Smokey Bear turns 80 today. He’s one of the most iconic and recognizable figures in advertising history, conjuring romantic images of America’s national forests along with the message, “Only YOU can prevent wildfires.” Some call him timeless — and others wonder if his message is dangerously out of date.
It was the Disney story of Bambi that sparked the idea. When the movie hit theaters in 1942, children all over the nation experienced, along with Bambi and his friends, the terror of a forest fire.
Disney lent the image of Bambi to the US Forest Service for a public relations campaign, but when the agreement expired, the forests needed a new spokesperson. Enter Smokey Bear.
“I’ve always, of course, been partial to Smokey Bear,” says Nina Hubbard, who works for the Prescott National Forest in Arizona. “I grew up with him, I’ve been working for the agency for over 30 years. I literally had a stuffed bear that I took camping with me that was Smokey Bear.”
At first, Smokey was just a friendly face for campaign posters. Then in 1950, a crew of Taos Pueblo firefighters in New Mexico rescued a real bear cub from a wildfire, and Smokey became a living legend. Hubbard says so many letters flooded the cub’s new home at the National Zoo that Smokey got his own zip code.
“Everyone rooted for him,” Hubbard says. “And seeing him grow up, so to speak, in the ad campaign, I think people just really connected with that.”
Soon Smokey got a theme song, and was chatting up other celebrities on the radio, like Bing Crosby. In the late 70s and 80s an artist named Rudy Wendelin created the iconic image of Smokey in a yellow hat and blue jeans. An exhibit of Wendelin’s paintings is now traveling the country, including to the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, where Jackson Medel is the curator.
Medel chose the most dramatic painting to hang directly in front of the door. It shows a grim-looking Smokey standing among charred stumps, framed by a fiery orange sky.
“Visually it’s very striking,” Medel says. “But it’s also, I think, powerful in terms of the core message of Smokey, and one of the core messages of this whole exhibit, and the idea behind it is that there is responsibility around fire management.”
Personal responsibility: that’s the heart of Smokey’s message. But former wildland firefighter Sarah Berns wonders if it’s past time for an update. “That’s the thing with Smokey is that he’s kind of frozen in time,” Berns says. “I feel like it’s time to dust him off and shake the ice crystals out of his hairy ears, and give him a megaphone.”
She wants Smokey to proclaim a new message: that not all wildfire is bad. Fires these days burn bigger and hotter in forests overstocked with trees. Foresters say what’s needed is more healthy, prescribed fire on the ground. That’s a message Berns would love to see Smokey adopt.
“I feel like the images we see of wildfires come with words like ‘devastation’ and ‘loss,’ and it would be amazing if Smokey Bear started using words like ‘restoration,’ ‘rebirth,’” Berns says.
She adds: why not make Smokey’s voice younger, hipper, even female? The Ad Council has made some steps in that direction, like in a 2021 ad featuring Isabella Gomez filling in for Smokey Bear.
But the focus on campfire safety hasn’t budged. Some say that message doesn’t need to change. After all, nearly nine of ten wildfires in the US are caused by people – and until that changes, Smokey’s advocates say, it’s not time for him to retire yet.
