07/23/2024
Do you know The Mack Truck Bulldog ?
The official Mack Bulldog model was rendered in porcelain by artist Doris Lindner and produced ina limited edition of five hundred, each accompanied by a leather-framed certificate—the official Royal Worcester Certificate of Registration. The first two hundred fifty of them bore the trademark of “Mack Trucks, Inc., Allentown, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., The Truck Capital of the World.” This most famous corporate symbol became a collector’s item when it was immediately sold out.
For many years the word Bulldog has also been associated with the Mack truck known as “The Bulldog.”’ This truck has been referred to as “‘the truck that built America’ because of its wide use during the major construction period in this country between the two World Wars. As early as 1914, the designing genius of a man named Alfred Fellows Masury was developing the powerful machine to be known throughout the world as the Mack truck. Little did Masury know during those early sessions at the drawing board that the truck and the Bulldog Mack mascot would lead to innumerable replicas, toy trucks, and reproductions of the Bulldog in the years to come.
All of the early Bulldog truck models had sloping front hoods to allow easy and clear views of the road ahead. Eventually the hood would be trimmed and shaped to allow the prominent Bulldog figure to stand out on the front of the truck as a radiator cap, thereby establishing the association between the truck and the canine.
In 1917 a British company ordered 150 Mack trucks and ultimately declared that their power and sturdiness suggested the tenacious quality of the British Bulldog. They were subsequently referred to as Bull Dog Macks by the British.
It is believed that perhaps it was Masury himself who picked up on the analogy of the two, and the truck’s nickname became an established fact. The truck name was spelled Bull Dog—as two words, that is—until the late 1920s, when it was changed to the single word Bulldog as used by dog fanciers.
By 1917 Bull Dog trucks were being used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in what was said to be the ‘‘war to end all wars,’” and in every imaginable heavy-duty capacity that helped win the victory. Over 4,000 were utilized for service during those war years on both sides of the Atlantic.
In the years immediately following World War I, the Bull Dog Mack trucks came to serve in many additional capacities. “There were Mack chain hoists, firetrucks, fuel trucks, sanitation and refuse collectors, lumber haulers, snow plows, trailers, moving trucks, rail cars, and even Mack trucks to haul circus equipment and a Wild West show through Oklahoma.
Bulldogs began to appear regularly in Mack truck advertising. The Bulldog shown in the early ads was by no means the figure we see today. It was depicted as a white-colored Bulldog and was seen viciously tearing apart a book titled "Hauling Costs" with a training muzzle labeled “Competition’’ broken and lying on the ground at its feet. ‘The message was that the ferocious Bulldog could slash costs of transporting merchandise and just about anything else. This caricature became a nameplate insignia that was affixed to the sides of certain models of the truck and was used extensively through 1936.
In 1920 there was also a publication called The Mack Bulldog. ‘The cover of this Mack company house organ newspaper made full use of the Bulldog, which was portrayed on the covers along with drawings of the trucks. These magazines are still around as collector’s items.
By 1926 the toymakers of America had latched onto a good thing and were reproducing toy Mack Trucks manufactured to scale in many different sizes, from tiny child toys to the soap box derby size for careening around the neighborhood streets. These various toys were featured in the company’s sales folders advertising the wide variety of Mack truck replicas called "Practical Toys for Future Mack Transport Men.”
It was in 1932 that Alfred Fellows Masury created his own Bulldog mascot by carving his own cubistic version of the Bulldog image out of soap, fashioned after a Bulldog figurine he had | seen in a Madison Avenue shop. While under observation for possible surgery, he whiled away the hours in the hospital by carving soap, an idea he picked up from a soap-carving contest being held at the time by a large soap company.
The patent application for the Bulldog radiator mascot was filed in July 1932, and was granted in October of that year. By 1933 the sturdy Bulldog was beginning to appear as standard equipment on all the radiator caps on the Bulldog Mack trucks, taking its deserved place in the advertising world. The Bulldog mascot became one of the most recognizable of all trademarks in world commerce.
During the following years there were several variations on the Bulldog mascot as the truck models changed along with the times. In 1941 a more symmetrical and rounded Bulldog figure was designed, this one standing on all four feet atop a prototype pedestal. The former model had been a Bulldog raised up on its back legs and described as straining at the leash. Another design was attempted in 1945, but it was not adopted. In 1965 the "colour ’’ of the dog changed from a white Bulldog to one brindle in colour. Artist Joseph Csatari painted a magnificent brindle Bulldog that was to become the new emblem for the company—a real-life Bulldog rather than the caricature. Once again the toy and novelty companies had a field day, and an entire new line of Bulldog trucks was marketed and brought additional fame to the company.
The new Bulldog was reproduced as pins that are given to visitors to the Mack World Headquarters building in Allentown, Pennsylvania. There is also an enormous hand-molded fiberglass rendition of the Csatari Bulldog on the outside of the building. It is translucent and illuminated at night, transforming the entire facade of the building with its presence. This sign, which was erected in 1969, measures 17 X 20 feet and is most impressive.
The Mack Bulldog mascot has come a long way since 1917.
I hope you do like reading this as it is part of the history of our journey.
JM
