Which Coca-Cola commercial featured football player “Mean” Joe Greene in 1979?

“Hey Kid, Catch!” was the 1979 Coca-Cola commercial featuring football player “Mean” Joe Greene.

The advertisement shows a young fan waiting outside a stadium and offering Greene his Coca-Cola after the injured and exhausted player leaves the field. Greene drinks it, then tosses the child his jersey while saying, “Hey kid, catch!”

The commercial softened Greene’s intimidating public image by presenting him in a grateful, vulnerable moment. It became one of the best-known sports-themed commercials in American advertising and was later remade in several forms.

The advertisement is sometimes identified simply as the “Mean Joe Greene commercial,” but its formal title is “Hey Kid, Catch!” The line and jersey exchange are central to the commercial’s ending.