Coppertone (sunscreen)

Coppertone is the brand name for an American sunscreen, owned by Bayer, formerly Schering-Plough. Coppertone is the sister brand to Bain de Soleil, which is targeted to adult women. The name originated from its marketing of suntan lotion.

It dates to 1944, when pharmacist Benjamin Green invented a lotion to darken tans. The company became famous in 1959 when it introduced the Coppertone girl, an advertisement showing a young blond girl in pigtails staring in surprise as a Cocker Spaniel sneaks up behind her and pulls down her blue swimsuit bottom, revealing her buttocks to have a lighter tone than the rest of her body. Accompanying the ads was the impish slogan, "Don't be a paleface!"

The original Coppertone logo was the profile of an Indian chief. In 1953 Tally Embry Advertising in Florida was hired, and their ad men created the concept of the little girl and the pup. An artist named Joyce Ballantyne Brand re-drew the little girl in 1959 when the original artwork was destroyed in a fire. She was then working for Grant Advertising in New York. She purportedly used her daughter, Cheri, as her model, although her drawing closely resembled the original artwork. A series of mechanical billboards was constructed across the United States, whereon the motorized dog and swimsuit bottoms rocked up and down perpetually. Though most of them are long since gone or have stopped moving, one such billboard of the then Coppertone Girl still stands in Miami Beach — dog, pigtails, swimsuit, and all. Sometime around 1965, Jodie Foster made her acting debut as the Coppertone girl in a television commercial, when she was three years old.