Similar simplistic concept except the centerpiece

Similar simplistic concept except the centerpiece was beer instead of pot. Remarkable success and cult-like staying power. The limpness and weaknesses of the current exploitation featuring pot are an open invitation for someone else to run with the idea. 



SCTV Great White North from the web

Bob and Doug McKenzie are a pair of fictional Canadian brothers who hosted "Great White North", a sketch which was introduced on SCTV for the show's third season when it moved to CBC Television in 1980. Bob is played by Rick Moranis and Doug is played by Dave Thomas. Although created originally as filler to both satisfy and mock network Canadian content demands, the duo became a pop culture phenomenon in both Canada and the United States.

The characters were later revived for an animated series, Bob & Doug, which premiered on Global in 2009.

The duo revived the act in two award-winning television commercials for Pizza Hut in 1984 and 1986 and a two-year campaign for the Molson Brewing Company in 1999 and 2000 consisting of more than a dozen television and radio commercials which aired nationally in the U.S. and also a series of commercials for Mr. Lube which aired in Canada in 2002. Featured as a sponsor of the "Two-Four Anniversary", a series of Red Cap Ale commercials featured the duo in 2007 along with collectible "stubbies" featuring the characters on the bottles.

McFarlane Toys produced Bob and Doug McKenzie action figures in September 2000. See McFarlane Action Figures.

The "Strange Brew" movie was released by MGM in 1983. While receiving only minimal praise from critics, it performed fairly well at the box office, earning $8.5 million in the U.S. alone to easily cover its skinny $5 million budget. Subsequent to its initial theatrical release in 1983, Strange Brew was released by MGM in both Beta and VHS formats and subsequently re-packaged and re-released on VHS and Laser disc by Turner which acquired the MGM library in 1985, then also several times on VHS and DVD by Warner Brothers which acquired the library from Turner in 1993. Strange Brew continued to perform for Warner Brothers as a DVD title most likely because of the strong college cult following for Bob and Doug.

They rode the crest of a fad, peaking in 1982-83, that produced one comedy album, The Great White North and a movie, Strange Brew. The album released by Anthem Records in Canada and Mercury Records in the US, went platinum in sales, won a Grammy nomination and broke the top ten on Billboard's Top LPs and Tapes list in March, 1982. It is noted for the song "Take Off" which featured fellow Canadian Geddy Lee of the rock group Rush chorusing between the McKenzies' banter. On this album, they also sing their own improvised version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas", which is frequently played on the radio around the holidays in both Canada and the United States. While hugely popular in the U.S., the album was also #1 in Canada for six weeks, suggesting that Canadians appreciated the duo as an affectionate self-parody.


A second album, a "soundtrack" to their movie Strange Brew, was released in 1983. The album featured dialogue and music from the film, as well as new skits made specifically for the album that centered around the movie. The lead off track was appropriately entitled "This Isn't Our Second Album". The album sold poorly and was out-of-print soon after.

In the 2000 video game Spyro: Year of the Dragon two characters appear in the Icy Peak level whose names are Bob and Doug. The level is a land of ice and snow and there are references in certain areas of the level to ice skating and ice hockey, as well as a use of the phrase "Take off, hoser!". The characters the player interacts with in the level seem to speak with Canadian accents.

In 2003, the fastest computer in Canada which is used by the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto was named after Bob and Doug. The $900,000 computer is being used to simulate supermassive black holes and collisions of galaxies. The machine, nicknamed McKenzie has 268 gigabytes of memory and 40 terabytes of disk space, and consists of two master nodes (Bob and Doug), 256 compute nodes, and eight development nodes.

They played a variant of the act for the Walt Disney Pictures animated feature film Brother Bear and its sequel, with their characters being the voices of a pair of goofy moose named Rutt and Tuke. They also recorded a commentary for the movie that is seen on the DVD.

A new special, Bob & Doug McKenzie's Two-Four Anniversary aired on May 20, 2007, on CBC Television. It was a retrospective on the history of the characters and their popularity, featuring interviews with various celebrities, classic clips, and new material featuring the pair. It includes an introduction by former Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and a cameo appearance by Rush lead singer Geddy Lee. On November 20, 2007, the special was released on DVD. The DVD, re-edited by Thomas himself, was twice as long as the broadcast and featured several classic McKenzie sketches from SCTV in their entirety, new footage filmed on the Great White North set and an hour's worth of bonus features. A Bob and Doug McKenzie bottle opener was included in every DVD.

In 2007, on Rush's Snakes & Arrows tour, a short film of Bob and Doug McKenzie was shown as an intro to the song "The Larger Bowl".

Animax Entertainment, whose interactive division is currently headed by Dave Thomas, began producing a new animated series for the Global Television Network based on the characters debuting on April 19, 2009, simply entitled Bob & Doug. Thomas reprised the character of Doug in the new series. Moranis, who had retired from acting, chose not to voice the character of Bob. The part was instead voiced by Dave Coulier.