The origin of Life Cereal’s most famous slogan

Say the sentence Mikey likes it to anyone between the ages of 40 and 100, and chances are they’ll get the reference. It immediately brings to mind an incredibly popular 1970s commercial featuring a cute, round-faced toddler shoveling Life cereal into his mouth.

However, the slogan was never spoken in the original 1972 commercial. Instead, it is a mix of the actual wording from the ad, in which actor John Gilchrist, then almost four years old, played the role of Mikey.

In the clip, Gilchrist’s two real-life brothers, Michael and Tommy, push a bowl of the mysterious, supposedly healthy cereal toward him and say, “Give it to Mikey. He won’t eat it. He hates everything.” When the little one finally gobbles it down, the funnier of the two older brothers calls out, “He likes it! Hey Mikey!” before a narrator intones, “When you bring Life home, don’t tell the kids it’s one of those nutritious cereals you were going to give them. You’re the only one who needs to know.”

Life – a brown, checkered, square cereal from Quaker Oats made mostly of oats, corn, whole wheat flour and a little sugar – was first launched in 1961 and was far from the first breakfast cereal. They had been around since the 1860s, when health fanatics praised the consumption of mostly tasteless bran, oats and corn flakes. But Life, touted as “the most beneficial protein ever in a ready-to-eat cereal,” was part of the larger movement toward convenience, with cereals like Life, Sugar Smacks and Cocoa Puffs hitting the market in the ’50s and ’60s. And the impact that the Mikey likes it The impact of this slogan on pop culture would extend far beyond the breakfast section at the supermarket.

Life’s first mascots were little goblins who extolled the virtues of “good oatmeal cereal” that contained “tiny bite-sized pieces of oatmeal with sugar crystals encased in it.” But in the early 1970s, after some work by the advertising agency Doyle, Dane and Bernbach, Quaker Oats launched the “Little Mikey” commercial, which ran from 1972 to 1986 and became one of the longest-running commercials in television history. Millions of people watched Mikey shovel spoonful after spoonful over those 14 years, making Gilchrist’s miniature mug one of the most recognizable faces on television.

Gilchrist and his six siblings appeared in about 600 commercials during their young lives—John alone appeared in about 150, and the “Mikey” spot was one of his first—though only that Life spot was a real hit. Gilchrist’s parents also turned down press requests for their son, which may have contributed to him becoming the subject of urban legend. In the ’70s, for example, rumors arose that he died of a perforated stomach after ingesting a lethal mixture of carbonated soda and the carbonated candy Pop Rocks. That’s impossible, of course—the combination would Perhaps if anything, it only causes mild stomach ache – but the schoolyard rumors were so widely believed that they seriously affected the sales of the once popular candy.

In 1979, Gilchrist’s own mother received a condolence call from a stranger expressing sympathy for the loss of her son. She reportedly responded, “He just got home from school.” General Foods, which owned Pop Rocks at the time, approached Gilchrist’s parents and offered him money to appear in a commercial disputing the claims, but they declined. The child star still had a contract with Life, and the company threatened to pull the deal if he did the Pop Rocks campaign.

General Foods stopped producing the treat in 1982, but rumors about Pop Rocks’ alleged dangers persisted for years. However, they’ve since been back in stores if you want to tempt (a completely fictional) fate.

Gilchrist, for his part, is still very much alive and well in New York. He used his early commercial fame to launch a career in advertising sales, first in radio, then at ESPN and now at MSG Networks, where he has been Director of Media Sales since 2011.