White Gold looks like a reject from a Whitesnake tribute band. He's a collage of bleached-white hair, Spandex and admire-yourself-in-the-mirror attitude.
In fact, the fictional rocker is the last guy I'd expect to shoulder the comeback hopes of California dairies.
But White Gold -- with his laser-beam-shooting guitar and "You're Almost as Beautiful as Me" anthem -- is the frontman in a 20-minute rock opera that the California Milk Processor Board hopes will do for milk what the Dancing Raisins did for shriveled grapes in the 1980s.
Backing White Gold are a damsel in distress (Strawberry Summers), a sidekick (chocolate-milk loving Jug Life), a dastardly villain (Nasterious) and a heroic flying cow/unicorn (Bovina).
A sign of the times: White Gold's television appearances are limited to 30-second commercials in which he directs viewers to "Battle for Milkquarious" on the Internet.
I did as requested and wasn't impressed. "Battle" was too camp and too obvious with its movie parodies for my taste.
But, in the milk board's defense, it's a commercial -- not a movie. Besides, I'm hardly the demographic that dairies are hoping to woo to moo. I was raised in an era when milk was a staple and soda was a once-in-a-while treat. On hot summer nights, I stand in front of the refrigerator and chug 1% from the carton.
So, I sought the analysis of David Butler and Tiffany Renna, ninth-graders at Big Picture charter school in Fresno.
Advertising experts say that their generation is tough to reach through traditional media. They also say that young consumers are turned off by a hard sell. Tiffany and David agree.
Tiffany said that she rarely watches television, although she does read the newspaper: "I think about what I actually need, and then check out things while I'm shopping."
David said that television ads "sometimes" influence his purchases.
Good news for the dairymen: David and Tiffany said that the Internet commercial met their gold standard -- it was worth the trouble of turning on the computer. They found the rock opera funny and memorable.
"White Gold is a cliché," Tiffany said. "But, in a weird way, that adds to the coolness."
"That whole glam thing," said David, finishing the thought.
They also liked the five-song soundtrack, a mixture of funk, metal and Barry White-esque love notes.
"The next time I see milk, I'm going to think of this and get one of these songs stuck in my head," David said.
Still not convinced that Milkquarious was milktastic, I asked them to check out the Dancing Raisins in "I Heard It Through the Grapevine."
They weren't impressed. Boring. Museum pieces. No match for White Gold.
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