Elsie the Cow

Elsie the Cow is a cartoon cow 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 successor, Eagle Brand, owned by The J.M. Smucker Company.

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]

The cartoon Elsie was created in 1936[4] by a team headed by advertising creative director David William Reid.[5] 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.[6] 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.[7]

The first living Elsie was a registered Jersey heifer 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".[8] 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,[9] and after the exhibit, she traveled around the country making public appearances.[10] 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.''[11]

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 Glue.[6] The pair was given offspring Beulah and Beauregard in 1948, and twins Larabee and Lobelia in 1957.[4]

In 1940, the actual cow Elsie appeared in the film, Little Men,[10] as "Buttercup". For a time in the mid-1940s, the cartoon Elsie was voiced by Hope Emerson. 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.

Elsie has been bestowed such tongue-in-cheek honorary university degrees as Doctor of Bovinity,[5] Doctor of Human Kindness, and Doctor of Ecownomics. In Wisconsin, home of the Dairy Princess, Elsie was named Queen of Dairyland. The Seneca people named her an honorary chief, and the City of Bridgeport, Connecticut presented her with their P. T. Barnum Award of Showmanship.