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Chuck Cunningham Syndrome / Advertising

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  • Wendell the Baker for Cinnamon Toast Crunch used to have two other bakers named Bob and Quello/Quienno by some, but they disappeared for reasons unknown around the early '90s, and were never featured again.
    • Initially, the premise was that Wendell has wandered off exploring the world, and the other two were searching for him (there was even a "Where's Wendell" contest). But the campaign became a sort of Aborted Arc without a resolution, and eventually, the "temporary" ads featuring only Wendell just became the new normal.
  • McDonaldland and the vast cast of characters who once existed side-by-side with Ronald McDonald in McDonald's commercials were steadily eliminated from the 1970s onward, until only the "core cast" of Ronald, Grimace, Birdie, and Hamburglar remained. For awhile past 2000 now, McDonald's ads have only featured Ronald, and lately even he hasn't been seen terribly often.
    • Beginning in the 2010s and 2020s, some of the McDonaldland characters (notably Grimace and Hamburglar) have slowly started resurfacing back into the spotlight. Between 2013 and 2014, there were two live stage shows (Ronald McDonald & Friends Friendship Adventure Show and Musical Show of Ronald McDonald respectively) starring Ronald, Birdie, Grimace, and Hamburglar together performed at a few countries across America. Occasionally Grimace or Hamburglar would make rare live appearances at some local McDonald's restaurants for special events, some of their official social media account (such as McDonald's official TikTok) posts, and sometimes appear during Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade beginning in 2020. Grimace's most recent appearance was in a 2022 Super Bowl commercial where he was voiced by Ryan Reynolds. He made a fuller comeback in 2023 as part of an anniversary celebration of the character. Complete with purple milkshakes.
  • The Burger King Kingdom was BK's answer to McDonaldland, and featured a colorful cast of characters including the milkshake-craving knight Sir Shake-a-Lot, the picture-framed Burger Thing, the robotic Wizard of Fries, the skeptic Duke of Doubt, and The Burger King himself. They were phased out in favor of the BK Kids' Club in the late '80s, which itself disappeared shortly into the new millennium.
  • Cookie Crisp cereal had in its early marketing campaigns a bobby who chases after a bandit-masked thief and his bandit-masked dog. Eventually the thief vanished, followed promptly by the bobby, leaving just the dog (still wearing his bandit mask, oddly enough). Now the dog has completely vanished, having been replaced by a wolf named Chip (ironically the same name as the dog that preceded him). Before even the bobby and thief was a wizard who vanished the moment the thief was introduced.
  • Erin Esurance was a Cartoon Network-esque super spy who went on dangerous assignments while pitching for the insurance company that created her. Her commercials ran for several months then abruptly stopped without explanation, and she was reduced to a static icon next to the company's name before being dropped completely. Much has been written about the vast, vast quantity of Internet porn she's now in, but the simple truth is most likely that the campaign had run its course and the company couldn't think of any new adventures for her.
  • Ned The Incompetent Loan Officer was the face of Ditech in the early-2000's. The commercials would usually show him with a clientnote , attempting to give him/her a home equity loan. He would horribly botch the deal, and the client(s) would call Ditech instead for the loan, leaving him to moan "Lost another loan to Ditech." Around 2003, the character ended up disappearing from Ditech's commercials, though he would go on to make appearances in commercials for auto insurance company Dashers.
  • Della and Foxworthy disappeared from the Computer Critters cast after the first commercial.
  • After years of appearing on-screen, Toucan Sam's nephews (Puey, Susey, and Louis) stopped appearing in Kellogg's Froot Loops ads after 2015 with their last appearance being in the commercial for Froot Loops Bloopers, not counting a modified version of the first full CGI Froot Loops ad from 2013 which aired in 2016. With Toucan Sam's permanent redesign in 2021 for America and Canada respectively, and Maurice LaMarche's departure from voicing Toucan Sam, any chances of the nephews returning are highly unlikely because of this.

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