The Demise of Bennie the Smoking Dinosaur
Wednesday, 13th August 2008 by James Turnbull
Long-time GSS readers may recall the story of Bennie the Dinosaur, who we originally spotted way back in February 2006.
Bennie was originally employed as the mascot for a now-defunct chain of cigarette shops and in his lifetime had moved around a bit, even changing sex along the way.
The last we'd heard of Bennie was that he'd been moved to the garden of a former employee of the company, but that garden was not covered on Google Earth.
That garden is now visible, but in that time there's been some shocking developments, and all that we can see are Bennie's charred remains:
The official word is that Bennie died during a forest fire, but with the dinosaur's well-publicised past involvement in cigarette advertising it's hard to accept that story.
A much more likely explanation is that, as with a staggering 800 people in the US each year, Bennie died as a result of carelessness with his cigarettes.
Thanks to Glenn Rice.
If the fire happened on June 22 2008, this area sure recovered fast!
What is strange to me is that the remains are still gray colored and in the photo on the “official word” the body doesn’t look burned at all, just dismembered. I assume the lone egg has now been destroyed since mother can no longer protect it…sad sad days.
My understanding was that there was some incident with an asteroid or something. Or have i misunderstood? Again?
Using a dinosaur to represent smoking seems somehow appropriate. I can’t wait until they become extinct.
It doesn’t matter how he died, just aslong as we remember his life. 2 minutes silence seems appropriate.
GOOD RIDDENCE TO UNHEALTHY ADVERTISING
Does anyone know if this was the same giant dinosaur featured in “The Wizard,” that 80s movie about the mentally retarded kid who was absurdly good at video games?
@Jeff, nope that’s the Cabazon Dinosaurs.
Nice irony.
got to agree with the posts above, the sheer irony of a dinosaur being used to promote cigarettes:) maybe it was cancer that killed him and the fire was just a cover up story:)