kool-Aid Man. He became well known for abruptly bursting through brick walls to share Kool-Aid with awe-inspired children. In the 1980s, he even inspired a (short-lived) video game and comic-book series.

Kool-Aid Man’s outsized appearance and dramatic entrances have made him a noted marketing and popular cultural figure. The character has been parodied by numerous television shows, including Family Guy and The Simpsons. Comedian Dane Cook memorably lampooned the Kool-Aid Man character in his 2003 debut comedy album Harmful If Swallowed. In his routine, Cook recalls the Kool-Aid Man as nightmarish and criticizes the children in Kool-Aid commercials, who would “drink out of him after debris fell in his open, dumb head.”