Charlie the Tuna

Charlie the Tuna is the cartoon mascot and spokes-tuna for the StarKist brand. He was created in 1961 by Tom Rogers of the Leo Burnett Agency after StarKist hired Leo Burnett in 1958. StarKist Tuna is the name of a brand of tuna currently owned by Dongwon Industries, a South Korea-based conglomerate. StarKist itself is based in Pittsburgh, the home of its former parent company, H. J. Heinz Company, sharing its headquarters on the site of Three Rivers Stadium with another former parent company, Del Monte Foods' Pittsburgh headquarters.

As reported in news stories about Rogers, Charlie the Tuna was based on Rogers' friend, the actor-songwriter Henry Nemo. B-movie actress Maila Nurmi claims that the character was originally sketched six years earlier by the actor James Dean while she was sitting with him one night in Googie's coffee shop in Los Angeles. However, StarKist and Burnett both give full credit to Rogers, and there is no actual evidence for Nurmi's claim.

The advertisements depicted Charlie (voiced by actor Herschel Bernardi) as a hipster wearing a Greek fisherman's hat and coke-bottle glasses, whose goal is to be caught by the StarKist company. Charlie believes that he is so hip and cultured that he has "good taste," and he is thus the perfect tuna for StarKist. Charlie is always rejected in the form of a note attached to a fish hook that says, "Sorry, Charlie." The reason given by the narrator (voiced by Danny Dark) for the rejection was that StarKist was not looking for tuna with good taste but rather for tuna that tasted good. Some of the commercials ended with Charlie appeasing the viewers: "Tell 'em, Charlie sent you". These commercials were animated by DePatie-Freleng Enterprises.

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