"Let Bad Breath Anonymous Tell Her"

I don't know how in the world I got on this topic, but I began on YouTube and went down a rabbit hole watching Johnny Carson reruns and ran across an old Scope commercial that made me cringe. It shouldn't, and it should just be funny, but you know how things just stick with you for years, even decades.

Well, in the late 1960s, as I recall, Scope mouthwash had a brilliant marketing plan. They ran television commercials with little comedic skits showing one person telling someone else they had bad breath, and some tragedy ensuing. I remember two guys moving a heavy piece of furniture or an appliance or something, and one of them telling the other he had bad breath and the guy getting mad, dropping the furniture downstairs. In another one, there were these ladies sitting around a dining room table asking what happened to one of them, who had a cake on top of her head. She lamented that she had told their friend she had bad breath, and the others said, "why didn't you just let Bad Breath Anonymous tell her?"

The marketing campaign was this. They would end the commercial by giving an address for Bad Breath Anonymous, a PO Box-a real one, and telling the TV audience all they had to do was send them the person's name and address, and they would do the rest. They promised to tell them they had bad breath and they would send them a $0.10 coupon for a bottle of Scope mouthwash. As I recall, they had in the background a bunch of women sitting at typewriters and filling envelopes with Scope mouthwash coupons, presumably sending them to all the people whose names and addresses had been sent to them.

Now, why does this make me cringe? I was only maybe seven or eight years old at the time, so obviously it did not impact me personally. I mean, even if I had received one of those notes, so what? An eight-year-old kid would not care.

No, that wasn't it. It was something else. Watching the television commercials gave this kid an idea.

I would take on the task myself.

So I proceeded to hand write notes –– "You have bad breath, should have washed your mouth with Scope!" Yes, I still remember what I wrote to this day. I remember I wrote it in pencil, as many kids might that age, and in fact, with a Commonwealth Life Insurance Company pencil, where my dad worked for many years. Dad got 12 dozen pencils in a box for marketing purposes, and would hand them out.

So I took the notes, place them in envelopes, and went up and down my neighborhood street ringing the doorbell, dropping the envelope or placing it inside the screen door…and running. I would typically hide around the corner, or in a bush to make sure that somebody answered the door, and then I would go on to the next house.

Clever, wasn't I? Well, after spending a day going up and down the street dropping probably two dozen of these envelopes at houses, I was discovered. I got home, and Mom and Dad were not too happy. I thought I had all my bases covered-I pressed the doorbells, and ran very quickly. I hid. I did not sign my name to the notes. But somehow, someway, someone either saw me, or very astutely determined that it was a child who was writing the notes, about my age using a pencil, and stuffing them in envelopes.

Wait. The envelopes!

I mentioned earlier that my Dad had bunches of these company advertising pencils. He also had a bunch of envelopes. And, naturally, the envelopes were engraved with the name of… Commonwealth Life Insurance Company.

No, it must not have taken them too long to figure out which kid was leaving these notes, since they knew which Dad worked for Commonwealth Life Insurance Company. Somehow my foolproof scheme to embarrass the neighborhood had a fatal flaw.

I'm not going to tell all the punishment I received, but the punishment that hurt the most was that I was forced to go back to every single house, ring the doorbell, and personally apologize to each and every person. I remember begging not to have to do that, to no avail.

I use mouthwash each and every day, and have for many, many years. But I have not, will not, and cannot use Scope. It just makes me cringe.

Here are a couple of links to the old TV commercials I referenced. I'm probably older than most of you so you may not even have ever seen these.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98B7Rc4knao

and

https://repository.duke.edu/dc/adviews/dmbb28607

There were probably more, but I found those two, and that's enough. Just telling the story is cringe-worthy enough; I don't need to relive too many of the commercials to highlight it.