With a Sense of Humor, Mr. Submarine Celebrates 50 Years with 50 Videos Spotlighting Prominent Chicagoans and Infamous Commercials

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Chicago has been the birthplace of ad campaigns both famous and infamous. Tony the Tiger, the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Charlie the Tuna were all dreamed up here – as was the hilariously hokey Eagleman of Eagle Insurance. Chicagoans created the swaggering Marlboro Man to endorse cigarettes; Mr. Submarine got then-emerging Chicago Bulls star Scottie Pippen to appear in an awkward, innuendo-heavy commercial for their sandwiches. 

As Mr. Submarine celebrates 50 years in business, the local chain is honoring their tradition of low-budget commercials with 50 new videos that parody their own and other Chicago commercials, including Eagleman and a remake of that Scottie Pippen spot. Prominent Chicagoans also show up, from White Sox manager and shortstop Ozzie Guillén to film critic Richard Roeper, former athletes Jason Kipnis and Tom Waddle to media personalities Mark Giangreco and Eddie Volkman of radio’s Eddie and JoBo. Advertising royalty even appears in the form of Howard Ankin, the personal injury lawyer whose face is plastered all over CTA stations and vehicles. 

“It wasn’t my idea,” says Dan Tzoumas, the second generation to run Mr. Submarine, with a laugh. “It’s a very ambitious idea and I loved the sound of it, but I’m not crazy to suggest, on the budget that we have, to go out and film 50 commercials.” 

An acquaintance connected him with the Chicago-based ad agency Quality Meats (even more serendipitous for the Mr. Submarine commercials than that name is the name of their production side, Sandwiches). Founders Gordy Sang and Brian Siedband were immediately onboard and pitched 50 commercials for 50 years. 

“Of course I had to reiterate what my budget was,” Tzoumas says. But they still wanted to do it.

“Because we’re dumb,” says Sang. He and Siedband grew up on the North Shore, and “Chicago is just near and dear to our hearts. Things that are authentically Chicago, and have a rich tradition of having deep roots there, have always been important to us.” Their very first project as Quality Meats was a parody of corporate expressions of care during the pandemic, made for The Wiener’s Circle.

Mr. Submarine was founded by Tzoumas’ father Gus in 1975 in a would-be Chicago icon that failed to stand the test of time: Bolingbrook’s massive shopping mall and indoor amusement park Old Chicago, which closed in 1980 after just five years. (Maybe it just needed better advertising.) By then Tzoumas and his brother-in-law had opened a few more shops on the Southwest Side of Chicago, around the same time that Potbelly's was also founded in Chicago and a few years before Jimmy John's started operating in central Illinois. Tzoumas had immigrated to Chicago from Greece and grown up working at the Berwyn restaurant of his parents. 

Dan Tzoumas – who is younger than Mr. Submarine – also grew up working in his father’s restaurants. Gus Tzoumas started franchising them, and there were over 30 locations at its peak in the 1990s. There are 20 across the Chicago area today, even if the Loop location at 18 W. Jackson – once called the “ugliest of the ugly Loop buildings” by the Chicago Tribune – no longer exists. They still serve Chicago specialties like gyros, gym shoes, pizza puffs, hot dogs, Italian beefs, and sandwiches on locally baked Turano bread. (The similarity of “Turano” to “Toronto” is the subject of one of the new commercials.) 

Mr. Submarine’s commercials have remained an object of fascination both national and local, with the Scottie Pippen one appearing on Jimmy Kimmel and a 1991 story in the small Berwyn Life newspaper chronicling the making of a courtroom-themed spot written by the attorney for Mr. Submarine – who also happened to be the attorney for the Berwyn Health Department. 

Dan recalls his dad coming home with a basketball signed by Michael Jordan when he made the Pippen commercial – and being disappointed that Jordan wasn’t available. “My dad’s story was that McDonald’s had already secured him,” he says.

The Quality Meats team revisited three other vintage Mr. Submarine ads, using AI to check in on where the characters in them are now. Each commercial is punctuated with a punchline delivered to the tune of the original Mr. Submarine jingle, sung by local musician John Merikoski. Quality Meats also reached out to other local businesses with indelible jingles such as United Auto Insurance and The Bedding Experts and got permission to use them.

As for probably any Chicagoan over the age of twenty, those jingles are “just burned into my brain,” Tzoumas says. “I can’t not hum along or sing those songs.”

Quality Meats even acquired some original costumes, like the Eagleman one. “A lot of them were confused,” Sang says of the companies they approached. 

The commercials were directed by Chicago native and Second City alum Brad Morris, and the actors who appear in them are current or former Second City members. They were filmed at the Downers Grove location of Mr. Submarine. 

“The idea was simple,” says Siedband. “They’re celebrating 50 years, so let’s take on the highly ambitious and delusional undertaking with the budget that we had of trying to make 50 commercials.” 

If they’re lucky, maybe some will live on in ad history – whether famously or infamously remains to be seen.

On Monday, November 10, all Mr. Submarine locations will celebrate 50 years by offering a classic Italian sub for 99¢ with a coupon, which is available to pick up in-store through Monday.