Hopefully, by the time you are reading this, you have tuned into the latest episode of my podcast where I welcomed McGruff the Crime Dog and Paul DelPonte from the National Crime Prevention Council (NCPC). If not, you can find that episode here. Talking with McGruff really took me down memory lane and I thought it might be fun to share some behind-the-scenes information that you may not be aware of regarding McGruff and the NCPC.
1.) The creation of McGruff technically dates all the way back to the late 1970s when the Advertising Council (original logo above) took on an important responsibility of helping to educate the public about how to fight crime.
2.) Jack Keil (above) came up with the concept of developing an anthropomorphic character. After coming up with the catchphrase "take a bite of crime" he decided that said character should be a dog.
3.) The McGruff character is based on several different well-known celebrities including "Columbo" (above) which was an incredibly popular television series that ran from 1971-1978 about a detective.
4.) McGruff made his TV debut in 1980 in PSA entitled "Stop A Crime" (which we talked about on the episode!). You can check out that PSA here.
5.) In a survey taken in 2021, 9 out of 10 people were able to recognize McGruff! Now that's saying something considering McGruff was 41 years old in 2021!
Don't forget to check out my latest show: Episode #93: McGruff and Paul DelPonte from the NCPC!
