What has to be said about Spuds MacKenzie is that I never bought him as even half the party animal his ads purported him to be, in that he never exhibited a huge amount of personality, period. A bull terrier dressed in shades and a Hawaiian shirt and with bunch of human groupies trailing him around will get you a few chintzy images but does not in itself a charismatic mascot make. If not for the weird zoophilic undertones that pervaded his ads through those legions of adoring Spudettes, I doubt that the Spuds campaign would have had much in the way of character at all. Tom, on the other hand, truly was a creature of the night - he was wild, mean and a little bit cutthroat. And goddamn, that feline could dance.
The "Tomcat" campaign, which got its start in 2001, incorporated many of the same elements of Bud Light's Spuds campaign (in that both were housepets whose insatiable lust for the high life made them immensely popular with the ladies) but in a manner that seemed like a dark mirror image of the bull terrier's bright and luxurious world. Whereas with Spuds, the central joke pivoted on the fact that nobody within the ads ever acknowledged that the object of their admirations was just a dog dolled up in people clothing (it was kind of like Animaniacs' Chicken Boo in that regard), "Tomcat" embraced the animalistic nature of its star and, instead of dragging the cat into the human world, attempted to play his human cohorts as an extension of that. Louis Creed, the protagonist of Stephen King's Pet Sematary, made the observation that, "Cats were the gangsters of the animal world, living outside the law and often dying there," and that's something you certainly get a flavour of in Bacardi Breezer's campaign, with its dark, sleazy and slightly dangerous milieu. Tom had a bit of a narrative going, living a prosaic life as the docile companion to a benign old lady during the diurnal hours, but come the night and he was transformed into a raving beast. Classic cat duality, only in place of butchering garden wildlife and leaving their innards sprawled across his owner's doorstep, Tom went out in pursuit of an altogether different kind of thrill.
The campaign offered a witty immersion into the Jekyll and Hyde-isms of not merely our feline friends, but also the human nightcrawlers who allow their ferociousness to hang out in full force in the wee hours, suggesting, in a manner not too dissimilar to the original Clive the Schweppes Leopard commercial, that the real wilderness is to be located right there upon the sticky barroom floor. Tom's world felt alive and exhilarating but distinctively off-kilter, as if the exuberance could give way to savagery at any moment. Various installments featuring Tom's nocturnal adventures trickled out across the following two years, including one ad spoofing the infamous music video to "Smack My Bitch Up" by UK rave group The Prodigy, and another containing the obligatory (for the time) parody of The Matrix. Tom was very much the alpha male of his nightly territory, and it wasn't wise to challenge him, as one opportunistic dog lover learned the hard way when Tom dunked a live goldfish in his tonic water. But despite being such a partying pro, Tom was not entirely invincible and the ads would also give us intermittent glimpses into the consequences of his crapulent lifestyle. The original ad concludes with Tom stumbling through the catflap at dawn in a visibly hungover state, while another has his owner calling in a vet to examine Tom's dancefloor-induced lethargy. Each of these closed with a punchline delivered by Tom's nonplussed owner, who unwittingly alluded to the cat's philandering nature when she asked him if he'd been out chasing birds, or if the love mark on his paw had been left by a fox ("bird" and "fox" both being notable slang terms), followed by a nightmare-fueling close-up shot of Tom making some kind of lurid facial expression at the camera.
If Tom strikes you as eerily familiar-looking, then odds are that you know him as Monty The Mouth, the garrulous, Steve Zahn-voiced chum of Snowbell the Persian in the Stuart Little films. Tom was portrayed by a threesome of felines, Merlin, Magoo and Murphy, at least two of whom also played Monty in the 2002 sequel Stuart Little 2 (this Guardian article implies that all three cats shared acting duties in Stuart Little 2, although this American Humane Association commentary only mentions Merlin and Magoo). Regrettably, I have not uncovered any confirmation that any of these cats portrayed Monty in the original Stuart Little film from 1999.
Tom's campaign was weird and intense, but reasonably short-lived (albeit no more so than Spuds MacKenzie's), with Tom receiving his last hurrah in 2003. The final ad took an unexpectedly harrowing turn, in having Tom cross the road to get to his nightly hang-out, only to walk directly into the path of an oncoming vehicle. Was Tom, who had lived outside the law for so long, about to meet the kind of unceremonious fate prophesied by Louis Creed? It looked awfully grim for a few terrifying moments, as Tom's entire life flashed before his eyes, including several replays of clips from previous installments. Thankfully, the car managed to stop mere inches from Tom, and and the cat lived to wriggle his tush for yet another boogie night. The ad ended with him assuming the car's passenger seat and riding off triumphantly into the twilight. Except that it's 2019, and odds are that Merlin, Magoo and Murphy have by now all gone the way of Sassy The Hang In There Baby Kitten. That's kind of a downer.
Although I've compared Spuds MacKenzie unfavourably to Tom at several points throughout this piece, what also has to be said about Spuds is that enough people do still remember him. The vapidity of his campaign notwithstanding, he nestled his way into the cozy bosom of nostalgia, meaning that you'll get the occasional nod in popular culture or official throwback ad. Tom I can't say I've heard much mention of since his own campaign wrapped. He partied hard but left little trace outside of the wonderful body of ads that are currently up for scavenging on online media sites. But then Spuds' a dog and Tom's a cat, and perhaps it's only fitting that the latter should have exited our lives as furtively he wandered in, an elusive spirit who had his fun and then slunk off into the night as soon as he was done. Whatever became of Tom? Who knows; he was never our beast to tether down.
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