Have a Cow - Please!!!

What do Elsie the cow and David Beckham (the English soccer star) have in common. If you answered that they both can kick, you would be partly right.
The answer is they both have served as the poster children for the dairy industry - namely encouraging the health benefits of milk.
While Elsie and her beau, Elmer, were quite the couple back in the day (think late 1930's) milk marketing boards have embraced the "Got Milk" ads. And you've got to admit, they have done the job in getting the word out about milk. Who doesn't know the catch phrase "Milk, it does a body good".
What is interesting is the glammed up ads designed to hit the younger, target audience. Who didn't love the first "Got Milk?" ad that ran in 1993 with the history buff who couldn't answer a radio station's trivia ad because his mouth was full of peanut butter and his answer was unintelligible.
Back then the commercials featured ordinary people in various situations involving dry or sticky foods and the unavailability of milk.
Go to part II of the ad's campaign in which celebrities from the fields of sports, media, entertainment and fictional characters (The Simpsons and Pikachu the Pokemon) began posing in print sporting milk moustaches. (note: many folks - especially those familiar with the actual qualities of milk - know that liquid milk doesn't linger on the upper lip unless you're skimming the cream off the top!)
Actually the moustaches are made with a mixture of milk and yogurt - not Elmer's glue! (sorry Elmer, I know that was your big spin when you were loaned to Borden's chemical division). Remember the kids that used to eat glue in your grade school days? Maybe they should have been cast as models in "Got Glue?" ads? Now that would have been funny - only if they were eating it and not sniffing it!
According to the "Got Milk?" web site, the ads have garnered over 90% awareness among US households and the tag line has been licensed to a multitude of dairy boards across the US since 1995. That's almost as good as the name recognition back in 1939 at the World's Fair at New York when 6 out of 10 people knew who Elsie the Cow was - back before the age of television).
But is milk consumption up? I'll tell you what is up in bedrooms across the country; it's the glossy pictures used in the new magazine ads sporting the "Body by Milk" campaign. (Think hot, scantily-clad models and shirtless athletes proudly displaying their six-packs).
I'm not making this up. One day a copy of my Blender (an edgy music magazine that I admit is my one guilty pleasure and draws the scorn of my husband) was laying on the table when one of my son's friends happened to be looking through it. As he was thumbing through the pages, he came across one of the ads (you can guess it wasn't Snoop Dog). "Are you done with this?" he asked with a sheepish grin. Sure, my husband was only going to sneak it into the garbage can anyway.
I don't suppose any 17-year-old boys were pinning up photos of Elsie on their walls in the early 1940s?

And for you trivia buffs? Do you remember the names of Elsie and Elmer's offspring? If you answered Beulah, Beauregard and twins Larabee and Lobelia you are A) older than me B) a great trivia buff with an amazing memory for little known facts or C) peeked at your old Elsie poster hanging out in the milkhouse.