It’s a Mad World of Endorsements

“What, me sell out?” Apparently so. Alfred E. Neuman, the gap-toothed mascot of Mad magazine, has officially joined the Establishment.

Dressed in a preppy blue polo shirt, he can now be found on the cover of a Lands’ End catalog, hawking chinos, button-down Oxford shirts and tasseled loafers. He also had his teeth fixed for a new “Got milk?” campaign. And PepsiCo plans to plaster his lopsided mug on bottles of its SoBe drinks. The list goes on.

Although Mad’s founder, the late William Gaines, once vowed to teach kids not to believe in ads, his cartoon protege has chosen another path, dishing out product endorsements for everything from Lucky jeans to Tang to computer gear.

“Advertisers are realizing Neuman puts a smile on people’s face and creates immediate brand recognition,” says Joel Ehrlich, senior vice president of advertising and promotions for DC Comics and Warner Bros., Mad’s parent company.

Neuman’s journey from Mad to Madison Avenue is also putting a smile on Warner Bros.’ face, thanks to the loot he hauls in. But his handlers insist that Neuman isn’t simply being offered to the highest bidder.

“At the end of the day, we do have integrity about his image,” Ehrlich says. “The product has to be a good match.”

For example, a proposal for Mad condoms was vetoed. And given Mad’s longtime ridicule of the tobacco industry, “I don’t see us [allowing Neuman to endorse] cigarettes or liquor,” says Mad co-editor John Ficarra.

Are there any other products Neuman wouldn’t promote? “The Los Angeles Times,” Ficarra jokes.

Although some Mad readers might wonder why Neuman is endorsing any products, his role as an advertising pitchman isn’t entirely out of character. In fact, that’s how he got his start.

Neuman predates Mad magazine by decades. One of his earliest known appearances was on the side of a 19th century traveling dentist’s wagon, accompanied by the motto, “It didn’t hurt a bit.” He also popped up in a 1939 ad for Thom McAn shoes, as well as on various billboards and even in anti-Franklin Roosevelt campaign literature.

Mad founder Gaines tried to reform the boy. After adopting Neuman in 1955, Gaines schooled him in Mad’s anti-advertising ethic. Gaines refused to let his magazine carry any ads, a policy that didn’t waver until last year, when Mad switched to an all-color format.

Neuman went along with the program, but in 1994, two years after Gaines’ death, he had a relapse, becoming the official spokesman for a Syquest computer memory device.

Next, he endorsed Tang, a breakfast drink that Mad had spoofed years earlier. More recently, the National Fluid Milk Processor Promotion Board recruited Neuman for a milk mustache ad. But first, they did some oral surgery. According to dentists, Neuman suffers a diastema--a space between the upper central incisors caused by too low an attachment of the labial frenum, which is the fibrous fold of tissue connecting the upper lip to the upper jaw.

In the milk ad, which premiered last month, he sports a full set of gleaming choppers, above a caption that says milk is “great for strong bones and toothy product endorsement smiles.”

Other Neuman ads include a plug for the American Library Assn.’s reading campaign and an endorsement for Lucky jeans. “In Mr. Neuman, Lucky has found an icon that mirrors its youthful, irreverent attitude,” said Advertising Age magazine.

OK, but what about Lands’ End? “Youthful” and “irreverent” aren’t the first words that spring to mind for side-elastic jeans and “frost blue” seersucker shirts.

Is it possible the catalog company meant to hire Paul Newman but got confused?

No way, says Lee Eisenberg, a former Esquire magazine editor who now serves as Lands’ End’s creative director. The company was looking for a baby boomer icon to promote its new polo shirt. The choice was between Neuman and the late Vice President Spiro Agnew. Mad’s poster boy carried the day.

“If you’re not tuned into the Alfred E. Neuman frequency, it may seem unusual,” Eisenberg says. But for Lands’ End’s core customers, who grew up during Mad’s heyday, Neuman “mirrors the youthful, irreverent attitude each of us used to have 20 or 30 years ago.”

Mad’s “usual gang of idiots” even wrote captions for the polo shirt: Eight great colors to choose from! (One for every day of the week!) Carefree comfort. (It will have you saying, “What, me worry?”)

The main draw, though, is Neuman.

His idiotic grin is so recognizable that someone in Europe once put his face on an envelope with no other information, and the letter still made it to Mad headquarters in New York, Ficarra says. Then again, that incident happened several decades ago. If the same stunt were tried today, the envelope might land on the desk of Neuman look-alike Ted Koppel or David Letterman, Ficarra says.

So when Eisenberg sent out several million copies of the March Lands’ End catalog, he felt “some degree of wariness and trepidation.” Not to worry. The response has been “phenomenal,” he says.

The catalog has already turned up on EBay.com as a collector’s item. One sold for $10.77, and several others are being offered for $3 to $4. “I’m thinking of putting him on every cover,” Eisenberg says.

At Mad headquarters, editor Ficarra sees no conflict of interest between Neuman’s dual roles as product pitchman and Mad mascot. “If Lands’ End did something shoddy or ridiculous tomorrow, we’d make fun of it,” he says.

Meanwhile, Neuman is apparently in such demand that the front of Mad’s April issue shows his blank silhouette with a note to readers: “Due to the slumping economy, we cannot afford the services of mascot Alfred E. Neuman on this cover.”