Bevo & Buford Do America!

I am a huge fan of Busch Gardens: The Old Williams-burg European Experience or whatever it's calling itself today. It's a classy place. I love classy places! It has roller coasters. I love roller coasters! It use to have free beer, but it cut that out before I came of age. Screw them!

Way back before the place was so classy and before they had most of the coasters they have today (but while they still had free beer. Screw them!) they also had Bevo & Buford.

Bevo & Buford were but one pair of a cast of characters that included the much more popular St. George & the Dragon (those two still put in the occasional appearance on souvenirs and kid's clothing) and a few more escapees from the Island of Misfit Mascots, each representing to the best of their abilities one of the European 'countries' that made up Busch Gardens as a whole. Buford the beaver was the official ambassador from "New France" aka "Canada" aka "Not Europe" while Bevo the fox-in-the-Robin-Hood-outfit-who-thinks-that-his ass-isn't going-to get-sued-by-the-Walt-Disney-company was, I'm assuming, from England. I'm assuming this 'cause I have no idea where Sherwood Forest is. Maybe Scotland. Whatever, it's British.

Cavorting about the park along with B & B were a frog from France (and you thought the Canadian beaver stereotype was bad) named Tallulah and some sort of a Sir Isaac Newton-like fop who's name escapes me. Somewhere within the copious archives (i.e. crap) that I've accumulated over the years I have a map of the park which lists all of these characters. When I come across it I'll be sure to update. If I was any kind of a person at all I would have found that map before I even bothered writing this post, but I really didn't feel like walking all the way upstairs and looking in the closet. Screw me!

Since they didn't have a cartoon series of their own and since their names weren't Mickey, Scooby or Bugs and since most of them were based on horrible ethnic stereotypes to begin with, these furry folks didn't remain in the park for very long. In fact, the only reason I bring up Bevo & Buford in the first place (besides as an excuse for that clever and not at all dated Beavis & Butthead spoof in the title) is because of the important place they hold in history as the first openly gay theme park mascot couple in the U.S. Of course it would take a Canadian & a European to break the boundaries of personal freedoms in America, but then again it always does. Screw us!

Buford, of course, was the bottom.