You got sass, girl!

She has stood the taste of time and aged deliciously

She’s a charming little girl in a polka-dot frock with sparkling eyes and floppy blue hair, with a half-ponytail springing out of it. She topically comments on news and newsmakers with chutzpah, her tongue firmly in her chubby cheek. And she has been at it for more than 50 years without any fear or favour. She’s taken no prisoners, ever. She’s the sassy Amul girl!

The adorable moppet was brought to life in 1966 by Sylvester da Cunha and Eustace Fernandez. She roguishly began her innings with the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread: with Amul Butter,” mischievously winking at a pack of butter in her first outing.

However, the wordplay with butter soon reached a dead end. And as time progressed, her buttery taglines melted into sharp, incisive comments on current events, reminescent of the razor-sharp wit of R K Laxman’s iconic Common Man. The campaign has stayed relevant and as fresh as news! And it helped that Dr Verghese Kurien, the brilliant mind behind the Amul movement, let them be and do their job so that the ads came out on time before the news got stale. “With Amul, you can’t obsess over a tagline for long; the turnaround is so quick,” says Manish Jhaveri, its copywriter. Rahul da Cunha and Jayant Rane form the rest of the formidable team running the present campaign.

“The topicals are part of my bloodstream,” states Rahul, who took over from his father in 1994. Hand-painted by Jayant for a good 30 years now, the trio seem to be on a long bus man’s holiday!

“We’ve always practiced compulsory sterilisation”... brazening it out during the Emergency, “Bread with Amul butter, cholbe na, cholbe na,” on the naxalite movement, welcoming the “taste tube baby” or saluting our armed forces, “Siachen jahan se achcha,” and “S(uri)gical strikes” to the risqué “Love-bites” for condoms, the cheeky little brat has spoken her mind fearlessly, resonating with all of India. “Heroine addiction” on MF Hussain had the celebrated artist ringing da Cunhas for a blow-up of the ad! The ads have always dazzled us with their evocative humour and teased a chuckle out of us.

While sometimes discomfiting, the messaging has taught us to laugh at ourselves. The sprightly kid has been part of my growing-up years and remains so for my teenage son. “She has not just stood the test of time, but has aged deliciously... I don’t want people to tell me, ‘Oh,
the Amul girl! My dad loves those ads,’ states Rahul.

To borrow a few lines from Queen’s Killer Queen, “She’s a Killer Queen;
gunpowder, gelatin; dynamite with a laser beam; Guaranteed to blow your mind Anytime.”