Thurl Ravenscroft was a man known mostly for two things: Owning an insanely metal sounding name and being the voice of the the anthropomorphic tiger used to advertise Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes. A gig so sweet it even came with its own private limo.
To explain, as noted in the image macro 3 inches above this sentence, long after he retired from the world of acting, Ravencroft continued to voice Tony the Tiger. As an added bonus, Ravenscroft also dubbed Kellogg’s ads in Spanish meaning he got paid double to record all his lines twice.
However, despite being happy to continue espousing the greatness of sugared flakes of flattened corn in two languages, as the years went on Ravenscroft’s age and limited mobility began to become more and more of a problem for Kellogg’s when they needed to actor to record lines. Rather than replace him or some other soulless corporate shit like that, Kellogg’s paid to have Ravenscroft brought to the studio in a private limo every single time they needed him.
But here’s the adorable part, Ravenscroft voiced Tony for over half a fucking century (53 years in total) and continued to do voice over work for Kellogg’s and Kellogg’s exclusively until the day he died. In other words, Ravenscroft just really liked pretending to be a cartoon tiger and despite not being able to fucking walk in his later years, still went through the ordeal of being driven hundreds of miles to a recording studio to rattle off a few lines as Tony.
In fact, there’s an anecdotes from a guy who tried to hire Ravenscroft to do some light voice over work in his 80’s (he died at age 91 and was still recording Tony the Tiger dialogue up until a few months beforehand), similarly offering a private limo to take him to and from the studio like Kellogg’s. Ravenscroft’s answer to this request was that he only left his home when “doing the tiger” before politely declining.
This said, Ravenscroft always made himself available to do phone interviews, in which he revealed that even at like 80 years old, he still loved blowing people’s fucking minds by bellowing out “THEY’RE GRRRRRRREAT!” at random when in public. Which is just amazing.
