Brand: Old Spice
Year introduced: 2010
To advertise Old Spice body wash, actor Isaiah Mustafa portrayed The Man Your Man Could Smell Like. The campaign took off during Super Bowl weekend, and by July 2010, six months after the ad debuted, sales for Old Spice's body wash had doubled.
Brand: Brawny
Year introduced: 1974
The Brawny Man has gone through a handful of makeovers in the last 40 years, including the removal of both his ax and mustache. In March 2017, the Brawny Man was temporarily shelved to make way for an ad campaign featuring women in his characteristic red plaid shirt, along with the hashtag #StrengthHasNoGender.
Brand: Dos Equis
Year introduced: 2006
"Stay thirsty, my friends." With those words at the end of every Dos Equis commercial, The Most Interesting Man in the World became nationally known. He caught marlin, drank beer with beautiful women, and gave his own father "the talk" in an ad campaign that ran from 2006 to 2018. And as it turns out, the man behind the myth, actor Jonathan Goldsmith, is every bit as interesting as his TV role.
Brand: Captain Morgan
Year introduced: Unlike the other mascots on this list, Captain Morgan was real. Sir Henry Morgan was a 17th-century Welsh pirate who plundered Spanish ships in the Caribbean. Although the rum company bears his name, there's no direct connection.
Brand: Mr. Clean
Year introduced: 1958
Mr. Clean was initially created as a sort of clean-freak genie in the late 1950s, according to Adweek.
In 2013, Mr. Clean posted an origin story — in the form of a short film — on YouTube.
"I'm super proud of this film about my history and the Mr. Clean brand," Mr. Clean wrote in the post's description. "It was too legendary to put on TV. It's also the only biopic you'll ever watch that doesn't have a lot of crying in it."
Despite having a wholesome image for the last six decades, Clean got a sudden dose of sexiness for a 2017 Super Bowl TV ad.
Brand: Allstate
Year introduced: 2010
Mayhem, the embodiment of all that can go wrong without a good insurance company, was originally inspired by a character called Mr. White in Quentin Tarantino's 1992 film "Reservoir Dogs." Mr. White, played by Harvey Keitel, causes trouble while wearing a black suit. Mayhem, played by Dean Winters, does the same.
Brand: Chiquita
Year introduced: 1944
Miss Chiquita, the mascot for the Chiquita banana company, was once herself a banana. But, in 1987, she was transformed into a human by Oscar Grillo, the same cartoonist who drew the Pink Panther.
Brand: St. Pauli Girl
Year introduced: N/A
St. Pauli Girl, as suggested by its mascot's outfit, hails from Germany. The original brewery was built on the site of St. Paul's Monastery in the 17th century in Bremen, Germany. Today, St. Pauli Girl is better known for its supermodel spokeswomen — which include a handful of Playboy models — than its beer.
Brand: Esurance
Year introduced: 2004
Erin from Esurance was a popular cartoon secret agent who happened to sell insurance on the side. As the Crestline survey notes, Erin was pulled from Esurance ads in 2010 due to her growing reputation online in X-rated cartoons.
Brand: Chicken of the Sea
Year introduced: 1952
In over 60 years, the Chicken of the Sea Mermaid has hardly changed — except that instead of remaining a hand-drawn cartoon in commercials, she's all CGI now.
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