Davey and Goliath and Mountain Dew

Nearly one year ago, the ELCA signed a contract with PepsiCo, allowing them to use our "Davey and Goliath" images for a Mountain Dew commercial. Our hope was to use this commercial to raise funds to produce new "Davey and Goliath" childrens' television and to reintroduce the "Davey" images to a new generation. ("Davey and Goliath" was a children's stop-motion animation television program produced by the United Lutheran Church in America and the Lutheran Church in America in the 1960's and 1970's. The ELCA owns the copyright to these images.)

The commercial began playing on MTV and ESPN in February and more recently on FOX and other networks. It has attracted a lot of positive publicity. There have been or will be articles in "Spin" magazine and DowJones Newswire ("The Wall Street Journal"). Religion News Service (RNS) did their second feature last week. Here are this week's examples:

1) In the March 16, 2002 issue of "TV Guide," "Davey"/Mountain Dew is a "cheer" in their "Cheers and Jeers" column, see www.tvguide.com/magazine/issues/020311/cheers.asp

2) "Shootonline" features the animation work behind this commercial. See www.shootonline.com.

3) The United Church of Christ featured the RNS "Davey"/Mountain Dew story on their Web site. This is the story with lead line, "Move over, Britney Spears. Your advertising contract with Pepsi has just been handed to an animated little boy named Davey Hansen and his talking dog, Goliath."

Our "official" "Davey and Goliath" Web site is always expanding. At this site you can read the news story from last September, explaining our "Davey" relaunch and why we decided to allow these images to be used commercially.

Eric Shafer
Director, Department for Communication