Sunny Jim

"Sunny Jim" is the name of two completely unconnected characters used in advertising and product branding: (1) a cartoon character created to promote Force cereal, the first commercially successful wheat flake; (2) the name of a brand of peanut butter produced in the Seattle area.

Sunny Jim and Force cereal

The character on boxes of Force cereal was created in the United States in 1902 by writer Minnie Maud Hanff and artist Dorothy Ficken, initially for an advertising campaign. Rather than selling the benefits of eating wheat, which Hanff assumed customers already knew, her copy for the original advertisements told stories in verse, such as this one:

The advertisements featured slogans such as "Better than a Vacation” and “A Different Food for Indifferent Appetites.” Other verses included:

and

This last rhyme became a familiar catchphrase.

The campaign was wildly successful at promoting the character of Sunny Jim. Printer's Ink stated that “No current novel or play is so universally popular. He is as well-known as President Roosevelt or J. Pierpont Morgan.” However, the cereal company turned its advertising account over to a different firm, which did not approve of humor in advertising and more or less abandoned the campaign.

Jed Stone

John Edward "Jed" Stone, played by Kenneth Cope, is a fictional character from the soap opera Coronation Street. He was a lodger of Minnie Caldwell's in the 1960s, and her nickname for him was "Sunny Jim". He made a reappearance after an absence of 42 years, only to tangle with local villain Tony Gordon. On a live chat with producer Kim Crowther, it stated that there are currently no plans to bring Jed Stone back for the moment, or even to finish up the Tony Gordon storyline.

Cope also appeared in the 1988 special Minnie Caldwell Remembered.

Storylines

1961–74

Jed served time in a borstal in Manchester in 1960. He first appeared in April 1961 to see if his friend Dennis Tanner, who he had met in borstal would help him on a job - of dubious legality - but Dennis wasn't into that sort of thing any more and turned him down.

He returned on 13 September ( the same day as Ida Barlow's funeral), reformed but unemployed, to find legitimate work with Dennis' help. Dennis was promoted at the Orinoco club and managed to get Jed his old job. Jed was a regular fixture in the street from then on and became best friends with Dennis, Christine Hardman and Jean Stark, who he briefly dated.