Brown Cows and Hush Puppies

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The dapper Mr. Treadwell Sloan helped you make your tile selection with “good taste.” Big Red flexed his powerful muscles. Examples of how ad characters could represent a selling point of the product or service. Other companies simply anthropomorphized their product giving them human features. Staple-Master not only transformed their stapler into a human but a race horse as well!.

Mechanical men were a popular type of ad character in the ’40 and ’50s, often straight from the business owner’s imagination to the artist’s drawing board. As products such as watches and appliances became more complex companies gravitated toward the robot as a symbol of accuracy, strength and reliability.

They don’t make pet food labels like this anymore. Piggy Snax is frying up some pork rinds — a bit unsettling when you think about it, but not uncommon in the world of brand mascots of the time. Chickens holding buckets of drum sticks and pigs promoting bacon were the norm.

From the late ’50s on, most beverages promoted for kids had their own brand mascot. Brown cows for chocolate drinks, pink bunnies for strawberry powder mixes and zebras with different colored stripes to match a multitude of flavors. Cocoa Marsh promoted their drink’s purported health benefits with a powerful lion.

There was a time in the United States when cap-wearing servicemen filled your gas, changed your tires, and checked your spark plugs. Brand mascots for gasoline stations and automobile service parts were plentiful and delightful.

By the ’60s and ’70s you can see the colorful influence of cartoon animation art. Happy-faced fruits and a delightful tropical-themed soda can grace this spread. These are some of my favorite images from Mr. Product.

The ’60s and ’70s influenced the look of many characters. The weird but wonderful Dunkin’ Munchkins embraced the iconography of “Flower Power” as did Pizza Hut’s Pizza Pete.

Current events such as the 1960’s Space Race sent previously Earth-bound characters like the Hush Puppies Bassett Hound skyward. Levi’s produced this bizarre poster that no doubt hung in many college dorm rooms.

The Campbell’s Kids first appeared in 1904. Yet here they are in a trippy 1968 poster––half Peter Max and half Andy Warhol style––looking very groovy. A great example of how brand mascots can be modernized with the times.

All images and captions  © Warren Dotz 2015. Images are from Meet Mr. Product: The Graphic Art of the Advertising Character and Mr. Product: The Graphic Art of Advertising’s Magnificent Mascots (1960–1985)