Funny Face was a brand of powdered

drink mix A drink mix is a processed-food product, designed to mix usually with water to produce a beverage resembling fruit juice or soda in flavor. Another type of drink mix is represented by products that are mixed into milk. It is traditionally made i ...

originally made and publicly sold by the

Pillsbury Company The Pillsbury Company is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based company that was one of the world's largest producers of cereal, grain and other foodstuffs until it was bought by General Mills in 2001. General Mills brands consist of Annie's, Betty Croc ...

from 1964 to 1994, and in limited productions (mainly in the Midwestern and New England regions of the U.S.A.) from 1994 to 2001. The brand was introduced as competition to the similar (and more familiar and better-selling)

Kool-Aid Kool-Aid is an American brand of flavored drink mix owned by Kraft Heinz based in Chicago, Illinois. The powder form was created by Edwin Perkins in 1927 based upon a liquid concentrate called Fruit Smack. History Kool-Aid was invented by ...

made by

Kraft Foods The second incarnation of Kraft Foods is an American food manufacturing and processing conglomerate, split from Kraft Foods Inc. in 2012 and headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. It became part of Kraft Heinz in 2015. A merger with Heinz, arra ...

. The product came in assorted flavors sweetened with

artificial sweetener A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Artificial sweeteners may be d ...

, and was mixed with water to make a beverage. The product name "Funny Face" was based on the packaging and advertising created by Hal Silverman of the

Campbell Mithun Mithun was an advertising and marketing firm, founded in 1933 by Ralph Campbell and Ray Mithun. It was part of Interpublic Group of Communication Companies. The core business was consumer advertising through radio, TV, print, digital, mobile and ...

advertising agency. Each flavor was designated by a cartoon character with a presumably amusing face. The original flavors, and their names, were Goofy Grape, Rootin'-Tootin' Raspberry, Freckle Face Strawberry, Loud-Mouth Lime, Injun Orange, and Chinese Cherry. These last two, being ethnic stereotypes considered offensive by that time, were soon revamped to Jolly Olly Orange and Choo Choo Cherry, respectively. Additional flavors were added later, including Lefty Lemon (later called Lefty Lemon-Lime and Lefty Lemonade), Captain Black Cherry, Chilly Cherry Cola, Loud-Mouth Punch (who was a re-working of the Loud-Mouth Lime character), Pistol Pink Lemonade, Rah! Rah! Root Beer, Rudy Tutti-Frutti, Tart Lil' Imitation Lemonade, Tart 'N' Tangy Lemon, Tart n' Tangy Orange, and With-It Watermelon, Chug-A-Lug-a Chocolate, was added much later, after the brand had passed to the Brady Company. His product was intended to be mixed with milk rather than water. The mix was sweetened with

calcium cyclamate Cyclamate is an artificial sweetener. It is 30–50 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), making it the least potent of the commercially used artificial sweeteners. It is often used with other artificial sweeteners, especially saccharin; ...

. Cyclamates and their salts (including calcium cyclamate and sodium cyclamate) were banned in the United States in 1970; Calcium cyclamate was briefly replaced by

saccharin Saccharin (''aka'' saccharine, Sodium sacchari) is an artificial sweetener with effectively no nutritional value. It is about 550 times as sweet as sucrose but has a bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. Saccharin is ...

, which proved unpopular, after which the product was offered unsweetened. Various promotional

tchotchke A tchotchke ( , ) is a small bric-à-brac or miscellaneous item. The word has long been used by Jewish-Americans and in the regional speech of New York City and elsewhere. It is borrowed from Yiddish and is ultimately Slavic in origin. The wor ...

s were offered as

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s in support of the brand, such as mugs and pitchers bearing the likeness of the various cartoon faces associated with each flavor. A series of children's books such as "How Freckle Face Strawberry Got His Name" and similar titles were published. The brand's tagline was "Funny Face is Fun To Drink!" The Funny Face brand was purchased by Brady Enterprises in 1980, and continued to sell nationwide until 1994. A limited production relaunch (albeit with some modifications) was briefly sold in selected areas from 1994 to 2001. On November 28, 2012, Decas Cranberry Products of

Carver, Massachusetts Carver is a town in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 11,645 at the 2020 census. It is named for John Carver, the first governor of the Plymouth Colony. The town features two popular tourist attractions: Edavil ...

resurrected the names and personas of four of the original characters – Rootin' Tootin' Raspberry, Freckle Face Strawberry, Choo Choo Cherry, and Goofy Grape – for a line of flavored dried cranberry and fruit snacks. In the 21st century, Smashing, Juicy, and Mully’s virtual reality YouTube videos have used the Goofy Grape character.

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