The ‘utterly butterly’ connection between Amul and Tharoor family

Everyone wanted to know who the always-cheeky Amul baby girls that were once displayed in the majority of print and TV. The identity of that yesteryear popular baby was a mystery until Shashi Tharoor revealed some interesting details about it.

Shashi Tharoor said that his family’s association with the Amul brand is intensely personal.

The story goes like this: Way back in 1961, Amul’s advertising agency, ASP (Advertising &Sales Promotion Ltd), was looking for a baby to front their milk powder in a first-of-its-kind ad campaign. After 712 babies were photographed, the ASP’s creative head Sylvester da Cunha had some other plans in his mind.

“Sylvester da Cunha, asked my father, his friend at (and Secretary of) the Advertising Club of Bombay: “you have a baby too, don’t you? Mind if you show me a picture?” My father did, and the rest is history: my sister Shobha became the first ever Amul baby. ASP recorded her selection in an ad in the trade press”, Mr Tharoor said.

Thus Shobha Tharoor became the first Amul baby.

History was to repeat itself a year later when Amul and ASP decided they needed a colour picture for their next ad campaign – by which time Shobha, of course, was too old to pose for one. But her sister Smita had been born, and this time, Shashi Tharoor’s younger sister became the first- ever colour Amul baby.

The Amul ads were not just published in newspapers, but printed as posters and displayed in groceries across the country.

Fast forward to thirty years Smita was startled to discover a picture of her baby face still displayed on the wall of a rural provision shop in some dusty forgotten corner of the country.

Interestingly Shashi Tharoor also got his space in the ads as well. “Except these were not glowing pictures of my chubby cheeks, but cartoons lampooning me, as Amul so inimitably does to those of our nation’s public figures who might be tempted to take themselves too seriously.”

The cartoon ads take up a topical subject from the news, draw them brilliantly, and accompany them with a tongue-in-cheek caption, usually involving a pun.

Mr Tharoor said, “My late father would have loved to see his son having gentle fun poking at him in a prominent hoarding on his favourite Marine Drive. He would have been happy that I had finally caught up with my sisters.”