It’s The Taste !
Or so we were told by the Tipps family. The Tipps family were of course the famous PG Tips chimps that were used in the tea commercials for PG Tips very successfully for over 40 years.
It was in 1956 that PG Tips first began to use chimps in their ads. Dressed in human clothes they became known as the Tipps family. Their voices were often provided by celebrities.
The Chimpanzees themselves were from Twycross Zoo in Leicestershire. Such was their popularity with the viewing public the ads became an instant hit taking PG Tips from the number four position in the British Tea market to number one by 1958.
Complaints by animal rights organisations lead to the chimps being dropped from the ad campaign in the 1970’s. However when sales of the tea dropped, within eighteen months the chimps were back on our screens. The last chimps ad was in 2002.
The ads spawned a whole market in spin-off in memorabilia, including trading cards and figurines.
The Ads
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Did You Know?
Among those who provided the voices to the Chimps were Peter Sellers and Bob Monkhouse. The last surviving chimp from the ads Choppers died in 2016 aged 48.