Milwaukee has seen its share of advertising icons, from Crazy TV Lenny to the personified Klement's Sausages. But once upon a time, a little elf named Billie the Brownie innocently -- and successfully -- sold products to Milwaukeeans.
Billie the Brownie was born in the minds of advertising creatives in 1927 to promote Schuster's Department Store, one of Milwaukee's most popular shopping palaces of the era. Billie was so popular that he later earned his own 15-minute radio program.
Although the dough-faced elf's popularity among Milwaukeeans soared through the '40s and early '50s (in 1947 Billie received 100,000 pieces of fan mail), Schusters' executives decided Billie was not mod enough to make it on television and layed the little guy to rest in the mid-'50s.
Billie's last radio show aired on Christmas Eve 1955, after a "Billie the Brownie" doll failed to sell in Milwaukee stores.
Over the years, Billie the Brownie has "reappeared" at various Milwaukee events, but not surprisingly, has never been embraced by locals as he was way back when.
Molly Snyder started writing and publishing her work at the age 10, when her community newspaper printed her poem, "The Unicorn.” Since then, she's expanded beyond the subject of mythical creatures and written in many different mediums but, nearest and dearest to her heart, thousands of articles for OnMilwaukee.
Molly is a regular contributor to FOX6 News and numerous radio stations as well as the co-host of "Dandelions: A Podcast For Women.” She's received five Milwaukee Press Club Awards, served as the Pfister Narrator and is the Wisconsin State Fair’s Celebrity Cream Puff Eating Champion of 2019.
