Ask for It by Name!

Even shoes can be late bloomers in America.

In 1958, Wolverine World Wide, a Michigan company that had been making shoes since 1883, was about to debut a new line of suede lace-up shoes with a crepe sole designed for comfort. The only detail missing was a good name for the shoe. Company sales manager Jim Muir happened to be visiting a friend in Tennessee one day, and noticed that his host quieted his barking dogs by tossing them bits of fried cornmeal. Such fried morsels, Muir learned, were called “hush puppies” in the South (”hush” being a verb meaning “to quiet”), and were also commonly served as a side dish at the dinner table.

In a moment of branding genius, Muir remembered that human feet had long been known in slang as “dogs,” and that someone with tired and aching feet would often say that “My dogs are barking.” The new comfortable shoe designed to soothe tired feet would henceforth be known as “Hush Puppies.”

The first Hush Puppies model, the Duke (a popular dog’s name) was introduced in 1958, and subsequent early styles also featured canine names such as Toby and Bozo.

Hush Puppies were popular in the 1960s, but by the late 1970s had come to be considered nerdy, associated with cardigan sweaters and aging relatives. Even Wolverine’s chief executive joked that Hush Puppies were the shoes that elderly widows put on their husbands in the casket, and by 1990 Wolverine was playing down its own brand.

All that changed, at least briefly, in 1994, when Tom Hanks wore Hush Puppies in the hit film Forrest Gump. Suddenly Hush Puppies were a fashion sensation and even celebrities had to put their names on waiting lists for the shoes.

By the late 1990s, however, the Hollywood bloom had faded and Hush Puppies sales slumped again. But there’s always the possibility that this old dog may have a few more tricks, and lives, left.