Bibendum - Michelin - 1980

Michelin Man, advertising item
Resin sculpture Michelin
new with packaging

Tracked shipping
carefully packed
with foam protection

Michelin Man in resin, large size compared to gadgets that were given away with tire purchases
This was issued to workshops as an advertising figure

Historical notes:

During their participation in the 1894 Universal and Colonial Exposition in Lyon, Édouard and André Michelin noticed a stack of tires that suggested to Édouard the figure of a man without arms.
Four years later, in 1898, André met the French cartoonist Marius Rossillon, popularly known as O'Galop, who showed him an image he had created for a Munich brewery that had been rejected. It depicted a tall human figure holding a beer glass and the phrase of Horace Nunc est bibendum ("Now is the time to drink"), and André suggested replacing the man with a figure made of tires, similar to the stack seen years earlier; O'Galop thus transformed the original image into what would become Michelin's symbol.

The first poster of 1898 depicted him toasting his miserable competitors with the phrase Nunc est bibendum, with a glass full of dangerous nails and broken glass, while he pronounces the phrase "C'est à dire: À votre santé. Le pneu Michelin boit l'obstacle" ("That is: to your health. The Michelin tire drinks the obstacles"). The implication was that Michelin tires would easily overcome road hazards unlike other tires.

Bibendum in modern version, displayed at a fair in Taipei in 2008.
The company used this type of poster as a base for many years, adding its latest products on the table in front of the figure. It is not clear when the word "Bibendum" became the name of the character itself. In 1908 Michelin commissioned Curnonsky to write a newspaper column signed "Bibendum". In the 1920s, "Bibendum" was also the title of a periodical published by the company's Italian subsidiary.

In 1922, Michelin organized a contest to "name the Michelin Tyre Man" in the United States.

The form of Bibendum has changed over the years, updating after World War II to align with new advertising needs. O'Galop's logo was based on bicycle tires, wore pince-nez glasses with the cord, and smoked a cigar.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Bibendum was shown running and in 1998, on its centenary, a slimmer version became the company's new logo. He had given up the cigar and the pince-nez many years earlier. The slimming of the logo reflected the smaller, low-profile tires of modern cars and gave the character a friendlier, more approachable look.

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