THE NOID IS BACK!

THE MASCOT FILES: THE RETURN OF THE NOID!

Grimey

I’ve been wanting to get into researching and writing a bit about my favorite mascots for a while now and it just so happens that, this past week, we saw a very surprising return of one of my all time favorite mascots! I’m taking this as a sign and jumping in full on with the first installment of The Mascot Files! You can probably guess how this will go, but in case it’s not obvious.... a deep dive of one mascot each article; the good, the ugly, the ups, the downs, the references in pop culture and, in this case, the returns! Let’s get into this.

As I’m writing this, 5 days ago the official Dominos Pizza account on YouTube uploaded a beautiful fresh commercial for their new Nuro R2 robotic self driving delivery vehicle (which is currently being tested in Houston) which includes the most triumphant return of our bunny eared mischievous pal in a red skin suit, the Noid! It’s been a while since we saw any Noid activity from Domino’s, and I assume most people who heard of him have no idea where he went in the first place. We will get to that. First, a little background.

With the combined efforts of Group 243 and Will Vinton (the genius behind A Claymation Christmas Celebration), the Noid was born! Making his first appearance in 1986, the Noid was the embodiment of every day problems and challenges of a 30 minute or less pizza delivery. They had a rule that if the pizza wasn’t delivered in 30 minutes or less, they’d take $3 off the bill (like that one part in TMNT 1990 where Mikey says “Time’s up... 3 bucks off”). The idea was that Dominos delivery people could apparently “avoid the Noid” better than any other franchise and would guarantee that your pizza gets to it’s destination perfect in temperature, in one piece, timely.... you get the idea.

The Noid was featured in as many as 16 different tv commercials (that I could find, anyways) from 1986 to 1990. I obviously can’t show off every commercial he appeared in so I will share this lovely almost 7 minute long compilation of Noid commercials uploaded to YouTube from user Musical Nostalgia Cat which contains my favorite one where the Noid freezes pizzas and smashes them into pieces... you know... normal pizza delivery issues that a typical delivery driver would run into.

The Noid almost landed a cartoon after a Saturday Morning Cartoon proposal was made in 1988 for CBS called The Noids, but was ultimately scrapped as it was rumored to be geared more towards advertising for Dominos rather than being a successful children’s show. I see where they’re coming from but, honestly, I think I would’ve watched it. The Noid might as well been a claymation Loony Tune. So, no cartoon. What we DID get, in 1989, was a computer game called Avoid the Noid as part of Dominos advertising campaign. Then again in 1990, Capcom (famous for games like Street Fighter, Mega Man, and Resident Evil) would hit us with their game Yo! Noid for the Nintendo Entertainment System which would later see a fan sequel in 2017 called Yo! Noid 2: Enter the Void. The Noid also makes an appearance in a pinball game released in 2016 called Domino’s Spectacular Pinball Adventure by Spooky Pinball LLC.

In between all these commercials, the turned down cartoon series and game releases, we’ve seen the Noid on several Dominos ads, merchandise as well as toys and even candy items from Dominos. Take this car shade I got a while back on eBay for instance. I’ve always had weird feelings towards the Noid. I remember when I first saw him, it was around the same time I first saw Sonic the Hedgehog. I can remember being extremely confused thinking they had to be from the same universe only to find out later that they had absolutely nothing to do with each other. I think it was the shoes, honestly.

The Noid was referenced all over in pop culture but a few of my favorite references can be seen in Family Guy, Michael Jackson: Moonwalker, The Goldbergs, The Simpsons and (of course, me being a huge TMNT fan) his brief action figure appearance floating in the sewer floor as well as an appearance on a napkin on Donatello’s neck in the 1990 TMNT film.

So, where did the Noid go? The story goes, a mentally ill man Kenneth Lamar Noid took the advertisements for the Noid as a direct personal attack and was convinced that Domino’s was instructing viewers of these ads to avoid him. Noid entered a Domino’s location on January 30th 1989 in Georgia armed with a .357 Magnum where he held 2 workers hostage for over 5 hours. It was said that he had the hostages call Domino’s HQ with the demands of $100,000 and a limo for a getaway. He later stated he’d exchange 1 hostage for a copy of the book The Widows Son but ultimately neglected to do so after a police officer handed him a copy of the book. Noid became hungry and while eating at the restaurant, the 2 hostages managed to escape. 2 shots were fired by Noid but soon after he surrendered to the police. He was charged with a slew of offenses including kidnapping, aggravated assault, extortion, and possession of a firearm at the scene of a crime but found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to a mental facility. Keep in mind, this all happened in 89. It wasn’t until 95 when Noid committed suicide at his Florida residence which caused the pizza franchise to completely stop the use of the Noid in any further marketing.

Although Dominos remained relatively quiet about the Noid for quite some time, we did see him come back in several forms. He made a small return on a limited shirt run in 2009 and again in a facebook ad campaign in 2011 where he was used in a game (to give 1 pizza away every minute for an entire week for a total of 10,080 pizzas). He also made it to the Ad Icons Pop series from Funko which I believe was a Target exclusive. I feel like it’s safe to say that you’ve made your mark in history once you are fashioned into a Funko Pop.

Here we are, 2021! One of the best fucking mascots (albeit, with an unusually sad history) is back to try and fuck all of your pizzas up before they ever meet your location in a self driving robotic car. Let’s get into this commercial! It starts off stating that they are always looking to find the best ways to deliver your pizza efficiently which is why they’ve chosen to test driverless delivery powered by this Nuro vehicle. Apparently, this Nuro car works so fucking well that it has forced the Noid back to his old habits ie keep those shits from every reaching you without problems. I never understood why the Noid had such a vendetta against Domino’s... I assume it was a classic “burned myself with hot coffee at McDonald’s” type incident but instead of ending in a law suit he put on his red bunny eared suit and decided to take problems into his own hands. The Noid isn’t messing around either! He’s riding this jack hammer looking stomper machine that smashes the road into pieces, then he’s seen with a laser powered chainsaw slicing a tree down across the road, and even blows up a Macys Thanksgiving parade style balloon of himself in the middle of the street to keep this car from delivering the goods. The car ultimately prevails and then they say it..... Avoid the Noid!!! Like... holy shit is this real life?! I’ve been DYING to hear those words from an official Domino’s commercial for years! As if that wasn’t enough, it turns out that the Noid is also going to be featured in the new mobile game Crash Bandicoot: On the Run appearing as one of the games mini bosses. It’s an interesting choice but I’m not even the slightest bit upset with it.

My only 2 thoughts now are 1. how long will it be that the Noid lasts with a self driving car promotion after seeing 2 men killed by a self driving Tesla as it crashed and burst into flames this past week in Texas which is ironically where these self driving robotic cars are being tested in at the moment. Self driving cars sound like such a bad idea, I still don’t understand them, I mean... I don’t even trust my toaster to toast bread while I take a quick leak... and it’s on a fucking timer! The idea that a car is driving itself is completely mind blowing to me. My other thought.. please please please let this trigger a solid series of comebacks from other long lost mascots of all kinds! Nonetheless, I’m satisfied with return of the Noid and I’m hoping our red friend can avoid any further cancellations. He deserves to be back!

I hope you enjoyed the first installment of The Mascot Files! Stay tuned for more! Also, we do have a comments section down below. Furthermore, we are relatively active on Instagram! Feel free to drop us a line here or there; if you have any mascots you’d like to read about next, I’d be glad to look into them and spew a few thousand words for your reading pleasure. Thanks for reading!