Got Moo?

Can a hip cow with sunglasses get kids to drink more milk? She doesn’t have the name recognition of Joe Camel--or even a name, as far as we can tell--but the happy, backward-baseball-cap-wearing bovine on the label of the new flavored milk Moo Kooler is the great black-and-white hope of the American Dairy Assn. and the Dairy Council Mid East. Apparently California’s “Got Milk?” campaign isn’t enough to ease what a dairy industry press release calls the nation’s “growing calcium crisis.” In other words, kids like soda better than milk. So why not make milk more like soda? Moo Kooler, launched this month in Pittsburg, Cleveland and Columbus, takes milk out of the presumably stodgy milk carton and into a hipper plastic, juice-like bottle. The flavors: ChocoKool (chocolate mint), ChocoBoom (chocolate fudge), OrangeSlide (orange vanilla) and VanillaZilla (vanilla). Oh yes, there’s also ClassicCow (plain white milk).