Read more about Bibendum (The Michelin Man) at: Wikipedia

Official Site: Michelin

For the restaurant of the same name, see Michelin House

Bibendum, commonly referred to as the Michelin Man, is the symbol of the Michelin tire company. Introduced at the Lyon Exhibition of 1894 where the Michelin brothers had a stand, Bibendum is one of the world's oldest trademark. The slogan Nunc est bibendum (Now is the time to drink) is taken from Horace's Odes (book I, ode xxxvii, line 1). He is also referred to as Bib or Bibelobis.

While attending the Universal and Colonial Exposition in Lyon in 1894, Edouard and André Michelin noticed a stack of tire that suggested to Edouard the figure of a man without arms. Four years later, André met French cartoonist Marius Rossillon, popularly known as O'Galop, who showed him a rejected image he had created for a Munich brewery—a large, regal figure holding a huge glass of beer and quoting Horace's phrase "Nunc est bibendum". André immediately suggested replacing the man with a figure made from tires. Thus O'Galop transformed the earlier image into Michelin's symbol. Today, Bibendum is one of the world's most recognised trademarks, representing Michelin in over 150 countries.

The 1898 poster showed him offering the toast to his scrawny competitors with a glass full of road hazards, with the title and the tag ("That is to say, to your health. The Michelin tire drinks up obstacles"). The implication is that Michelin tires will easily take on road hazards. The company used this basic poster format for fifteen years, adding its latest products to the table in front of the figure. It is unclear when the word "Bibendum" came to be the name of the character himself. At the latest, it was in 1908, when Michelin commissioned Curnonsky to write a newspaper column signed "Bibendum".

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