Cartoon Characters & Mascots That Were Cool And Should Be More Prevalent In Today's Society

That title doesn't even really make sense. I just started writing about some cartoon characters and brand mascots and National Ad Council campaign dogs that I liked. I figured I by the end I'd be able to reverse engineer a title that kinda tied them all together, but it never quite came together the way I'd hoped. But I wrote 1300 words so I'm posting it anyways.

Joe Camel

This blog was directly inspired by Kenjac tweeting that picture of some Joe Camel themed glassware he found while straight guy antiquing this weekend. Joe Camel is possibly the coolest, most appealing to children cartoon character/mascot that has ever existed. Before I was corrupted by popular kids, I used to be disappointed in Joe Camel. Well... I was more disappointed that I couldn't participate in what Joe Camel was hawking. I didn't yet have a desire to smoke cigarettes, but I surely would have sucked a dick for a bag of Joe Camel tropical flavored gummies. Or a slice of pizza from Joe Camel's restaurant. Maybe play a Joe Camel video game. Or if somehow Joe Camel could have been the mascot for a local insurance company so that my Pee-Wee baseball team could be sponsored by Joe Camel. Then we'd have gotten sick Joe Camel baseball jerseys and Joe Camel hats. That would have been amazing.

The real shame of it all was by the time I was cool enough to smoke cigarettes, Joe Camel was a thing of the past. I never even got to buy a pack of Turkish Blends while staring down the barrel of Joe Camel's snout on a life-size cardboard cut out at a gas station counter. Our country was promised a lot of cool things coming back when Donald Trump was elected President again. I was hoping that meant some fun little things like Joe Camel making a return. I don't know who we're even kidding with the whole, "We don't market this stuff to kids" shit anymore. I mean, we have Sour Patch Kids flavored nicotine vapes displayed proudly at the front desks of convenience stores. And have you ever seen a single marijuana product packaged in a way that doesn't looks specifically geared towards kids ages 8-12? The tiny little slice of Americana that is Joe Camel should be the least of our concerns. 

McGruff The Crime Dog

As a response to that commercial back in 2018, Coley Mick wrote a blog titled, McGruff The Crime Dog Deserves More Respect From His Contemporaries. I doubt he put more than 10 minutes into it. Nothing about it was especially hilarious. But for some reason it stuck with me. I think about that blog way more than I should. I just love McGruff The Crime Dog. Honestly, if our school's D.A.R.E. program was run by McGruff The Crime Dog instead of whichever one of our town's police officers most recently got a DUI and had some community service hours to work off, I probably never would have picked up a drug in my life.

Otto Rocket

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I've long said, if there were a skatepark in Bowling Green, Ohio at the time I was growing up there, my life would have gone down a drastically different path. And it would have been a direct result of Rocket Power. When I first discovered Rocket Power as a young child, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I legitimately couldn't believe my eyes. "Can Nickelodeon really do this? Is this legal? Surely there must be some sort of FCC regulation that forbids a cartoon from being this fucking cool."

If there was one cartoon character I could have traded lives with… well… it would have been Timmy Turner because he had Fairy Godparents who granted him wishes. But my first wish would have been to trade lives with Otto Rocket. Everything about Otto Rocket rocked. There wasn't an extreme sport he wasn't the best at. He lived in an awesome beach town where him and his pals spent all day doing McTwists and eating Tito's famous fish tacos at the Shore Shack. He had dreadlocks. His dad was named Raimundo. He surfed a hurricane one time. The list goes on forever. They would never make a show like Rocket Power anymore. They'd probably too scared to make a kids show promoting such an epic and dangerous lifestyle. 

Cool Dot (The 7up Dot)

I felt the same way I did about Rocket Power when my dad introduced me to the Cool Dot 7up video game on our old Gateway computer. "It's both a video game AND soda? Is that even allowed?"

Although I always hated that the soft drinks with the coolest ad campaigns were the ones I liked the least. I was never a fan of the clear non-caffeinated citrus drinks. But it was 7up and Sprite who had the best marketing. 7up always had Cool Dot, and the "Make 7, Up Yours" commercials. I didn't even understand why "up yours" was funny, but I wanted this shirt so god damn bad.

Then Sprite always had NBA players and rap concerts. Young me that it was really cool how they incorporated the word "remix" a lot. But the 7up Dot in particular… that was an underrated mascot. So simple, yet so effective.

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Pink Panther

Much like young me was disappointed in the way I couldn't immediately enjoy the fruits of Joe Camel's labor, I always hated how the Pink Panther was out there pushing Owens Corning Fiberglass Insulation. There truly couldn't be a more boring product. I can only imagine how many child deaths the Pink Panther was directly responsible for, because some kid thought that delicious looking bag of pink fluff with the panther's smiling face on it must have been delicious. Hard to see if Pink Panthers fiberglass insulation or Joe Camel's cigarettes were more dangerous to children.

I was also fucking pissed when I learned the classic Pink Panther movie with Audrey Hepburn didn't have the Pink Panther in it at all. That movie poster was the biggest piece of false advertising I've seen in my life.

The Legacy Collection. Shutterstock Images.

Obviously I wasn't around in the 1960's, but even the official trailer was chock-full of panther.

Then you pop in the movie to get nothing more than a few minutes of Pink Panther in the opening credits, and it's nothing but Robert Sellers shitty 1960's comedy for the next 110 minutes. Bullshit. Then when the made the actual Pink Panther cartoon that did feature the real Pink Panther, it kinda stunk. The Pink Panther cartoon character had so much potential to be the focal point of an all-time great TV show or movie, but he was just never quite done justice by his writers. 

ICEE Polar Bear

Luis Santana. Shutterstock Images.

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Any polar bear mascot is a quality mascot. Probably should have gone with the Coca-Cola Polar Bears, but the Coca-Cola Polar Bears are popular enough. I don't see the classic ICEE machines around nearly as much as I used to. The half cherry/half Coke ICEE from a classic polar bear machine in the classic red white and blue polar bear cup with the plastic dome lid and red straw with the little scooper on the end is one of the most refreshing treats to ever exist. But they've been replaced the by shittier, none ICEE brand machines with clear cups (I do like the Mountain Dew ones though, the Mountain Dew ones are good)

Bonus Cartoon Who Wasn't Even Cool at All

Johnny Bravo

He sucked. Ass. Johnny Bravo was an ass sucking cartoon character, and not in the cool way. Cartoon Network thought they could just shove cool guy stereotypes down our throats and we'd eat it up. Maybe some people did, but not me. I saw right through his act. Johnny Bravo was an overcompensating loser who lived with his mom. And he barely even got bitches.