Video: Wilkins Coffee commercials, 1957 - 1961
In the late '50s, a young puppeteer named Jim Henson was commissioned by Washington D.C.-based Wilkins Coffee to produce a series of ultra-quick commercials. Henson's ads, featuring a pair of early proto-Muppets named Wilkins and Wontkins, proved incredibly successful, and until 1961, Henson continued to produce ads for Wilkins' products, ultimately cranking out 179 commercials.
What's so striking about these ads isn't just the tremendous creativity or whimsy, but the raucous slapstick violence. Poor frumpy Wontkins is frequently maimed, murdered, blown-up, threatened, whalloped, stabbed, guillotined, clobbered and beaten, but there's somehow still a friendly air of delight to these ads.