Reddy Kilowatt

7/6/23

Reddy Kilowatt

Your humble servant [Source]

Seeing heavy industry sold using cartoon characters is something of a surprise. We can all remember consumer products sold that way—those of us who were kids in America, at least. Cartoon branding mascots have served to inspire youngsters to exhort parental purchases, for instance, in the grocery-store cereal aisle, with all the sugary treats packaged in boxes emblazoned with colorful and fun images of tigers, rabbits, toucans, or pixie Irish stereotypes approximately from County Cork, home of almost all stereotypical Irishmen.

We’re familiar also with cartoon spokes-characters like Ronald McDonald for fast food, Charlie the Tuna for canned fish, Elsie the Cow for cheese, and maybe even Serta Counting Sheep for mattresses. But today we’re concerned with a particular mascot for an industry where we might not expect cartoon representation to be adult enough: electricity.

As electrification once penetrated American cities and towns by the 1920s, some 90 percent of rural farmsteads still went without. A commercial manager for Alabama Power Company (APC), Ashton B. Collins, Sr., envisioned an advertising campaign to make rural electrification more appealing and less frightening to rural residents. Thus was his brainchild born, Reddy Kilowatt. APC copyrighted the figure at the time, granting Collins use of it into the Great Depression. A refined cartoon image was trademarked in Collins’s name in 1933, and licensed throughout the United States and then other countries around the world. The mature image was introduced in the post-war period, created under cartoonist Walter Lantz.

Safety first, kids! [Source]

Licensing continued to expand, and Reddy enjoyed a career adorning public relations campaigns for many investor-owned utility companies. Collins had conceived of the character as an ambassador not only for electric power, but also of free-market capitalism. By mid-century, Reddy was used to convey messages explaining electric power generation, as well as electric safety and convenience. By the late 1960s and ‘70s he would be used to spread messages about conservation, keeping up with trendy environmental concerns.

Here was one of his ad jingles:

The Wikipedia page has a decent longer history of Reddy and his career.