Lucky Vanous: The Diet Coke Guy

Like Scott Madsen, the Soloflex Guy , and Clara Pelter, who asked "Where's the beef?", Lucky Vanous became famous in an instant.  Though the Nebraska native had been modeling and studying acting for several years, he became the talk of the town through a series of heterosexist commercials for Diet Coke: some female office workers gaze through the window at the construction site next door, where lean, muscular Lucky goes on his break, rips his shirt off, and opens a can of Diet Coke.  They become more and more aroused as he drinks.

He was not a bodybuilder, but he was lean, muscular, and hirsute, a perfect New Sensitive Man even without saying "I know how you feel."

Lucky's exercise book and video, aimed at a female audience (The Ultimate Fat-Burning Workout) appeared in a few months.  In May 1994 he took off his shirt on tv sitcom Wings.  He was a presenter at the Clio Awards (for excellence in advertising).  In December was profiled in Playgirl.

A couple of movie roles followed, plus some tv: the evening soap opera Pacific Palisades (1997), guest spots on Pensacola: Wings of Gold and Will and Grace, and finally 18 Wheels of Justice (2000-2001), about a federal agent turned trucker who helps people with their problems.

Although in real life Lucky was always gracious to his gay fans, his stage persona maintained the heterosexist "every woman's fantasy" myth, insisting that all women but no men wanted to see him with his shirt off.  So the shirt came off when the audience was mostly women, but stayed on when it was mostly men.  This promo for 18 Wheels of Justice gives you the general idea.

In 2016, mega-hunk Brock O'Hurn starred in a homage to the commercial for Icelandic Water.  Only this time there was some gay inclusivity.

See also: Brock C*ck, Part 1: From the God Squad to the Immortal Kane, with bonus Daryl McCormack and James Duval

Scott Madsen: The Soloflex Guy

Jason Bradley Jacobs: From a cowboy cruising in the shower to a cartoon Kentucky Adonis to...well, isn't that enough?

The Sonic Drive-In Guys Are Saving a Gay Kid's Life

The Coca Cola Kid

I don't drink anything alcoholic,  I hate tea, lemon-lime sodas make me gag, and orange juice is for sick people. My only beverages are water and Diet Coke.

Two or three 12-ounce cans or one 20-ounce bottle per day.

That doesn't strike me as much.  But:

1. Every time I am invited to dinner at someone's house, I have to bring my own.  Nobody else that I know drinks it.

2. Every person I have ever met, without exception, has informed me that I shouldn't drink it because aspertame causes cancer in lab rats. Usually they say this the first time they see me with a can.  I always say "Really?  I had no idea!  This is the first time I've ever been told this -- today!"

By the way, that's an urban legend.  Aspertame does nothing to lab rats, or to humans.  Your stomach breaks it down into aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol, which we consume all the time in organic foods such as meat and milk.

Those friends who are a little less intolerant concerning my vice think that Coca-Cola memorabilia would make a good birthday or Christmas present.

The problem is, Coke advertising overwhelmingly features attractive young ladies, trying to draw in straight men with the promise that "If you drink Coke, you'll get laid."

The only time you see guys alone are in humorous ads.  Or creepy ones.  The psychotic Sprite Boy was introduced in 1941 to force people to use the four-syllable "Coca-Cola" instead of their preferred "Coke."

Or in some of the bonding ads of the 1970s, with people of various races holding hands on hilltops and singing "I'd like to buy the world a Coke."  Here they're alternating black and white to demonstrate that Coke is "the real thing."

But their knees are touching, anyway.

This ad from the 1940s shows a father and his wife and son, or maybe his daughter and son (who has a target on his muscle shirt).  As they raise bottles to their frozen plastic faces, we are told that Coke is "a family affair."

Even this series of tv commercials from the 1990s, featuring Lucky Vanous ripping off his shirt to chug Diet Coke, puts him in the sight of the lustful ladies gazing from the office next door.

But during the Super Bowl, Coke broadcast a new commercial showing people of various races and religions engaging in wholesome activities while drinking Coke.  Among them were gay dads teaching their daughter to bowl.



See also: Lucky Vanous, the Diet Coke Guy.