The sticker you are looking at is NC State’s beloved Mr. Wuf FEASTING UPON THE CARCASS OF A DEAD RAMESES. I’m really weirded out by a wolf in a sweater feasting upon the bones of a ram in a UNC sailor hat. It’s… a lot.
It turns out that this is not the only sticker that shows Mr. Wuf committing potential war crimes upon other Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) mascots.
At this point, you may be wondering: Who did this, and how did they get away with it? As in, how can anyone make stickers that show a representative of an institution of higher learning committing murder and/or mercilessly torturing other mascots? Well for that, I have to take you back. Back in time. Back to a point in our nation’s history where colleges and universities didn’t care about making serious money off of their mascots.
Until about 40 or 50 years ago, hardly any universities had any internal licensing departments. UCLA administrators were the first to realize they could make a lot of money by getting others to pay to put their logo on, say, t-shirts and mugs. Ohio State followed in 1974. Then, in the early 1980s, the floodgates opened. UNC and NC State trademarked their logos, along with dozens of other schools. Today, the Collegiate Licensing Company handles the licensing for hundreds of institutions, and the move was one of many that nudged regionally beloved universities toward becoming national brands.
This also had the side effect of standardizing all of the looks of the mascots. You can only trademark so many traditions, images, and slogans.
Before that, though, the world of mascots was a free-for-all. “Back in the day, licensing didn’t exist,” says Homefield Apparel founder Connor Hitchcock. “Because of that, it’s hard to find any institutional memory of these things.” Today, Homefield works with universities to create shirts, pants, and stickers that feature vintage logos. If you look at enough of them, you may notice something: They all seem to have sort of a Disney feel to them. That’s because many of them were created by one man, Arthur Evans, who supposedly was once a Disney illustrator. In 1933, a new decal company named Angelus Pacific hired him to be its lead artist, and Evans spent the next 45 years there sketching, drawing, and painting on-demand logos for stickers. If your college or university didn’t have a mascot, Evans would create one.
It’s impossible to know for sure, but here’s the most likely scenario: Back in the 1950s, someone in NC State’s bookstore called or wrote to Angelus Pacific and asked for some custom stickers from its “feudin’ decals” line. The company then told Art Evans to create several designs depicting Mr. Wuf ritualistically mutilating his in-state rivals. Then those decals were sold at the NC State bookstore.
Past that, things get fuzzy. Angelus Pacific was sold several years ago and moved to Minnesota, and I couldn’t track down its former owner. There’s little information out there on Evans himself, who died in 1981. Anybody who would have ordered the stickers for the store is probably long gone as well.
It’s also unclear whether UNC or Wake Forest ordered any feudin’ decals. But Duke? Duke did.
Don’t you just wish you could buy one of these decals at a bookstore today? Good luck. Any school that uses another school’s name or mascots would almost certainly need permission from their rival. For example: I’ve seen “Beat (other ACC team)” buttons on sale in the Wake Forest University bookstore. The button-maker not only needed to get permission from Wake, but also from the rival school that Wake would supposedly beat. When it’s a matter of harmless school spirit like that, a school is more likely to sign off. “But obviously, no school wants to approve its mascot’s thigh bone being eaten,” Hitchcock says.
That permission wasn’t needed in the 1950s, when (clears throat) men were men and mascots were bloodthirsty drunks. “There’s a lot of violence and a lot of alcohol,” Hitchcock says, referring me to a University of Kentucky decal that shows three wildcats singing a drinking song while completely tanked on corn liquor.
Sure, it’s possible that I’m reading too much into this. After all, some of those old mascot are just plain cute and innocent. Others are more sadistic than a vintage Tom & Jerry cartoon. Still, there’s a big modern demand for logos that haven’t been slickly designed by a branding agency.
Why? “Objectively, they’re more creative than what we currently have,” Hitchcock tells me. Is it nostalgia?
Yes. But maybe they also remind us of an era when collectible items were actually scarce, when regionalism still held sway, and when big institutions didn’t have complete control over their imagery and our imaginations.
Jeremy Markovich writes NC Rabbit Hole, subscribe at NCRabbitHole.com. This column is syndicated by Beacon Media, please contact info@beaconmedianc.org..
