After much soul-searching, we decided to shelve our first slogan, which was “Purveyors of the finest things to stick your hand into.” I really liked it, and I think it fit pretty well with our comedic sensibilities, and gave a pretty good sense of the tone we’d be tending to go for. Plus, it has everything you’d want in a double-entendre — it’s technically clean, but in actuality quite dirty.

Since we want Hoggworks to be a business, not a playhouse — though we do want to have fun as much as possible — we realized that the old slogan wouldn’t work so well. People have commented to me in the past that they would not use me after reading the slogan, because of some kind of moral sensibility. And while those people (or at least the one I’m thinking of) is reacting to a religious sensibility, and does puppetry for ministries (both of which are totally cool), and even though my initial reaction was to brush the comment aside with a somewhat derisive “who cares? You’re a puppeteer, too, you’d never use us!,” I had the thought that while the complaints were minimal,  there could be a bunch of people who considered hiring us, got offended, and then walked away, without us knowing. I’m not one for censorship, and I don’t want to feel like I’m being hide-bound by sensibilities that I think are needlessly strict, and I don’t believe that prompted the rewrite of the slogan. Let’s call it professionalism.

In addition to wanting this to feel like a real business, if we’re half as good as we think we are, then we ought to be able to come up with a humorous slogan that’s catchy, witty, and doesn’t skew tawdry (I will admit that while my first reason for the first slogan was that it was funny, my second reason was that it a touch blue). To whit, here’s the new slogan:

“Purveyors of the finest puppets made by Hoggworks Studios.”

What do you think? It’s a bit self-deprecating, hopefully droll, and it made me, when I first wrote it down, laugh out loud, which I have come to take as a good sign.