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Cocaine Bear wants you to visit the Kentucky for Kentucky Fun Mall. Lumber on down, y’all!
Or at the very least, check out the 175-pound stuffed creature (aka, Pablo EscoBear)—which perished 31 years ago after ingesting 40 kilos of cocaine that fell from a plane in a botched smuggling operation—in the goofy TV commercial below.
A masterpiece (fiasco?) of low-budget, shouty self-awareness, the ad—and the Lexington, Ky., mall itself—sprang from the Southern-fried (and frequently bourbon-soaked) brain of ad exec/entrepreneur Whit Hiler and his associates, probably best known for their “beardvertising” venture and “Kentucky Kicks Ass” tourism ads from a few years back.
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