Elsie the Cow is a cartooncow developed as a mascot for the Borden Dairy Company in 1936 to symbolize the "perfect dairy product".[1] Since the demise of Borden in the mid-1990s, the character has continued to be used in the same capacity for the company's partial successors, Eagle Family Foods (owned by J.M. Smucker) and Borden Dairy.
Named one of the Top 10 Advertising Icons of the [20th] Century by Ad Age in 2000,[2] Elsie the Cow has been among the most recognizable product logos in the United States and Canada.[3][4]
History
The cartoon Elsie was created in 1936[5] by a team headed by advertising creative director David William Reid.[6] Elsie first appeared as one of four cartoon cows (with Mrs. Blossom, Bessie, and Clara) in a 1936 magazine advertisement series featured in medical journals.[7] By 1939, she was featured in her own advertisement campaign that was voted "best of the year" by the Jury of the 1939 Annual Advertising Awards.[8]
The first living Elsie was a registered Jerseyheifer selected while participating in Borden's 1939 New York World's Fair "Rotolactor" exhibit (demonstrating the company's invention, the rotary milking parlor). The most alert cow at the demonstration, she was born at Elm Hill Farm in Brookfield, Massachusetts and named "You'll Do, Lobelia".[9] After being purchased from her owners, family farmers from Connecticut, she spent the rest of the season on display twice each day dressed in an embroidered green blanket,[10] and after the exhibit, she traveled around the country making public appearances.[11] You'll Do, Lobelia is buried at her home in the Walker-Gordon Farm in Plainsboro, New Jersey. Her tomb stone is marked with the fitting title of "one of the great Elsies of our time.''[12]
Elsie had a fictional, cartoon mate, Elmer the Bull, who was created in 1940 and lent to Borden's then chemical-division as the mascot for Elmer's Products.[7] The pair was given teenage offspring Beulah sometime before 1947, the year baby Beauregard arrived. Twins Larabee and Lobelia appeared in 1957.[5]
In 1940, the actual cow Elsie appeared in the film, Little Men,[13][11] as "Buttercup". For a time in the mid-1940s, the cartoon Elsie was voiced by Hope Emerson.[14] Elsie and her cartoon calves were featured in Elsie's Boudoir at Freedomland U.S.A., a theme park depicting America's history located in The Bronx, from 1960 to 1963. A live cow representing Elsie appeared on stage at the Borden's exhibit in the Better Living Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair, in a musical revue with a score by the Broadway composer Kay Swift.[15]
The success of the character encouraged Borden to promote a real life version of Elsie, with the name "You'll Do Lobelia", being her appearance in 1939. This version of Elsie became a well-known.[16] being noted as "the most famous icon in the U.S.", ranking above The Campbell Soup Kids, the Marlboro Man, and The Jolly Green Giant.[17]
Lobelia died in 1941 after a traffic accident, just two years after her rise to fame.[18] Her tombstone is at Plainsboro, NJ.[13] Since then, other "Elsies" took her place as Borden's spokescow.[19]
Elsie and her bull calf son "Beauregard" made yearly appearances in the Food & Fiber Pavilion at the State Fair of Texas until retirement after their final fair in 2013.
