Energizer Bunny

The **Energizer Bunny** is the marketing icon and mascot of Energizer batteries in North America. It is a pink toy rabbit wearing sunglasses and blue and black striped sandals that beats a bass drum bearing the Energizer logo.

## Biography

Originally a parody of the preexisting Duracell Bunny, still seen in the UK, Europe and Australia, the Bunny has appeared in television commercials in North America since 1988. The Energizer Bunny is promoted as being able to continue operating indefinitely, or at least much longer than similar toys (or other products) using rival brands' batteries, with the marketing tagline "It just keeps going and going...". The American Energizer commercials, produced by D.D.B. Chicago Advertising, originally began as a parody of TV advertisements for rival Duracell. In the original Duracell ads, a set of battery-powered drum-playing toy rabbits gradually slow to a halt until only the toy powered by a copper-top battery remains active. In Energizer's parody, the Energizer Bunny then enters the screen beating a huge bass drum and swinging a mallet over his head. The criticism was that Duracell compared their batteries with carbon-zinc batteries, and not similar alkaline batteries like Energizer.[1] The creative team at D.D.B. Chicago who conceived and designed the bunny chose All Effects special effects company to build the original Energizer Bunny, a remote-controlled prop. All Effects operated the Energizer Bunny in most of its first commercials.[*citation needed*] Later commercials were made by Industrial Light & Magic, Cafe FX and Method Studios.

The commercials started out with the Bunny leaving the studio it was in, then wandering into the sets of a couple of realistic-looking commercials for fictional products, interrupting them. As the campaign progressed, many of these ads were standalone (for fake products such as "Sitagin Hemorrhoid Remedy", "Nasotine Sinus Relief", "TresCafe Coffee", "Alarm" deodorant soap, etc.) and even a few featured celebrities (such as Lyle Alzado promoting a snack called "Pigskins", and Ted Nugent doing an ad for a Mexican food chain called "Cucaracha") only to have the Bunny march through, beating his drum, because he was "still going". (One infamous commercial was for a fake long-distance telephone company with a couple in the United Kingdom talking to their son, who was supposedly in New York and exclaimed that he "sounded like he's right next door", and when the Bunny came in, he knocked down the divider to show they really were next to each other.) Eventually real-life products and icons would do a crossover with the Energizer Bunny (i.e. Michael J. Fox doing a Pepsi ad, and the opening of TV shows such as *Alfred Hitchcock Presents* and *ABC's Wide World of Sports*). To date[*when?*], the Energizer Bunny has appeared in more than 115 television commercials.[2] In these commercials, a voice-over would announce one of various slogans used throughout the years; all of them would relate the stalwartness of the Energizer Bunny to the long-lasting power of their batteries. The original slogan boasted that "...[n]othing outlasts the Energizer...", but it was eventually changed after a lawsuit filed by Duracell disputing Energizer's claim.[3] Those commercials with the bunny interrupting all the action in a commercial were eventually spoofed in the 1993 film *Hot Shots! Part Deux*, featuring a blue animal drumming through instead of the pink bunny. The two people fighting then used their guns to shoot the blue animal, causing the blue animal to explode.