Tuesday on eBay, there were more than a dozen auctions touting pieces of dried bread (and even two pop tarts) with etchings of either Jackson's face or "Not Guilty." The pages drew lots of gawkers. But even with opening bids as low as a penny, serious bidders were in short supply.

So goes Jackson's toast, so goes Jackson's career?

"If you compare the Michael Jackson brand to other products, at the end of the day, what people are looking for is that brand to deliver that product successfully," said Mike Swenson, president of the Kansas City-based public relations firm, Barkley Evergreen & Partners.

"He hasn't really had any success with his [music] business for some time," Swenson said. "It's going to be hard to recover because he doesn't have anything out there."

Nothing, that is, but the same old image problems.

If the jokes about Jackson and his lifestyle didn't go away with his acquittal, then neither did the suspicions. A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll showed 48 percent of respondents disagreed with the not-guilty verdicts. Even one of the jurors who helped set Jackson free said he believes the singer probably has molested children in the past.

Swenson said he likes to advise clients that a reputation is like a savings account.

"[Jackson's] savings account is pretty depleted with the public because he hasn't been putting anything positive out there from a music standpoint, from a business standpoint," he said.

The latest rehabilitation effort has begun, slowly. On Monday, a deadened Jackson appeared to be in no shape to begin anything quite so strenuous as a career makeover. And according to Majestik Magnificent, he wasn't.

The pop singer remained in seclusion Tuesday at his Neverland Ranch. His only public comment on the verdicts has been the "thank you, thank you" voiced in court.

On NBC's Today, defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr. said Jackson has been ailing from being "too nice to too many people."

"He's allowed people to come into his life and run freely through his home, and that's going to change," Mesereau said. "He's not going to make himself vulnerable to this anymore."

In another interview to the Associated Press, Mesereau was even more specific, saying Jackson would no longer share his bed with children who weren't his own. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, who offered spiritual counseling to Jackson during the trial, previously has suggested the singer was ready to change his ways.

But Jackson has been advised more than once to stop inviting children into his Neverland bedroom--for innocent slumber parties, he insists--and more than once he has ignored the advice. On Court TV, juror Ray Hultman, the man who believes Jackson molested other boys, but not the most recent accuser, said he hoped the singer's brush with a potential prison sentence finally would serve as a "wake-up call."

And so go the same old image problems. Even die-hard supporters such as Majestik Magnificent concede the days of Thriller, Jackson's 59 million copy-selling phenomenon, are gone, and that the last 18 months, from arrest to acquittal, were a drain on the star's career.

"When you have this kind of stress on you, he hasn't been able to be creative," Magnificent said.

If Jackson's image problems persist, so does the belief that his talent will be his salvation.

"Michael is going to do what he does best--sing and dance," Magnificent said. "Nobody is like Michael Jackson."

If Team Jackson struts as if its leader belongs on the same stage as Nobel Prize winners and astronauts, its behavior is not without some encouragement. On Monday afternoon, coverage of the trial verdicts was watched by more people--28.1 million--than some Presidential press conferences of the last 10 years, according to Nielsen Media Research. Nearly half of all TVs in use were tuned to the 11 English-language U.S. networks, broadcast and cable, carrying the courtroom finale.

"There's certain people--they're icons," Swenson said. "And icons don't necessarily have to be good."

They don't even have to sell toast.