Captain Birdseye (United Kingdom)
In the United Kingdom, Captain Birdseye was an advertising mascot of the brand, from the 1960s to late 1990s. Appearing in numerous television and billboard commercials since 1967, he was played by the actor John Hewer between then and 1998 e.g. in 1986 advert for Birdsye Fish Fingers.[20] After the retirement of the original actor, the brand was relaunched with a younger man with designer stubble (played by Thomas Pescod), but was less popular, and the character was dropped from Birdeye's advertising. A 2014 redesign of the brand's packaging[21] includes artwork resembling the original Captain Bird's Eye.[8]
Other British advertising
Child actress Patsy Kensit appeared in an early 1970s advert for frozen peas. This featured a jingle including the slogan "Sweet as the moment when the pod went 'pop'".[22]
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, June Whitfield appeared in a series of television advertisements for Birds Eye products, featuring the concluding voice-over line: "... it can make a dishonest woman of you!".[23] The series was the brainchild of advertising art director Vernon Howe and was mentioned in several of his obituaries.[24][25]
Another popular campaign in the 1970s was for Birds Eye Beefburgers, which was one of the first to feature regional dialects (i.e. from Leeds), a novelty on television at the time. The series began in 1973 and the adverts were produced by advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP) and directed by Alan Parker before later being taken over by Paul Weiland, the slogan being "somehow, other beefburgers just don't taste the same". Initially, they starred Paul Malkin as Dan Godfrey and the late Darren Cockerill as his brother Ben, with the latter only ever wanting to eat beefburgers from Birds Eye. After Malkin left, he was replaced by Heather MacDonald as neighbour Mary, who had an unrequited crush on Ben. Cockerill departed in 1979 (with Ben emigrating to Australia) and was himself replaced by twins (played by Andy and Stephen Halstead) who Mary looked after at Ben's old house. Cockerill returned for a final farewell with MacDonald in the early 1980s and the series briefly continued with a "new" Ben and Mary (played by Jonathan Slater and Fiona Rook respectively) before CDP lost the Birds Eye contract shortly afterwards.
Advertising campaigns of the 1980s included one for Potato waffles that had a jingle including the words Waffley versatile. A popular advertisement for Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills featured a scene of hungry building site workers heading home in a minibus and singing about what they were hoping their wives would serve with their steak burgers. The song to the tune of Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) included the tag line "we hope it's chips".[26]
Adverts the early 2010s featured a hand puppet polar bear named Clarence (voiced by Willem Dafoe), who in most adverts would be seen in a person's freezer and would advise them to eat Birds Eye products instead of alternatives. In 2011, Birds Eye created toy versions of Clarence that could be obtained when consumers sent away six tokens from boxes of Birds Eye fish fingers or cod fillets.
