Trivia / Energizer Bunny

Trope Trivia

• Blooper:
  • The commercial for Sexy Nuit shows off not only an obvious neck flap on the bunny prop, but how the puppeteer has to try and maneuver around the bathtub without accidentally driving it into the water.
  • A recent commercial has the bunny using an electric toothbrush by phasing the CGI toothbrush model through the Bunny's head and fur, due to the lack of a mouth.
  • In one of the mid-90s battery tester commercials, when the bunny starts spinning the drum with his feet to get attention back onto him. The drum changes its design to an earlier version instead of the one shown at the beginning.
• Banned in China: Thanks to the Oklahoma City bombing not long after its original release, the "Bombshell Bunny" commercial (where the Bunny is chased after a fake female bunny bomb made by a mad scientist) was banned and considered lost until it resurfaced on YouTube.
• Dueling Works: In Fall 1994, Duracell launched the Puttermans campaign, centered around the titular Robo Family who ran on oversized Duracell batteries. In the same vein as Energizer's fictional rival Supervolt was made to resemble Duracell batteries, the off-brand batteries that other robots used resembled Energizer batteries, being silver with black stripes. Many people did not like the Puttermans due to how annoyingly optimistic they were, in addition to how deeply each of them fell under the Uncanny Valley. Sure enough, the Puttermans campaign ended in early 1997, while the Energizer Bunny is (ahem...) still going strong to this day.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Some of the commercial parodies have been lost over time and can't even be found on YouTube. One memorable parody included one for The Clapper, which ended with the bunny coming through the commercial after the elderly woman clapped off the lights.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: The bunny's design has been subject to this, with the story being that designer Eric Allard got the inspiration from an inflatable pool toy. It's never been confirmed if this was the case.
• Referenced by...: Being a very popular series of commercials, this is a given, enough to warrant its own page.
• Role Reprise: Keith Scott and Frank Welker reprise their roles as Boris and Bullwinkle from an earlier Taco Bell campaign featuring the characters. June Foray would also return as Natasha for these spots.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: When Coors aired a parody of their commercials featuring Leslie Nielsen banging a drum in a pair of rabbit ears, Energizer tried to sue The Miller Company over it. They would ultimately lose the case for the exact same reason their own campaign thrived— It was protected under parody law.
  • In a reverse case, when Duracell tried to apply for trademark for their bunny in the United States, they lost because Energizer already claimed the trademark, resulting in the "Durabunny" to only be used in foreign countries outside of the Americas.

General Trivia

• All Effects, the studio originally responsible for the construction and maintenance of the original puppet are also known for their robotics works on films such as Class of 1999, Virus and Moonwalker. One of the puppets made by the company is still in the possession of Eric Allard, while another would be auctioned off in 2010.
• Mythbuster Grant Imahara would contribute to several of the later puppets constructed by Industrial Light & Magic used in the commercials with regards to the mechanism used to bang the drums.
• Despite the D Cell battery seen on the Bunny, the original animatronic puppet actually ran on more than 40 batteries, all located within the drum. This is part of the reason why the prop was retired after a while.
• There are three known performers for the Bunny's animatronic puppet - Allard himself, Peter Greenwood^*a former animator of Hanna-Barbera Australia and voice actor for The Rescuers Down Under and Power Rangers. He also helped to research "The Moose That Roared" for voice actor Keith Scott and Hal Miles^*An animator and animatronics technician with credits ranging from Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, Twilight Zone: The Movie and Starship Troopers, along with the "Sorcerer Mickey" Vanity Plate for Walt Disney Home Video.
• Frank Oz directed a few ads in the mid-1990s, most of them during the Supervolt arc.
• It's still up for grabs whether the campaign actually helped Duracell. Back then Duracell made claims 40 percent of consumers associated commercials with them, and their sales went up during the campaign. It's hard to verify that claim now, however in terms of market share in United States, Energizer never pulled ahead of Duracell pretty much up to this day, remaining at second position. Likewise you don't see that kind of "mascot takeover" anymore. Come to think about it, in the market where there isn't really much difference between brands (do you really care about the brand of alkaline batteries in your TV remote?), blurring the line even more between you and your competition is probably something you don't want to do (unless you're dead last or something).
• One can interpret the Bunny as a Spiritual Successor of sorts to another robot used in an Energizer commercial. In 1986, as part of the brand's short-lived "Do-Run-Run" campaign, one advertisement features a robot powered by the battery being chased by young children, outrunning them akin to the Bunny. This robot would also be built by Allard, and can be seen both in The Wizard as one of Simon's toys in his workshop, and in the background of Rollie's studio apartment for a couple of shots in F/X 2.
• USS Blueback, a decommissioned US Navy submarine used for the filming of The Hunt for Red October that now resides as part of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland, Oregon, has a plush of the Energizer Bunny in its after battery well.

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