Spuds MacKenzie
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Spuds MacKenzie was the marketing dog of the year in 1987 when he first showed up in a Bud Light Beer Super Bowl ad. By the end of the game, Spuds was a marketing success.
The sly ladies-dog (a Bull Terrier) existed not without his share of controversy. Shortly after Spuds' sensational rise to fame it was learned that "he" was actually a "she" (similar to Lassie, Benji, and many other show-biz dogs). The "controversy" was spread through the media. At one point Budweiser employees concealed "Spuds" from cameras, so as to hide her female genitals while she urinated.
It also inspired a satire in the comic strip Bloom County, in which Spuds ran for president in a race that also included Bill The Cat. After drunk driving, crashing into Mother Theresa's car, being rumored to have impregnated Benji, and revealing to Opus the Penguin her true gender, Spuds reveals that another supposedly male anthropomorphic animal in Bloom County is also female. After widespread hysteria and the eventual suspecting of Bill the Cat, Portnoy, Hodge-Podge and Opus, it was revealed that Rosebud the Basselope was actually female.
Because of the popularity of the ads, they were the subject of attacks and calls for censorship by temperance oriented groups. In 1989, the Center for Science in the Public Interest along with Mothers Against Drunk Driving, charged that Anheuser-Busch was pitching the too-cool-for-monogamy-and-sobriety dog to children. Although the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found no evidence to support that allegation, the ads were dropped.
Honey Tree Evil Eye (Spuds' real name) died of kidney failure on May 31, 1993 in North Riverside, Illinois at age 10. An untrue urban legend had Spuds dying of electrocution while filming a commercial.
The character Slurms MacKenzie ("The Original Party Worm") from the television series Futurama is a parody of Spuds, as is Santa's Little Helper's stint as "Suds McDuff" on The Simpsons.
On an episode of Family Guy while at a spring break celebration one unknown character sees a Bull Terrier which he replies to and says, "Hey look, it's Spuds MacKenzie" for which the dog attacks him.
