Creature Features
I’ve been watching cartoons since I was a kid, so it pleases me whenever I see a product using a cartoon animal as a marketing icon. But suddenly they’re everywhere!
Geckos, Lizards, beagles, geese, monkeys, turtles, rabbits, cheetahs, horses, teddy bears, creepy stacks of money with eyeballs, robots, ostriches and rhinos; all of these have been featured in TV spots recently, some of them realistic, most of them goofy. ALL of them instantly compelling, because the message is being delivered by something fuzzy. Or weird. Or both.
But why does it seem that there’s a sudden proliferation of these characters? Did we suddenly rediscover the charm of little animals?
Advertisers have been using goofy characters forever, starting with Hearst newspaper’s Yellow Kid in the late 1800’s, 
to Mickey Mouse in the ’20’s, Smokey the Bear in the ’40’s and Yogi Bear kicking off the craze in the 1960’s. 
