In Media and Popular Culture
- Phil and the town of Punxsutawney were portrayed in the 1993 comedy film Groundhog Day. The actual town in the film is Woodstock, Illinois. The movie was likely the biggest factor in Phil and the town's current popularity.
- In 1995, Phil flew to Chicago for a guest appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired on Groundhog Day, February 2, 1995.
- Phil was also the main attraction on an episode of the MTV series Viva La Bam. The episode was titled "Groundhog Day" and it aired on April 10, 2005. In the episode, street skater Bam Margera held a special race in honor of Punxsutawney Phil.
- Until 2009, Ty Inc. annually released a "Punxsutawney Phil" Beanie Baby to celebrate Groundhog Day. The toy is shown consistently wearing a top hat and bow tie in order to appear as a member of the Inner Circle. Three varieties are known to exist. The first is a consumer model with a black bow-tie (some have black or purple capes as well), which is available nationwide. A second, with a red bow-tie, is sold in a few stores in Punxsutawney itself, including at the Chamber of Commerce (both the red- and the black-tie versions benefit the Groundhog Club Inner Circle of Punxsutawney). The third version, with a silver bow-tie, is sold directly through the Ty Store online shop, raising funds for the Clearfield-Jefferson Red Cross. The "Punxsutawney Phil" Beanie Baby for 2009 (with a red bow-tie) was the last in the series; it was available only at the Punxsutawney Souvenir Shop.
- In 2010, a new text service was started to announce Phil's predictions. Mobile phone users could text the word "Groundhog" to the number 247365.
- The Pennsylvania Lottery uses an animatronic groundhog called "Gus", who bills himself in television commercials as the "second-most-famous groundhog in Pennsylvania" (as an unspoken nod to Phil) as their mascot for their instant scratch-off games.
- A tetraploid cultivated variety of daylily named "Punxsutawney Phil" was registered with the American Hemerocallis Society in 2003.
Read more about this topic: Punxsutawney Phil
Famous quotes containing the words media, popular and/or culture:
“Few white citizens are acquainted with blacks other than those projected by the media and the so—called educational system, which is nothing more than a system of rewards and punishments based upon one’s ability to pledge loyalty oaths to Anglo culture. The media and the “educational system” are the prime sources of racism in the United States.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers another.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“Let a man attain the highest and broadest culture that any American has possessed, then let him die by sea-storm, railroad collision, or other accident, and all America will acquiesce that the best thing has happened to him; that, after the education has gone far, such is the expensiveness of America, that the best use to put a fine person to is to drown him to save his board.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)