Puppy siblings and a pinch hitter: The five canines behind The Farmer's Dog's Super Bowl commercial
Wayne and Samantha, Princess, Bolt and Blue have gone their separate ways but together, will always make up the answer to a trivia question:
How many dogs does it take to represent the life of a chocolate lab in a 60-second story?
For The Farmer's Dog, the answer is five canines of varying ages and background, joined together to tug on heart strings and help the brand stand out in a Super Bowl commercial field overloaded with celebrity pitchmen.
In "Forever," its first Super Bowl ad, The Farmer's Dog prevailed in USA TODAY's 35th Ad Meter competition, its score of 6.56 outpointing A-list brands and celebrities like Will Ferrell, Bens Affleck and Stiller and the boys from Breaking Bad.
"Forever" certainly captures the magic of television: A puppy grows into a senior dog all while a family grows up around him, as we see a tail-wagging puppy evolve into an adorable elder, its face flecked with gray as our human protagonist grows up herself to have a child of her own.
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Tracking the dog's evolution through one actor would require a lot of makeup and trickery. So The Farmer's Dog - which produced the ad in-house - quickly realized it takes a veritable kennel to make magic. The company and director Goh Iromoto leaned on five pups, four of them making their acting debuts, to pull it off.
It starts with Wayne and Samantha: Actual siblings who were just eight weeks old when the commercial was shot in mid-December. They play young Bear, the name of the dog in the ad. Both were making their small-screen debuts and required significant nap time during lulls in shooting.
That duo passed the torch to Princess, a 1-year-old lab who plays Bear during the dog's spunky youth. Princess gave way to Bolt, an actor's actor whose proverbial IMDB page was already plenty long. At around 7 or 8 years old, Bolt had been in plenty of commercials already and hit his marks in predictive fashion.
Finally, the ad closes with Blue, seen cuddling with his humans at the end. Blue is in his teenage years and was called upon after another senior dog pulled out at the last minute.
Fortunately for The Farmer's Dog, its search for a replacement led it to Smart Approach Veterinary Services, where one of its doctors owned Blue and decided he could handle the rigors of the set. It was Blue's cuddliness, you might say, that pushed "Forever" across the goal line and into the realm of championship ads.
Now, the Forever Five will go their separate ways, even the siblings. After shooting was complete, brother and sister Wayne and Samantha found their forever homes.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Super Bowl The Farmer's Dog's winning commercial featured five canines
