Mr. Whipple

A fussy grocer begging customers, "Please don't squeeze the Charmin!" over and over. Character actor Dick Wilson played Mr. Whipple in more than 500 commercials between 1964 and 1985, which makes this one of the purest examples of a single gag repeated until it became part of the culture. The repetition was the point. A 1978 Procter & Gamble survey placed Whipple as the third best-known American, behind Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. After a 14-year break he even came back in 1999, joking that he could not retire while the public still needed telling about Charmin.