In 1986 , advertising agency Group 243 was tasked with creating a mascot for Domino’s Pizza. Their creation–the Noid–was one of the most inexplicably popular mascots in corporate history . But in a case of branding gone bad, the Noid’s rise plummeted when he inspired a real-life crime by a schizophrenic namesake.
Today, Domino’s is throwing us back into the Noid world because they are testing Nuro’s R2 robot, which is great because you don’t have to pay a machine to deliver pizza. Appropriately enough, the Noid is also appearing in the latest Crash Bandicoot game.
Domino’s brought the Noid back for a limited run of 1,000 T-shirts in December 2009. On May 4, 2011, the Noid was brought back as a promotional figure by Domino’s to be used in a campaign on their Facebook page, and made a brief appearance as a stuffed toy at the end of a May 2011 commercial promoting a one-topping pizza deal.
As covered by The A. V. Club back in 2018, Domino’s dropped the Noid mascot after a 1989 incident in which a mentally ill man named Kenneth Lamar Noid took two Domino’s employees hostage.
From 1986 to 1995, Domino’s had a mascot called the Noid, a not entirely human character with buck teeth in a red bunny suit whose sole aim was to disrupt pizza delivery back when 30 minutes or less was state of the art. Lisa Lacy is Adweek’s commerce editor.
What happened to Kenneth Noid from Domino’s?
Unfortunately, the Noid story took a turn for the tragic. In 1995, still convinced that Domino’s Pizza was out to make his life miserable, Kenneth Lamar Noid committed suicide in his Florida apartment. The pizza chain immediately stopped using the Noid in their marketing thereafter.
What was the name of the Domino’s mascot from 1986 to 1995?
The Domino’s Pizza mascot from 1986 to 1995 was a bizarre claymation, appearing in everything from commercials to video games to a cameo in Michael Jackson’s weird anthology film Moonwalker. The Noid was so omnipresent it was, well, annoying (which makes sense—Noid is short for annoyed).
What was the name of the pizza mascot in the 80s?
Domino’s Pizza had one of the most bizarre mascots of the 1980s: the Noid. A demented little gremlin in a red onesie, the Noid was an anti-pizza monster. (Only Domino’s pizzas were Noid-proof.).
When we were researching we ran into the question “What happened at Domino’s Pizza in 1989?”.
On January 30, 1989, a 22-year-old man named Kenneth Lamar Noid walked into a Domino’s Pizza in Atlanta, Georgia, with a .357 magnum revolver and took two employees hostages. After a five-hour standoff during which Noid demanded $100,000 in ransom money, the employees in question escaped.
Was NOID the worst mascot PR in history?
But as an informative post by Zachary Crockett over at Priceonomics explains, what eventually killed off the Noid had nothing to do with the public coming to its senses, but rather what may have been “the worst mascot PR in history” at the height of his popularity.