Spuds MacKenzie ("The Original Party Animal"[1]) is a fictionalbull terrier dog character used for an extensive advertising campaign marketingBud Light beer in the late 1980s. The Spuds MacKenziemascot and campaign was the idea of a 23-year-old art director, Jon Moore. At the time, he was working at Needham, Harper, and Steers, aChicago advertising agency. The dog first showed up in a Bud LightSuper Bowl XXI ad in 1987.[2][3]
The dog was portrayed by a female bull terrier namedHoney Tree Evil Eye,[4] or Evie for short. Evie was fromWoodstock, Illinois, and lived inNorth Riverside, Illinois, with her owner's family, where she died in 1993.[5] Anheuser-Busch sponsored many dogs from the kennel inIllinois where Evie was born.[6]
The Spuds McKenzie ad campaign was not without its share ofcontroversy. Shortly after Spuds' rise to fame, it was learned that the dog, portrayed as male in the ads, was actually female.[6] Politicians and advocacy groups criticized the ads for promoting consumption of alcohol by children. Soon after the ads first aired in 1987, SenatorStrom Thurmond began his own media campaign, claiming that the beer maker was using Spuds to appeal to children in order to get them interested in their product at an early age.[7] By Christmas 1987, more legal action resulted from Bud Light's use of ads featuring Spuds dressed as Santa.[8] Advertisements for alcohol beverages cannot reference Santa Claus in states such as Ohio.[9]
In 1989, theCenter for Science in the Public Interest, along withMothers Against Drunk Driving, alleged that Anheuser-Busch was pitching the dog to children. Although theFederal Trade Commission found no evidence to support that allegation, Anheuser-Busch decided to retire Spuds in 1989, claiming that the character's image had started to overshadow the product.
In 2017, the character appeared in Bud Light'sSuper Bowl LI advertisement as a ghost who helps a man named Brian reunite with his friends; the ad was an homage toCharles Dickens'A Christmas Carol. The house number in this advertisement's last segment is 1989, the year Spuds was retired.[10]
