Bigfoot in popular culture

Bigfoot, as imagined by a Canadian artist.

Bigfoot, or Sasquatch, an alleged ape-like creature purportedly inhabiting forests, mainly in the Pacific Northwest region of North America, has had a demonstrable impact as a popular culture phenomenon. It has "become entrenched in American popular culture and it is as viable an icon as Michael Jordan" with more than forty five years having passed since reported sightings in California, and neither an animal nor "a satisfying explanation as to why folks see giant hairy men that don't exist."

Advertising

The words "Bigfoot" and "Sasquatch" are widely understood and as such have been used in advertising, being applied to many products and services, such as pizzas, beef jerky, skateboards, skis, an Internet search engine, a computer hard drive series, gas stations, Kokanee beer, Bigfoot Shadows award winning wine and a monster truck.

• Jack Link's brand of beef jerky has produced a series of commercials entitled "Messin' with Sasquatch". In the commercials, hikers play tricks on Sasquatch. The end of the commercials usually show Sasquatch reacting angrily to the pranks, chasing and sometimes picking up the hikers and throwing them into the air.

• Game camera manufacturer the Bushnell Corporation, along with Field & Stream, launched a promotional contest over a photo taken in September 2007, by deer hunter Rick Jacobs of Pennsylvania on his game camera of what some believe could be a young Sasquatch. More skeptical viewers deemed it a bear. The companies offered a one million dollar reward for a verifiable photo of Bigfoot taken on a game camera.

• The food chain Red Robin ran a television commercial in which a hiker speaks the words "Red Robin" and hears a reply of "Yummm" from Bigfoot.

• The restaurant chain Boston Pizza used "Louie" the sasquatch in a series of television commercials around 2007. Ultimately they decided to drop the character as a promotional gimmick.

• Kokanee beer used "Mel" the sasquatch in a series of commercials pitting him against the "Kokanee Ranger" played by John Novak. In 2004, a Mel The Sasquatch statue (complete with him holding a case of Kokanee Beer) was built in Creston, British Columbia. The Columbia Brewery Company (who owns Kokanee beer) paid for half the construction costs.

Films

• Bigfoot (1970)
• The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)
• Sasqua (1975, D:Channon Scott)
• Bigfoot Man or Beast (1975)
• The Mysterious Monsters (1975)
• Creature From Black Lake (1976)
• Snowbeast (1977)
• Sasquatch, The Legend Of Bigfoot (1977)
• Manbeast, Myth Or Monster? (1978)
• Curse of Bigfoot (1978)
• The Capture of Bigfoot (1979)
• Revenge of Bigfoot (1979)
• Night of the Demon (1980)
• Bigfoot (1987)
• Harry and the Hendersons (1987)
• Drawing Flies (1996), A movie produced by Kevin Smith. Starring Jason Lee as the character Donner who wants to find Sasquatch.
• A Goofy Movie (1995)
• Little Bigfoot (1997)
• Little Bigfoot 2: The Journey Home (1997)
• Sasquatch Hunters (1997),
• Monsters, Inc. (2001),
• Ape Canyon (2002)
• The Untold (2002)
• They Call Him Sasquatch (2003)
• Sasquatch Hunters (2005)
• The Unknown (2005)
• Stomp! Shout! Scream! (2005)
• Bigfoot (2006)
• Abominable (2006)
• Bigfoot (2006)
• Sasquatch Mountain (2006), a made-for-TV movie from the Sci-Fi Channel.
• Tenacious D in The Pick of Destiny (2006)
• The Sasquatch Gang (2007)
• Strange Wilderness (2008)
• Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie (2008)
• The Wild Man of the Navidad (2009), released by IFC Films
• Boggy Creek (2009)
• Momo (2009)
• The Legend of Grassman (2010)

Games

• The interactive robot from Mattel called the BIGFOOT Monster comes with a wireless remote control to burp, chew, throw a ball and do exercises.
• In Castlevania Dawn of Sorrow the yeti's sprite is very similar to a photograph of Big Foot.
• In the Darkstalkers series, Sasquatch is a playable character who lives in a village of other Sasquatches deep in the Canadian Rockies.
• In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, Bigfoot seems to be a myth in the game.
• The adventure game Sam & Max Hit the Road involves a search for a Sasquatch that had escaped from a traveling freak show.
• In Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Bigfoot makes an appearance.
• In The Simpsons arcade game, Bigfoot is an opponent which players encounter during the 3.5 Springfield Butte level.
• In Ski Resort Tycoon you can create an exhibition in which you may display a captured Sasquatch.
• In SkiFree players get eaten by an abominable snow monster if they cross the boundaries of play.
• In Tony Hawk's Underground 2, when unlocked, Bigfoot is a playable character.
• In Zoo Tycoon players can unlock Bigfoot which costs $10,000.
• In Poptropica cryptids island, players spot bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest and have to find where he lives.

