But the damage to the Noid brand was done: not only was the headline too good to ignore ( вЂњDominoвЂ™s Hostages CouldnвЂ™t Avoid the Noid this TimeвЂќ) but it turned out that Kenneth Lamar Noid actually believed he was the NoidвЂ“or, at least, the NoidвЂ™s original inspiration.ДЄ paranoid schizophrenic, Noid believed that DominoвЂ™s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan had created the вЂњAvoid the NoidвЂќ campaign specifically to persecute him. After a five-hour standoff during which Noid demanded $100,000 in ransom money, the employees in question escaped. 357 magnum revolver and took two employees hostages. On January 30, 1989, a 22-year-old man named Kenneth Lamar Noid walked into a DominoвЂ™s Pizza in Atlanta, Georgia, with a. Even compared to the worst corporate mascots, the Noid was a unique grotesquerie.Д«ut as an informative post by Zachary Crockett over at Priceonomics explains, what eventually killed off the Noid had nothing to do with the public coming to its senses, but rather what may have been вЂњthe worst mascot PR in historyвЂќ at the height of his popularity.

The NoidвЂ™s bizarre popularity was probably helped by the fact that DominoвЂ™s Pizza chose Will Vinton StudiosвЂ“creators of the California RaisinsвЂ“to bring the Noid to life through Claymation. The Noid was a strange character to capture the cultural zeitgeist, but in the 1980s, he was popular enough to earn not just one, but two separate video games, as well as dominate a line of toys and merchandise. Only DominoвЂ™s Pizza, the ad campaign claimed, delivered pizzas that were вЂњNoid-proof.вЂќ Avoid the Noid by ordering from DominoвЂ™s and get your pizza in 30 minutes or less. A gibbering, pot-bellied, buck-toothed pervert squeezed into a skintight rabbit costume, the Noid was a Hamburglar-like character wholly devoted to delaying pizza deliveries.

Even compared to the worst corporate mascots, the Noid was a unique grotesquerie.

Domino meme