This is just another strange ad campaign from the 1980’s — Spuds Mackenzie was the mascot for Bud Light. People went nuts for the dog — the campaign spawned a ton of merchandising. (People in the 80’s got worked up over the damnedest things.)
In the interest of full disclosure, I will confess here that I myself owned a Spuds MacKenzie button at the close of the decade. I wore it on my dark gray denim jacket — along with a bunch of other arbitrarily selected buttons that I thought made me look extremely cool. (It was a late-80’s thing.) Hell, I even wore that jacket-and-button ensemble during the first semester at Mary Washington College.
Weird world — Spuds was actually a female dog. She was a rescue dog, and she was named “Honey Tree Evil Eye.” (I feel certain there is an interesting story behind that.) And Mothers Against Drunk Driving lobbied against the ad campaign as it allegedly targeted children.
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 