Smokey Bear Turns 60, Introduces Sexy New Graphics and Touching Bearcub Story

We were screwing around on some foreign news site when we saw the banner at left and thought, "Hey, Smokey Bear! Can't believe that guy is still around."

Out of curiosity, we hit www.smokeybear.com and found a creepy video that involves a child singing some song about forest fires, coupled with imagery of a spark igniting stenciled animals and a forest.

Smokey's Vault is a feature that brings Smokey into 2007 with a bunch of hip little spigot-thingies. There we discovered that Smokey was an actual baby bear that in 1950 rolled charred (and orphaned) out of the forest after a (clearly unprevented) forest fire.

And that's way more about fire-shy Bear than we ever thought we'd know. Those spigots, or at least that Bambi-esque banner ad, are clearly very effective.