Wiki wiki dollar was a giveaway promotion in the United States from the Chevrongasoline company during the 1960s. The advertising campaign featured a Wiki wiki girl, played by dancer Irene Tsu, dressed in a grass skirt and performing a hula while standing on a gasoline pump.[1]
Irene Tsu
The National Petroleum News noted it was one of the many promotional gimmicks attempted by gasoline companies in the 1960s and described it as part of "a late Sixties West Coast duel" between Chevron and Shell:
Chevron paid game players "Wiki Wiki Dollars" of $1 to $2,500 for matching segments of game pieces and offered more than $2,300,000 in prizes as part of a "hula" bingo game.[2]
In the San Francisco Express Times in 1969, editor Marvin Garson denounced the campaign as part of an article on Standard Oil, the corporate predecessor of Chevron. He wrote:
Standard debauches the public taste with its garish $2,300,000 hula-hula Wiki Wiki Dollar giveaway. Standard strangles the beauty of the American road.[3]
Further reading
The Star Trek: The Episode Guide stated that Irene Tsu, "was the TV spokeswoman for "Chevron Island" Standard Oil."[4]
A 2005 Fragile Industriesblog entry read, "I found the debate when I Googled Wiki Wiki Girl (no quotes, shoulda had 'em) to see if anyone remembers that phrase. In the late '60's or early '70's, Chevron had an advertising campaign with the "Wiki Wiki Girl"—a gorgeous pseudo-Polynesian woman in a grass skirt hula-ing her butt off on top of a gas pump. There may have been a contest involved. I remember it only because 10 years later, I had my first full-time job working for the Wiki Wiki Girl herself, Irene Tsu, former dancer and now fashion designer. I got the job because I knew her husband, photographer/director Ivan Nagy. (Pronounced Yvonne Nazhh, not that it matters.)"[5]
^Lawrence, Donna. "If gimmicks sell 'gas' and anything goes ...." National Petroleum News, vol. 76, Feb. 1984, p. 100
^Goodman, Mitchell (1971). The movement toward a new America: the beginnings of a long revolution; (a collage)--a what? ... Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press. p. 531. ISBN0-394-70944-6. OCLC253767.
^"Irene Tsu". stvoy.epguides.info. Star Trek: The Episode Guide. 2006. Archived from the original on February 24, 2007.
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