A Friend of the Blog attended Boise State’s home football game on Friday night against UTEP, and in addition to getting to see the debut of Boise State’s new tee-retrieving dog after Kohl passed away last month, he had his first encounter with…Spuddy Buddy:
Spuddy Buddy is, well, he’s a legend. Look at this potato. Look at it. Read this profile of the iconic tater. From the profile (which was on Potato Grower dot com, of course):
In 1983, the Idaho Potato Commission (IPC) needed to find a way to turn its dirt-encrusted, starchy tuber back into a highly marketable crop. That year, a cartoon-style potato character, complete with resplendent cowboy hat and red Idaho neckerchief, was born.
Fast-forward to 1993, when Hasbro quashed hopes of securing the rights for the IPC to use Mr. Potato Head as the new face of its character—no thanks to Pixar. Hasbro pulled out of negotiations when it became clear the famous spud was going to be a bit busy in his starring role in the animation studio’s 1995 blockbuster Toy Story.
No matter. Eventually dubbed Potato Buddy, the character previously used by the IPC was given a permanent smile, tennis shoes and his now iconic red sweater. But in 1996, while being interviewed on live television by Willard Scott on the Today Show in New York, former IPC chairman Don Dixon changed the name of the character on the fly to something else: Spuddy Buddy.
And it stuck.
“We always want to bring the potato back to modern culture,” current IPC president and CEO Frank Muir says. “We’ve made it cool to hang out with a potato.”
Well, you did. It’s cool now. It’s very cool. More:
When Muir came on board with the IPC 14 years ago, he couldn’t help but feel the deck was stacked against him.
“I really do believe potatoes were under the gun,” Muir says. “Was the Idaho potato going the way of the Washington apple? When I was growing up, there were commercials for the Washington apple. Now my kids don’t make that same connection.”
At the height of the Atkins diet in 2003, which called on dieters to remove carbohydrates from their meals, Muir said potatoes were under attack.
Closer to home, a bill was making its way through the Idaho legislature in 2006 that would have allowed Idaho drivers to rid their license plates of the words “Famous Potatoes”—a slogan that first appeared on the plates in 1948.
That same year, the prestigious Institute of Medicine released a report that cautioned against including white potatoes in the federal government’s Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program—a banishment in place until 2015.
Then the potato was also passed over for consideration for the U.S. Treasury’s state quarter program in 2007.
Muir says he got real with the commission—did it want the public to view Idaho potatoes as just another commodity, or did it want to market an actual brand?
“Idaho is known more for the potato than any other state is known for anything else,” Muir says. “Think about that. Not Florida oranges. Not Wisconsin cheese. The Idaho potato is a connection people make.”
It’s true. I do think of potatoes when I think of Idaho. Now, I even think of them when I think of Boise State football. Which honestly, I don’t think of as much as I think of Idaho’s license plate, now that I’m reflecting upon it. I think about that license plate a lot. I love that license plate.
So, that’s the story with the excited potato. The bouncing, exuberant stem which has more potassium in it than a banana.
No wonder it’s so fired up.
