{"id":49121,"date":"2024-08-26T19:14:10","date_gmt":"2024-08-26T23:14:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/?p=49121"},"modified":"2024-08-26T19:14:16","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T23:14:16","slug":"have-you-ever-met-publixs-mascot-heres-what-hes-all-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/2024\/08\/26\/have-you-ever-met-publixs-mascot-heres-what-hes-all-about\/","title":{"rendered":"Have you ever met Publix\u2019s mascot? Here\u2019s what he\u2019s all about"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The popular Florida-born grocery chain Publix has been around for nearly a century, with founder George Jenkins opening the first store in downtown Winter Haven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since then, the chain has gone through several changes, though a lesser-known feature of Publix is its mascot: Plato.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
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\u201cPlato the Publixaurus\u201d was introduced over three decades ago via a coloring book dubbed \u201cFun with Food.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Publix officials, the book showed Plato as a \u201cgood little dinosaur who learned about nutrition and exercise,\u201d though other dinosaurs wouldn\u2019t listen to his teachings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, Plato decided to share his teachings with children to show the benefits of physical activity and healthy eating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe went to sleep that night and woke up in the 20th century when construction workers building a new Publix store found him,\u201d a release from the company<\/a> explains. \u201cPublix was impressed with Plato and asked him to be their spokesdinosaur.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plato made his official mascot debut at the company\u2019s first Georgia store in Savannah when it opened in 1991, though he\u2019s also made plenty of appearances at company events and other store openings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mascot\u2019s origins stem back to Publix artist Warren Dossey, who was tasked with designing a character to appeal to children. Dossey worked on sketches for two characters that could represent Publix \u2014 a farmer and a dinosaur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFarmers have an obvious tie to Publix,\u201d the release reads. \u201cBut in the end, the dinosaur was selected to represent education, nutrition and environmental awareness.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the dinosaur\u2019s name?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe thought he needed a real name, rather than just Publixaurus,\u201d Warren said. \u201cI named him Plato, and it seemed to work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward, Publix ad layout artist Stacy Smith took over, leading to Plato\u2019s status as the grocery chain\u2019s chief mascot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The popular Florida-born grocery chain Publix has been around for nearly a century, with founder George Jenkins opening the first store in downtown Winter Haven. Since then, the chain has gone through… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49122,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"6","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"wpai_generated_summary":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","default_image_id":71799,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[9574],"class_list":["post-49121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community","tag-have-you-ever-met-publixs-mascot-heres-what-hes-all-about"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49121"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49123,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49121\/revisions\/49123"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lakelandgazette.info\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}