"Oh no, Mrs. Burke! I thought you were Dale!" is part of the dialogue featured in a 1968 through 1970 Post Grape-Nuts cereal television commercial advertising campaign in the United States. This phrase long endured in pop culture media, well after the commercial disappeared from the television screen. Variations of, and direct references to, this catchy dialogue continued to appear in other media as long as two decades after the ad campaign had expired. 1968 (MCMLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Monday (the link is to a full 1968 calendar). ... 1970 (MCMLXX) was a common year starting on Thursday. ... Grape-Nuts is a breakfast cereal developed by C. W. Post in 1897. ... Cereal crops are mostly grasses cultivated for their edible seeds (actually a fruit called a caryopsis). ... A television commercial (often called an advert in the United Kingdom) is a form of advertising in which goods, services, organizations, ideas, etc. ... Generally speaking, advertising is the promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, usually by an identified sponsor. ... Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (peoples) culture that prevails in a modern society. ...

In this commercial, a young man in a backyard swimming pool mistakes his girlfriend's mother for her daughter, and he exclaims, "Oh no, Mrs. Burke! I thought you...you were Dale!"

The 30 second commercial spot[1] that includes this line first aired on television across the U.S. on July 19, 1968. It ran in prime-time slots with a number of popular TV series. A 10 second spot, edited down from the full length ad, also ran during this period. Two print ads associated with this campaign appeared in issues of LIFE magazine. Prime time is the block of programming on television during the middle of the evening. ... This article does not cite its references or sources. ... A cover of Life Magazine from 1911 Life has been the name of two notable magazines published in the United States. ...

The enduring place of this phrase in pop culture history is evidenced in the many spoofs, skits, and jokes spawned by the commercial, covering 2 decades and appearing in a wide range of comedy variety shows and movies, newspapers, magazines, and literature. Comedy is the use of humor in the form of theater, where it simply referred to a play with a happy ending, in contrast to a tragedy. ... Film refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed. ... A collection of magazines A magazine is a periodical publication containing a variety of articles, generally financed by advertising and/or purchase by readers. ... Literature is literally acquaintance with letters as in the first sense given in the Oxford English Dictionary (from the Latin littera meaning an individual written character (letter)). The term has generally come to identify a collection of texts, mainly novels, drama and poetry. ...

Five single-panel cartoon gags were syndicated: one in MAD and two in Playboy magazines. Comic-strip artist Bil Keane, penned two panels. The first line of an Erma Bombeck book references it. Four or more television comedy/variety shows did skits and jokes about this ad in the early '70s, such as The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Carol Burnett Show, and Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. A sketch based on it appears in 1977's Kentucky Fried Movie, and over a dozen “riffs” on the commercial's dialogue feature in the long-running '80s and '90s television comedy series, Mystery Science Theater 3000. Harvey Kurtzmans cover for the first issue of the comic book Mad Mad is an American humor magazine founded by publisher William Gaines and editor Harvey Kurtzman in 1952. ... Classic Playboy logo. ... Bil Keane (1922- ) is an American cartoonist best known for his work on the long-running strip The Family Circus, which began its run in 1960 and is still going strong. ... Erma Louise (Harris) Bombeck (February 21, 1927 - April 22, 1996) was an American humorist who achieved great popularity for a newspaper column that depicted suburban home life in the second half of the 20th century. ... The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was the full name of NBCs The Tonight Show during the years that Johnny Carson hosted from 1962 to 1992. ... The Carol Burnett Show was a sketch comedy television show starring Carol Burnett, Tim Conway, Harvey Korman, Vicki Lawrence, and Lyle Waggoner. ... Rowan & Martins Laugh-In was a United States comedy television show broadcast from January 22, 1968 through 1973 over the NBC network. ... The Kentucky Fried Movie is an American comedy film, released in 1977. ... Movie theater view, featuring the short film Hired!. Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1988–1999), usually abbreviated MST3K, is a cult television comedy series created by Joel Hodgson featuring a man and his robot sidekicks who are trapped on a satellite in space and forced to watch particularly bad movies. ...

The Benton & Bowles, Inc. ad campaign, which included a number of individual television commercials featuring "mother/daughter look-alikes", employed real people, rather than professional actors, to impress upon consumers the idea that a mother may remain as healthy and young-looking as her teenage daughter "with exercise...and Post Grape-Nuts for breakfast."

During this era, similar TV ad campaigns for other products also utilized the mother/daughter mistaken identity theme. One was the campaign for Ivory-brand dishwashing liquid, in which the hands of moms who washed dishes using the product were mistaken for the "young-looking" hands of their daughters. The term dishwashing is used for cleaning, eating and cooking utensils, not just dishes. ...