Guinness toucan goes undercover in Mason London’s Good Times collection

Guinness has handed its archive to the illustrator Mason London, and he has put the toucan in a trench coat. Good Times, a 22-piece clothing and homeware collection made with the creative studio Good Shout, reworks some of the most protected artwork in British advertising, and it went on sale this week at the Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Covent Garden.

The collection runs from T-shirts, hoodies, caps and totes to collectible pint glasses, pub mirrors, a toucan figurine and a bomber jacket based on vintage bottle labels. It is the latest release from Guinness Good Things, the brand’s collaboration platform, following tie-ups with Vintage Threads, Lazy Oaf and Percival, as Creative Review reported. London also painted murals for the brewery itself.

How the Guinness toucan ended up in disguise

London was invited to the archives in Dublin, where he went through decades of bottle labels and the work of John Gilroy, the illustrator behind the toucan and the rest of the brand’s mid-century menagerie. His brief, he says, was simply to bring Guinness into his world.

He nearly left the toucan alone, assuming something that famous would be off limits. His first idea was a pub dog in a trench coat buying a pint. The toucan-headed version only went into the presentation as an idea he had thrown away, until Good Shout persuaded him to show it.

Guinness loved it, and the joke became the centre of the range: the bird has become too famous to get served, so he goes out in disguise. The dog’s feet still poke out from under the coat.

Why it matters

Most brands guard a mascot like a trade mark lawyer. Guinness is lending its out, repeatedly, to people with a sense of humour, and it can afford to because the asset is so well established that a parody strengthens it. London put it well himself: people have good associations with the brand and are actively interested in what it does next, which is what lets a collection stretch from clothing to pub mirrors and still make sense.

That permission was earned by ninety years of advertising, from Gilroy’s posters to Surfer, which London says left him awestruck as a child. We ranked the lot in our review of the great Guinness adverts. Merchandise is usually where brand equity gets spent. Done this carefully, it is one of the few places it gets topped up, which is also the bet Supercell is making with Clash Royale.