Law

Skamania County, Washington passed a law regarding Bigfoot in 1969 declaring that "any willful, wanton slaying of such creatures shall be deemed a felony" subject to substantial fine and/or imprisonment. The fact that this legislation was passed on April 1 did not escape notice, but County Commissioner Conrad Lundy said that "this is not an April Fool's Day joke ... there is reason to believe such an animal exists."^{[citation needed]} Hunter and Dahinden mention their own "speculation that Skamania County authorities had their ears tuned much more to the music of a publicity bandwagon than to any song of distress" for Bigfoot.^{[citation needed]} Notwithstanding, the ordinance was amended in 1984 to preclude an insanity defense and to consider such a killing homicide if the creature was proven by the coroner to be humanoid.^{[citation needed]}

In response to Al Magnussen from the Mt. Baker Chamber of Commerce, Whatcom County, Washington, an Agenda Bill was drafted (92-247) on 6/9/91, which unanimously passed a resolution declaring Whatcom County a Sasquatch Protection and Refuge Area.

Literature

Many have written on the subject, demonstrating a broad spectrum of approaches from a small body of serious scholarly work to lurid tabloids, such as the Weekly World News.^{[citation needed]} The Gwaii, published by Arcana Studio, is an award winning children's graphic novel that features a sasquatch named Tanu searching for his mother and tribe in the Canadian wilderness. John Prufrock, the hero of the comic book Proof, is a Bigfoot who works for a secret agency that hunts and captures other cryptids. The comic, an ongoing series, is written by Alex Grecian and illustrated by Riley Rossmo. The first issue was published by Image Comics in October 2007. "Donations to Clarity", a 2011 novel by Noah Baird, tells the story of a Bigfoot who falls in love with a Bigfoot hoaxer.

Sports

• Bigfoot is the name of the first series of monster trucks. In 1975, Bob Chandler created the original truck, which he named after his driving style rather than its characteristically large tires.
• Squatch was the mascot of the basketball team the Seattle SuperSonics.
• Quatchi, one of three mascots for the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, is portrayed as a "young sasquatch who comes from the mysterious forests of Canada".

Television

• Six Million Dollar Man/The Bionic Woman featured three separate two-part episodes featuring a bionic Bigfoot. In the first episode, the creature was played by Andre the Giant while in the latter two episodes he was played by Ted Cassidy.
• Harry and the Hendersons (TV series) was a 72 episode show that ran from 1991 to 1993 and was based on the film of the same name.
• In the Canadian TV show Trailer Park Boys one of the characters frequently mispronounces Sasquatch as a "samsquanch" and in one episode beats up another character wrapped in a fur blanket to resemble a "samsquanch".
• Sasquatch was also featured in the Tenacious D (The Greatest Band In The World) T.V. show and wanted to join the band but was unable to. Sasquatch did, however, cause Jack Black and Kyle Gass to re-gain trust in the rock star mythos.
• Bigfoot makes an appearance in a Futurama episode entitled "Spanish Fry", where Fry attempts to find Bigfoot.
• In the TV series The Invisible Man, the title character of Darien Fawkes is turned invisible by a chemical derived from Bigfoot; Bigfoot has escaped detection over the centuries by turning invisible.

Tourism

Bigfoot statues are found along tourist routes in the Northwest.

There are annual Bigfoot-related conventions, and the creature plays a role in Pacific Northwest tourism, such as the annual "Sasquatch Daze" held for several years in Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia. Primatologist and Bigfoot researcher John Napier commented on this, stating that "Bigfoot in some quarters of North America has become big business ... It can no longer be considered simply as a natural phenomenon that can be studied with the techniques of a naturalist; the entrepreneurs have moved in and folklore has become fakelore."

See also

• Evidence regarding Bigfoot
• Formal studies of Bigfoot
• Loch Ness Monster in popular culture
• Patterson-Gimlin film