The ‘tiger in your tank’ comes to auction
Esso mascot was tucked away for 60 years in a curling club
Scott Quesnelle, Inventory Manager at Miller & Miller Auctions, poses with the 6-foot Esso Oil Tiger mascot, coming to auction March 7.
A life-sized fiberglass tiger mascot commissioned by Imperial Oil Company in the late 1950s to promote Esso gasoline sales is coming out of the darkness and into the light and will be sold at auction.
If you’re old enough to remember the Esso advertising slogan “put a tiger in your tank” you’ll be able to picture him.
The crouching, six-foot-long tiger has been stored in a closet at the Hamilton Victoria Curling Club since he was brought in around 1959 by a former curler, who at the time was an executive with Imperial Oil, which owned the Esso brand. He knew it would be the perfect mascot for the club’s annual Tiger Town Bonspiel, which ran from the late 1950s into the ‘60s.
The crouching, six-foot-long tiger has been stored in a closet at the Hamilton Victoria Curling Club since he was brought in around 1959.
“We opened in 1867 and are one of the oldest clubs around – about as old as Canada,” says club member and volunteer Donna Guitar, who consigned the tiger on behalf of the curling club to Miller & Miller’s March 7, 2026 Petroliana auction. It’s in excellent condition with just some minor paint wear. It’s estimated to fetch CA$3,500 to $5,000.
The ‘put a tiger in your tank’ was a hugely successful advertising campaign during the 1960s. There were bumper stickers that said “I’ve got a tiger in my tank,” and fuzzy striped tiger tails were also manufactured, which people would hang from their gas caps so it looked like the rest of the tiger was inside the gas tank.
The ‘put a tiger in your tank’ was a hugely successful advertising campaign during the 1960s.
“This would have really spoken to the 1960s muscle car culture,” says Justin Miller, Miller & Miller’s co-owner. “The tiger was a symbol of speed and power, an appealing image for that generation, and it’s probably among the top 10 most memorable advertising campaigns in the past 50 or 60 years.”
Justin believes few of the huge fibreglass tigers have survived. “It’s not like a sign where you’d stack it up against a wall and forget about it. I’ve seen very few come to market in Canada.”
A similar mascot seen in a Toronto parade in the early 1960s. Source.
Imperial Oil Limited display at the Canadian National Exhibition building promoting Esso's 'Put a tiger in your tank!' advertising campaign in Toronto, Ontario.
Donna says the curling club plans to put the auction proceeds towards club maintenance, equipment and other needs. “The money will help support our club,” she says. “We have no use for him now. He’s been sitting in that closet in the dark for so long. It’s exciting he’ll be going to a new home where someone will appreciate him.” It’s somewhat ironic that the tiger brought in to promote a fundraiser over 60 years ago has now become the fundraiser itself.
The life-sized fiberglass tiger mascot was commissioned by Imperial Oil Company in the late 1950s to promote Esso gasoline sales.
According to campaign.co.uk, an online marketing, advertising and media industry resource, the slogan ‘put a tiger in your tank’ was created in 1959 by Emery Smith, a young Chicago copywriter who’d been asked to produce a newspaper ad to help boost Esso Extra sales. The tiger mascot became so well known and so celebrated in the advertising world that Time magazine referred to 1964 as ‘The Year of the Tiger’, an allusion to the Madison Avenue ad world. The campaign also inspired American country music band Buck Owens and the Buckaroos to write the hit song, ‘I’ve Got A Tiger By The Tail’.
An early Esso commercial (late 50s or early 60s) featuring the “put a tiger in your tank” slogan.
As for the early history of the company, Imperial Oil incorporated in 1880 in London, Ontario. U.S.-based Standard Oil bought a majority interest in Imperial Oil in 1898 and opened the first Esso station in Canada in 1907 in Vancouver when the city only had about 160 licensed vehicles. (‘Esso’ is the phonetic pronunciation of ‘S’ and ‘O’ – for Standard Oil.)
“It’s nice to have such an iconic piece as the tiger itself, especially when there are still people around who remember the campaign,” says Justin. “The size of a piece used to be a deterrent for collectors, but a lot of them now have the space for these impact pieces.”
Long-time members of the Hamilton Victoria Curling Club are pictured above with the tiger. The proceeds from the sale of the mascot will be put towards club maintenance, equipment and other needs.
By Diane Sewell
Diane Sewell has been a writer for more than 25 years, producing feature stories for some of the country’s top newspapers and consumer magazines, as well as client newsletters and commissioned books.
SALE INFORMATION:
Petroliana
March 7, 2026. 9am EST
A Miller & Miller Online Webcast Auction
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