Getting children to take medicines, including vitamins, has always been a challenge for parents and caregivers, and that was particularly true for the earlier part of the 20th century, when most pills were decidedly unappealing. But that challenge was made a lot easier with the introduction of children's multivitamins in interesting and fun shapes and colors, and in fruit flavors. There were several varieties of children's vitamins introduced during the 1960s and 1970s, including Flintstones, Pals, and the subject of this blog, Monster Vitamins.
Monster Vitamins featured seven different monster characters, including the pink Screaming Mimi with cone-shaped hair, the purple Blob, the orange Fedorable with its giant hat, and the two-headed red Sneaky and Squeaky. Though the characters appeared friendly enough, they were, after all, still monsters...so a spooky ad for the product seemed called for. And in the 1970s, if you wanted spooky, there was no better person than Vincent Price.
Vincent was well-known for his work in horror films, as well as guest appearances on sitcoms such as The Brady Bunch. His distinctive sinister voice and quietly menacing persona made him the perfect choice for television commercials promoting products with a scary or haunted theme, such as the Milton Bradley game Stay Alive and Vincent's own Shrunken Head Apple Sculpture Kit. His appearance in this ad (and the accompanying 1974 TV commercial) gave just the right amount of fun scare factor to interest kids (and their parents) into getting acquainted with the monster gang and taking the vitamins.
Although Monster Vitamins were a fairly short-lived phenomenon - Bristol-Myers ended production of them in the late 1970s - the characters, and Vincent's ads promoting them, are likely a fond memory for many '70s kids.
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