<P> In 1996, Quaker Oats commissioned director Rick Schulze, of Industrial Light & Magic Commercial Productions, to digitally composite a bottle of Snapple, then a subsidiary of Quaker Oats, into the original Life ad, via longtime Snapple ad agency Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, New York . This time, however, in an ironic twist, Mikey likes some of the product's flavors while disliking the others . </P> <P> Life's ad agency, Foote, Cone & Belding in Chicago, revived the Mikey character for two campaigns in the late 1990s . In 1997, Quaker Oats initiated a nationwide search for the "next Mikey", settling on 4 - year - old Marli Hughes out of more than 35,000 applicants . She also appeared in a TV commercial, "Better Life" directed by Howard Rose, where she is seen telling her classmates how she won the contest and traveled to New York to do some TV shows . She adds that as the new Mikey she gets to eat as much Life cereal as she wants . </P> <P> In 1999, Quaker Oats remade the commercial word for word with an all - adult cast acting like kids . Mikey is portrayed by New York - based actor Jimmy Starace . </P> <P> A few years after the original commercial appeared, an urban legend spread that the actor who had played Little Mikey had died after eating an unexpectedly lethal combination of Pop Rocks (a type of carbonated hard candy) and a carbonated soft drink, which caused his stomach to inflate with carbon dioxide . A MythBusters exploration of the legend in detail debunked the story, adding that the show had tried to contact Gilchrist, but he did not return their calls . The legend is not true; Gilchrist is a director of media sales at New York's MSG Network . The human stomach is too elastic to rupture or explode from consuming such excesses of carbonated foods or beverages . </P>

Give it to mikey he will eat it