They lack the cute factor of the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Elsie the Borden cow.
But the Exxon tiger and the Mobil Pegasus rank as two of the most memorable and enduring characters used to hawk gasoline in an industry where faceless logos abound.
Whereas other popular symbols and spokespeople have come and gone, the tiger and the Pegasus have managed to outlast Shell’s Answer Man and its dancing pumps, Sinclair’s animated green dinosaur, Mobil’s Mr. Dirt and Texaco’s Milton Berle and Bob Hope.
The Exxon tiger first surfaced on the company’s gasoline pumps in Norway at the start of this century, according to corporate lore.
Although the tiger next showed up in the 1930s and after World War II in England, it wasn’t used in the United States until 1964, when it was paired with Exxon’s famous ad jingle “Put a tiger in your tank.”
The friendly cartoon tiger, still used today, got an alter ego in 1975 when Exxon ads in Britain began using a live tiger. The new tiger began popping up in Exxon commercials in the United States in 1982.
Mobil’s flying horse has been a part of its corporate identity since 1931, when the company was known as the Socony-Vacuum Corp. Early on, Mobil was forced to change its color from white to red after discovering that a white horse symbolized death in Japan.
Unlike the tiger, the Pegasus has suffered a comedown. In 1966, Mobil removed the flying horse from its service stations’ signs and attached it to the stations’ walls.
In recent years, both the tiger and the Pegasus have enjoyed relatively little advertising competition. The only brand giving the tiger and flying horse cause to worry: Chevron’s animated cars and trucks.
— The Dallas Morning News
