Berries and Cream Starburst
A 2007 candy commercial became a 2021 TikTok explosion. The Little Lad — a grown man in old-fashioned page-boy clothes chanting "berries and cream" with a marionette dance — sat dormant for 14 years before the internet crowned him. The flavor was fine; the ad is immortal.
In 2007, Starburst launched a new Berries and Cream flavor, and to introduce it the agency TBWA\Chiat\Day New York — with executive creative director Gerry Graf and campaign architect Scott Vitrone — produced a spot titled "Bus Station." It starred actor Jack Ferver as the Little Lad: a grown man in old-fashioned page-boy clothes who interrupts two ordinary strangers with an unshakeable chant — "Berries and cream, berries and cream, I'm a little lad who loves berries and cream" — performed with a stiff, hypnotic dance somewhere between a marionette and a music-box doll. The ad was surreal and mildly unsettling, exactly the kind of advertising weirdness the era still permitted.
For 14 years it existed as a YouTube curiosity, occasionally rediscovered, occasionally remixed. Then in 2021 the ad was reborn on TikTok. Creators posted their own renditions of the chant and the dance, layered it over everything, and by that September posts inspired by the ad had drawn more than 350 million views. Ferver leaned in, and his own account — @thereallittlelad — passed 2.1 million followers. The Little Lad had become a genuine meme, proof of the internet's talent for resurrecting the obscure and crowning it as genius.
The candy itself is almost beside the point now. Ask anyone under thirty what "berries and cream" means and you will not hear about fruit chews — you'll get the chant, possibly with the little bow that goes with it.
Similar items
Starburst
Juicy square fruit chews in individual twist wrappers, with a transatlantic double identity — Opal Fruits in Britain, Starburst in America — and a lunchroom economy all their own, in which pink was a personality trait and the wrappers became origami.
Mentos (The Freshmaker Era)
Minor social catastrophe? Eat a Mentos. Roll across a freshly painted bench, hijack a tablecloth, climb through a stranger's car — then flash a thumbs-up at the camera. The Freshmaker ads were so gloriously wrong they became one of the most beloved things on 90s TV.
Airheads
The stretchy, tangy taffy bar in the loud mylar wrapper — Blue Raspberry stained your tongue, and White Mystery was a gamble by design. Fifty cents of pure lunchbox status.
Amazin' Fruit Gummy Bears
Hershey's entry into the gummy-bear wars, forever burned into memory by TV commercials of little bears who sang like a choir. For a lot of 90s kids, it was the first gummy bear they ever met.