Houston Chronicle, February 12, 1998, by  Rose DeWolf
"Viewers vote for their 'choice.' Neighbor in TV coffee 
commercials wins battle for heroine's heart ."
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Could there ever have been any doubt? 

Michael, the nice neighbor who wooed the heroine of TV's 
Taster's Choice commercials for seven long years, has won 
her heart for good . . . just in time for Valentine's Day. 

Andrew, the former husband who showed up in the last few 
commercials making obvious attempts to win his ex back, is 
out of the running. 

This was determined by a vote among viewers of the 
commercials who clipped a coupon from a Taster's Choice 
advertisement. The outcome was reported in Soap Opera 
Digest. 

Last October, after teasingly doling out 13 episodes of the 
saga, Nestle's, maker of Taster's Choice, announced it was 
dropping the ad campaign without actually bringing it to an 
end. 

Instead, the company simply ran an advertisement in selected 
newspapers asking fans to choose which male "will win her 
undying love," adding that Soap Opera Digest would print the 
results. 

Last week, it did. 

Andrew's efforts were in vain, the Digest reported. Thanks 
to "thousands of concerned fans, the lady is back sipping 
coffee with her neighbor." Presumably forever. 

When Terri Johnson, communications manager for Nestle USA 
Beverage Division, announced there would be no more episodes 
in the long-running saga, she didn't say: The ads aren't 
selling the product anymore. But Food & Beverage Marketing 
magazine says coffee sales are down and several Taster's 
Choice varieties are way down. 

Johnson merely said Nestle wants to introduce a "fresh, new 
ad campaign." 

(Possibly one in which the ad agency can figure out an 
ending.) 

The mini-soap opera began in 1990 when the never-named woman 
borrows some Taster's Choice from a good-looking neighbor. 

Although Taster's Choice is an instant, their romance was 
anything but. It heated up very slowly in 45-second 
installments. 

In their early years, the commercials, created by the 
McCann-Erickson agency, ranked among the 10 most popular on 
TV and were parodied on Saturday Night Live and Coach. 

Sharon Maughan, who played the woman, and Anthony Head, who 
played neighbor Michael, are British stage performers who 
had played similar romantic parts in TV commercials for Gold 
Blend coffee, a Nestle's brand sold in Great Britain. 

Head has since been been cast in the role of Rupert Giles, 
Buffy's mentor, in the TV series Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. 

Trevor Eve, also British, played the ex-husband. He had a 
much heftier role in a two-part drama called The 
Politician's Wife, which was aired by Masterpiece Theater in 
1996. 

In that, he also played a husband. He was the politician of 
the title who is caught in bed with a call girl. 


Photo: Sharon Maughan plays the woman in the Taster's Choice 
TV commercial and Anthony Head plays the neighbor, Michael 



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