“Sorry, Charlie” Comes from Starkist’s Charlie the Tuna Commercials

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Noelle calling from Jericho, Vermont.

Hello, Noelle. Welcome to the show.

So I am calling with a funny question about the expression, sorry, Charlie. We used to say it to my son a lot, and it started out as a funny thing and then turned into a nickname, and now we actually call him Charlie. And I was just wondering where that may have originated from.

So now it’s a nickname for your child?

Yes. So Charlie was actually born with the name Mia. And as the years went on, Charlie expressed feelings about being a male and not a female.

Okay.

And so when we started to kind of make those changes, Mia wasn’t a very fitting name for a male. And so we had been saying sorry, Charlie, to him so much that we just started calling him Charlie.

How nice is that?

Oh, wow. What kind of context would you say that in?

Sorry, Charlie.

Oh, just, you know, in the simple, like, no, sorry, you can’t do that, or sorry, you can’t have that fifth cookie. Sorry, Charlie. -huh, -huh.

And Charlie was born in what year?

2008.

Okay. So he was eight years old.

Oh, gosh, relatively recent. I’m sure that lots and lots of our listeners are thinking back to an old commercial for Star Kissed Tuna right now.

Oh, okay. Did you ever see these commercials for Star Kissed Tuna that had Charlie the Tuna in them?

I didn’t, but when I mentioned this whole thing to my mom, she brought that up.

Yeah. I just wanted to kind of wait and hear what you guys had to say. I’m 31, so I don’t know if that commercial was before my time.

Not completely, but maybe mostly. Yeah, they started back in 1961, and they were these animated commercials featuring this tuna named Charlie. And he was sort of what you might describe as a hipster. He had these cool clunky glasses. A beatnik, maybe, for the era.

Yeah, a beatnik. The beret, I remember.

A beret on a fish.

It was a Greek fisherman’s hat. It was a Greek fisherman’s hat. He was stylish, chunky glasses. He thought that he was really cool, and he thought that he had really good taste. But the thing was that Starkist Tuna was looking for tuna that tasted good.

Yeah, that was the line, right? The announcer always said, sorry, Charlie.

Yeah, and there were many, many, many, I think about 80 versions of these commercials that would run over the years. And every single time in the commercial, he would be full of hope going toward a hook, hoping that he would be caught and used by the Starkist Tuna Company, which is sort of weird.

You know, that reminds me of all those restaurants you see with happy cows outside that serve steak or happy chickens. That was his fondest dream. And he just never, never got it. And a little sign would come down.

You can see these.

On the hook, right?

Yeah, on the hook. Go to the Star Kiss Tuna website because they have a whole history on Charlie because they’re very proud of him. And he’s still their mascot. He sold lots and lots and lots of tuna that way.

Yeah, he’s still their mascot, although I think they’ve dropped that kind of commercial.

Yeah. And his voice was very distinctive. It was like Charlie.

Like a New Yorker, Brooklyn.

Yeah, it was Herschel Bernardi, who was the star of the TV show Arnie for many years. People may remember that as well.

Sorry, Charlie. Starkist doesn’t want tuna with good taste, but tuna that tastes good. That was the line.

That’s so great. Well, thank you guys so much. I really had fun with that.

Yeah, sure. That’s great. Thanks a lot. Thanks for sharing his famous story, too.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Thanks, guys.

Bye.

877-929-9673.