Mr. Happy Crack

I’ve done a lot of posts in this space on how different everything is in Michigan, and I expect we will have several more before I’m done at MSU. It’s not just the climate and the culture, although those are every bit as alien as everyone kept telling us they would be; even basic things like the selection of local companies in familiar fields (coffee, diner food, etc.) are different here. But of all of the strange things in this strange new world, I think we hit a new high (or low; it depends on your point of view) last week when we encountered Mr. Happy Crack…

For those who, like me and my wife, have never encountered him before, Mr. Happy Crack is the advertising mascot for a company that seals cracks and other structural issues with your basement where water can seep into your house, which is called The Crack Team. You can visit their website here if you’re interested in learning more about their services, pricing and so on. What makes this particular mascot so hilarious, in our opinion, is the company’s sales slogan, which says (I am not making this up) “Mr. Happy Crack says: ‘A dry crack is a happy crack!’” As you might imagine, when this offering first appeared on our television set, both of us just about lost it…

Now, there are two different reasons I’m wasting my time and yours writing about Mr. Happy Crack. One is the obvious business lesson: despite (or perhaps because of) its obvious absurdity, this ad actually served its intended purpose very well. My wife and I were completely unaware of the existence of this company before we saw the ad; we had not actually been aware of companies of this type at all until coming to Michigan. Now, having seen the television spot featuring Mr. Happy Crack and learning that “A dry crack is a happy crack!” the odds of our ever forgetting the company are effectively zero. We may or may not do business with The Crack Team (we actually have a company that we use for this type of home repair service already), but if for some reason we need a crack in our basement sealed and don’t have anyone else to call, we will definitely remember them…

The second reason I bring this up is a little more subtle. When I first saw the television spot I thought it was so funny that I snapped a picture of Mr. Happy Crack and his slogan with my cell phone camera and sent it to all of my friends, many of whom are also from California and (like me) had never heard of either the company or its mascot before. If school had been in session that week I would have undoubtedly shared this discovery with all of my fellow students, any faculty members in range, random visitors, and so on; we also considered sending the image (and possibly the link) to the Tonight Show so that Jay Leno could put it on the “Headlines” segment…

All of whom would have thought I was a total cretin, since this firm isn’t actually new to anyone from this part of the country. It turns out that the Crack Team has been doing business since 1985, and they’ve been cracking these same “crack” jokes the whole time. In fact, the founder refers to himself as “the Ray Croc of Crack” (in reference to the man who made McDonald’s famous). Mr. Happy Crack has already been featured on the Tonight Show, as well as the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, CNN, Fox News, and advertising industry journals like Brandweek, Advertising Age and CNBC…

Which only goes to show that what may seem new, unprecedented or just plain weird to you might be a regular part of the landscape in the strange new world where you have landed, and laughing and pointing may go farther towards making you look like a cretin than it does toward mocking what you’re pointing at. It’s worth keeping in mind, should you suddenly find yourself living Somewhere Else in early middle age...