He Kept His Cool : After Saving an Otter Pops Icon, Boy’s a Hit With Leno

Before John Travolta, before Tori Spelling, a 9-year-old Costa Mesa boy with a touch of showmanship told Jay Leno on NBC-TV’s “The Tonight Show” how he stopped a $17-million ice pops company from dropping his favorite Otter Pops flavor.

Fourth-grader Kevin Kee told Leno how he and his family picketed in the rain at the Riverside headquarters of National Pax Corp., the makers of Otter Pops, when word leaked out that the Sir Isaac Lime flavor would be dropped for a new flavor, Scarlett O’Cherry.

“It was raining?” Leno asked incredulously.

“Pouring down hard rain,” Kevin corrected. “I knocked on the door and said, ‘Can we come in?’ ”

Kevin got his 30 seconds of fame Monday during the “Headlines” segment of the show, in which Leno pokes fun at the day’s news.

“Tonight Show” officials said they invited Kevin because they were impressed with his guts.

“A kid fights bureaucracy and wins,” said Jolie Ancel, the show’s talent coordinator. “It seemed like a cute story.”

Afterward, Kevin, who was given $200 for his appearance, said he enjoyed bantering with Leno.

“I was a little bit nervous because I did not know what he was going to ask. It’s like, ‘What’s he’s going to do?’ You have to think of an answer.”

Half an hour before show time, in a dressing room with his name on it, Kevin muttered to himself over and over again: “Don’t think third grade.” In the third grade he messed up a line in a school play, and he never forgot the mistake.

But Monday, he exited stage left to thunderous applause.

The day started at 10:45 a.m. when a black limousine picked up Kevin and his mother, 28-year-old Amy Kee Cordova, and stepfather, 30-year-old Daniel Cordova.

His mother clutched her “Beverly Hills 90210” lunch box in hope of catching Spelling for her autograph.

His nervous parents, armed with a video camera, prepped him beforehand. Belt or no belt? They decided no belt. Hands in pocket or not? They decided not. And fretted that his overly sprayed hair would flop. It did.

Leno, who had sent a gift basket full of toys to Kevin’s dressing room, dropped by to say hi and throw mock punches.

“Hey buddy, this will be fun,” Leno said, before turning on his heels.

“Is Tori here yet?” Leno asked an assistant, and then he was gone.

Kevin made headlines when he won the battle to keep Sir Isaac Lime in the Otter Pops six-pack.

The company had been within days of starting production on Scarlett O’Cherry, officials said.

Kevin heard the bad news from the Otter Pops home page on the World Wide Web, an arm of the Internet.

At the suggestion of his mom, he prepared for battle. Kevin, an Otter Pops purist who eats three of the treats after school every day, could not stand the idea of a new flavor; the six flavors had stayed the same since the days he teethed on Otter Pops as a baby.

National Pax officials said they did not have the heart to ice Sir Isaac after Kevin, three cousins and eight other family members marched with protest signs, colored with crayons and markers. Kevin and his grade-school cousins also presented the company with 130 petition signatures that they gathered during two weeks of recesses.