A Ralston Purina treat from St. Louis.

Beggin’ is a dog treat made to look like a strip of bacon. English Wikipedia says the treats were first sold in 1989, starting in North America, and that they were first made by Ralston Purina, the St. Louis company that is now part of Nestlé Purina PetCare. For most of its life the product has been called Beggin’ Strips; Purina’s more recent announcements call the brand simply Beggin’, while the original strip keeps the longer name on its packs.

The company behind it was old by 1989. English Wikipedia says William H. Danforth, with George Robinson and William Andrews, founded Purina Mills in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1894, and that the business took the name Ralston Purina in 1902. Beggin’ was a treat rather than a meal, and Purina has sold it on one idea ever since: bacon.

English Wikipedia lists the slogan “Dogs Don’t Know It’s Not Bacon,” citing the trade magazine Pet Food Industry in 2007. The line admits that the product is an imitation and turns that admission into the joke.

English Wikipedia says the treats now come in a variety of flavours. Purina’s 2023 releases still describe the brand by the same idea, as a treat “made with real bacon” that “dogs go bonkers for”; we give those as the company’s own words.

Hamlet and a commercial people still look up.

Two things carry most of the Beggin’ identity: a cartoon dog and a television commercial. The dog is Hamlet. English Wikipedia describes him as a cartoon dog on the bag, licking his chops while waiting for a treat, and says he was created in 1994 and chosen to appear in the brand’s advertising and to represent the product. In an October 2023 news release Purina called Hamlet “Beggin’s lovable mascot.”

The commercial is older than the mascot. In a news release dated 2 May 2023 from St. Louis, Purina said it was paying homage to “its iconic commercial released in 1989,” the year the treats went on sale. The release opened with the line most people remember from that advertisement — “I smell bacon… BACON, BACON, BACONNN!”. The release invited owners to “sniff around for treats like the original commercial.” Tim Brunt, then a brand manager at Purina, said in the same release that “people consistently search online to watch the now 34-year-old, retro Beggin’ ad.”

Purina built a whole campaign on that memory in 2023. It released a limited collection of vintage-styled merchandise — crop tops and T-shirts for people and their dogs, hair scrunchies, leashes, collars and a fanny pack sized to carry a pack of treats — sold through a dedicated online shop. It added a “Vintage Commercial” augmented-reality filter on Instagram, so owners could film themselves “going bonkers” for Beggin’ or follow the scent from the dog’s point of view, and it worked with Zach Kornfeld of the online comedy group The Try Guys to promote it.

In October 2023 the brand followed with a Pawliday Cheer Kit: a holiday sweater for people with a matching bandana for dogs, and a small talking plaque of Hamlet that, at the push of a button, announces “IT’S BEGGIN’.” Purina opened pre-orders on the brand’s own online shop on 25 October 2023, with the kits due to ship in December, and Brunt, by then senior brand manager, said the aim was “to bring more meaty goodness to your dog’s holiday celebrations.” Both campaigns were built around the brand’s own past: the 1989 commercial and the cartoon dog.

The dog-treat aisle.

The seven brands in this group are all dog treat names: Greenies, Zuke’s, Milk-Bone, Dentastix, Beggin’, WHIMZEES and Pet Munchies. Dog treat brands in general sit at many different points in the pet trade, from founder-run businesses that began with a single recipe to names that now belong to much larger pet food groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a supermarket aisle to a veterinary practice or an online shop.

A dog treat brand’s identity is usually carried less by the treat itself than by a pack, a name and a character or colour that owners learn to recognise, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its treats are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its treats are made and how its packs have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A Purina brand inside Nestlé.

Beggin’ changed owners when its parent did. English Wikipedia says Nestlé bought Ralston Purina and merged it with its own Friskies PetCare business to form Nestlé Purina PetCare in December 2001. Nestlé has owned Beggin’ since then, and Purina’s 2023 releases list it among a company whose brands include Purina Cat Chow, Purina ONE, Pro Plan, Fancy Feast and Tidy Cats. The company’s news releases still carry a St. Louis dateline, and English Wikipedia places Nestlé Purina’s headquarters in the city, on the site where Ralston Purina put up its first building in 1902. In the boilerplate of its news releases, Nestlé Purina PetCare dates itself to 1894 and describes itself as “part of Nestlé.”

Those releases also show how Purina now writes for the brand. They borrow the voice of the 1989 advertisement — the shouted “BACON, BACON, BACONNN!”, capitalised brand names such as “BEGGIN’ Pawliday Cheer Kit,” and puns including “ultimutt” and “PAW-some” — and they sell the brand through clothing and gifts as much as through the treats themselves.

For a design guide, Beggin’ shows how a single sensory idea — the look and smell of bacon — can hold a brand together for more than three decades, carried by a cartoon mascot and one memorable commercial rather than by a logo change. Compare Purina Pro Plan, a Ralston Purina line from 1986 under the same owner, and Milk-Bone, another dog-treat brand in this series. For this guide we use a sizzle red, a smoked brown and a cream with a chunky rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Beggin’’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.