The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #37: Labatt Blue Bear (C-A-N-A-D-EH?)

The Labatt Blue Bear is yet another entry in the curiously prolific subgenre of Horrifying Advertising Animals who were actually humans in moth-eaten bear costumes, following in the footsteps of George the Hofmeister Bear and the Sun Country Polar Bear. Gracing television screens in the late 1990s, and on into the first years of the brave new millennium, here was yet another freak of nature, always hot on the trail of the latest beanfeast, to guide us through uncertain times. The premise behind the Labatt Blue Bear (if he had an actual name, I've never heard it) was that he'd wandered into the United States from the backwoods of Canada, and now spent his days hanging around sushi bars, golf courses, private parties and an assortment of other hip and happenin' venues, staying in touch with his Canadian roots through the endorsement of its imported lagers. Wherever he roamed, the bear was never far from a bottle of Labatt Blue, which was used as a shorthand for his national identity. Whatever the scrapes in which he found himself, the bear usually came through on the back of his Canuck charms and Blue ammunition, but this wasn't a guarantee - in one spot, for example, the bear is unable to persuade a convenience store clerk that he is of legal drinking age.

Although the basic concept of a bipedal bear who'd abandoned the wilds and assimilated himself into civilised culture through an allegiance to its lagers sounds immediately reminiscent of George, tonally this campaign feels closer in spirit to Spuds McKenzie, in that much of it hinges on the sheer absurdity of the various humans the hero encounters somehow not processing or commenting on the fact that there's this beer-swilling bear walking among them. Also like Spud, the bear's knack for beguiling the ladies gave the campaign frequent and inevitable undertones of there being bestiality at play. There was one critical difference, however - unlike Spud, the bear could actually answer back (again, information on the bear is kind of scant, so my apologies for not being able to credit who played and/or voiced him), and he at least had no delusions about what he was. Intermittently, he would reference the fact that he was a bear and his various ursine quirks and eccentricities, and yet the humans seldom seemed to bat an eyelid; they were more likely to comment on his being Canadian than his being a bear. Did they really so oblivious to that particular detail? Hard to say - in one ad, the bear is able to convince an old flame that the reason he's not been returning her calls for the past few months is because he's been in hibernation. The ad ends with him showing up at her door with a conciliatory crate of Blue and her sultrily remarking that, "You must be so hungry...", one of the campaign's many implied interspecies sex gags - unless the implication is he's intending to eat her. Both interpretations are equally valid.

 

In another, particularly skin-crawling ad, we find the bear engaged in a game of golf, and tasked with having to return a ball from the woods to the open green, something he manages with flair. The bear emerges from the trees, whistling nonchalantly, as his companions gawk on in discomfort. He then looks directly at the camera and asks, "What?" What indeed. We all know what bears are reputed to get up to in the woods, and I'm not really sure if my takeaway is intended to be that this bear just soiled the wooded part of these people's green, but I feel as though that's what I'm being goaded to think. I can't imagine what else that intensely uncomfortable "What?" is supposed to imply.

Although the bear's blatantly humanoid figure and lack of expressive facial features give him an unrepentantly nightmarish quality, there is a likeable strangeness to this campaign, with the individual ads playing like miniature fish-out-of-water sitcoms with a eerily off-kilter flavour. The visual grotesqueness of the bear seems to accentuate some kind of hidden malaise in the overriding banality of the various scenarios - the trepidation of the outsider seeking acceptance in another culture - albeit one that our conspicuous misfit looks to have successfully overcome. I don't feel qualified to comment on whether or not there's a joke in here specifically about how Americans perceive Canadians, but the vibe I certainly get is that of a foreigner who feels assured and at ease in the land he's traversing, thanks to a reciprocated love of the product being hawked. The general theme of this campaign seems to be about connections across ostensible barriers, so maybe the whole concept of a bear who blends effortlessly into human society makes for a perfectly apt metaphor. The theme of transnational affinities is most explicitly explored in one ad where the bear bonds with a group of Japanese businessmen in and ends up performing an Al Jolson number with them at a karaoke bar - sweet enough, if you can forgive the fact that the central gag hinges heavily on their very Engrishy mispronunciation of the bear's favoured beverage.

The Labatt Blue Bear was considered iconic enough for a revival in 2013 (and was still just as horrifying as ever), although it's probably fair to say that he didn't make quite the same pop cultural splash, in the dying embers of the 20th century, as his better-known contemporaries, the Budweiser Swamp Gang. It lacks the gleeful, all-out insanity of that particular campaign, going for weirdness of a more muted variety, but the notes it hits are sufficiently unsettling. As a party animal, the bear had more bite than Spuds MacKenzie, for certain.

 

One final point of interest - in the aforementioned ID spot, the bear confirms that he was born in 1992 - which, as the store clerk points out, would have made him 9 when the ad aired in 2001. The bear disputes this, claiming that in bear years he would be the equivalent of 29. Well hey, it's now 2021 and the bear would indeed be 29 in human years. In bear years...he could still be alive. 30 would be at the far end of the average black bear's life expectancy, although I'm not sure what impact a drinking habit is going to have on that.