Fourteen years after a Mobile television crew was sent to the Crichton neighborhood to sort out a traffic jam, the goofy news story that resulted is still generating merchandise, media appearances and debate over who actually owns its most famous image.
The 2006 segment aired just before St. Patrick’s Day and featured interviews with residents who said, with varying degrees of conviction, that a leprechaun had taken up residence in a tree near Le Cren Street and that a crowd had gathered hoping to find his gold. The report was popular around Mobile as soon as it aired, but it became a true phenomenon once it hit YouTube, where it still resurfaces every spring as St. Patrick’s Day approaches.
Scott Walker, who was a morning anchor at the station at the time, said he still cannot quite believe how long the story has stuck around. “If you’d told me we’d be talking about it 14 years later, I wouldn’t believe you,” he said. Walker, who now serves as a Jefferson Parish councilman in Metairie, Louisiana, said the crew had been sent to Crichton simply to cover a traffic backup caused by the crowd, with no idea the commotion was tied to a supposed leprechaun sighting. “It wouldn’t have shown good news judgment,” he said of the decision to send a reporter, had producers known what was actually happening.
The clip that circulates online today shows Walker anchoring alongside a colleague, but the original report aired the night before with a different reporter holding a box of Lucky Charms cereal during the live shot. Walker said he first watched the segment along with everyone else the next morning, after pitching it for a re-air. “I read the intro and thought, ‘this is so stupid,'” he said. “It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before. It was silly. Local telecasts air stupid stories all the time, but this is the gift that keeps on giving.” Walker said he is still recognized as the “leprechaun guy” roughly 20 times a year, even outside Mobile, and that he and his family wear leprechaun-themed shirts every St. Patrick’s Day.
The most enduring artifact from the segment is a crude sketch of the leprechaun’s face, drawn on a sheet of yellow legal pad paper, showing little more than an outline, a hat and two eyes with no nose or mouth. That image, viewed millions of times online, has become shorthand for Mobile itself and now appears on hats, T-shirts, buttons, stickers, door hangers, Mardi Gras beads, cookies and even beer labels.
Parish Brewing Company, based in Broussard, Louisiana, has leaned into the phenomenon by putting the sketch on the label of a pilsner sold in the Mobile market and parts of Louisiana. Owner Andrew Godley said the idea came to him while sitting at Callaghan’s Irish Social Club in midtown Mobile. He called the leprechaun a “regional mascot” and said he had long been a fan of the viral clip. “It was an amazing thing,” he said. “We originally thought of the leprechaun beer for St. Patrick’s Day.” Godley said the brewery produced 400 to 500 cases for the season and has fielded requests from wholesalers well beyond the area. “We get calls for it from wholesalers all over the South,” he said. “We can’t make enough. We only ordered enough labels for a small amount.” He chose a pilsner as the base beer because of its broad appeal. “It’s not the most interesting beer we make, and it’s not a huge flagship for us,” he said. “Anyone can drink it.”
Local clothing designer Johnny Gwin, who runs Deep Fried Threads, built a Mobile-centric shirt line around the sketch after a trip to Chicago inspired him to mash up local iconography. Seeing a T-shirt there featuring the Blues Brothers character Jake Blues in Chicago Blackhawks warpaint, Gwin returned home and began producing shirts pairing the Crichton Leprechaun with Mobile Mardi Gras icon Joe Cain, a combination fans have nicknamed “LepreCain.” “There are no words,” Gwin said of the design. “You either get it or you don’t.” The shirts sell year-round, Gwin said, since they also do well around Christmas, and Deep Fried Threads has expanded the line to include LepreCain-themed koozies, buttons and novelty “leprechaun-trapping license” stickers.
The Mobile bakery EllenJay landed its own moment of national exposure when Jimmy Kimmel pulled a Crichton Leprechaun-themed sugar cookie from his pocket during an episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live.” Co-owner Jennifer Conrad said the bakery had shipped Kimmel some of the cookies but never expected them to end up on the broadcast. “Never in a million years,” she said. The hand-decorated cookie recreates the legal-pad sketch on a yellow background. Conrad said a customer first requested a custom version of the cookie about five years earlier, and the bakery began selling them the following year. They remain available only through St. Patrick’s Day each season, though Conrad said the bakery has discussed selling them year-round given their popularity. “We have a shop full of them now,” she said. “We’ve toyed with carrying them year-round. They are extremely popular.”
Few Mobile bars are as associated with St. Patrick’s Day as Callaghan’s Irish Social Club, which hosts an annual street party for the holiday and has built several products around the leprechaun sketch. Owner John Thompson said he is still surprised by how far the image has traveled. “It’s amazing to me how widespread it is,” he said. “Members of bands who come and play here will see it on a T-shirt or hat and start high-fiving each other. It’s really funny.” Thompson said the bar first put the sketch on a St. Patrick’s Day T-shirt that became a best-seller, and its use has since expanded to a Callaghan’s hat, a Christmas shirt featuring the leprechaun with a red Rudolph nose, and knit golf-style shirts. The image is expected to make another appearance at Callaghan’s St. Paddy’s Day street party.
Not everyone selling leprechaun merchandise runs a storefront. Midtown resident and University of South Alabama nursing professor Pam Johnson has spent recent months recreating the sketch on seasonal ornaments and larger pieces like door hangers, a side hobby that has found an audience well beyond Mobile through Etsy and Facebook. Johnson said her $30 door hangers are especially popular. “I paint him up for just about all holidays, Christmas, Mardi Gras, Valentine’s, Pride, and also as the original ‘amateur sketch,'” she said. “I sell on Etsy and Facebook, but mainly by word of mouth. I’ve sent them to Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Maryland, Ontario, Canada and even as far as Spain.”
The commercial afterlife of the sketch has raised a question that has never quite been settled: does anyone actually own it? Local trademark attorney Greg Friedlander said he once fielded a call about the drawing years ago and invited the callers in to discuss potential protections, unaware at the time how well-known the image already was. They never followed up. “When I got home, my kids knew exactly what it was,” he said. “My whole family thought I should pursue it.” Friedlander said whoever originally drew the sketch would hold copyright on it, since it has not entered the public domain, though proving authorship at this point could be difficult. If the copyright were registered, he said, the original artist could sue over uses of the image dating back three years, though there are a number of possible defenses to such a claim. A trademark, unlike a copyright, would have to be registered for “use in commerce,” Friedlander said, and in either case, he added, valuing the rights is more of a business question than a legal one.
Marcus Neto, owner of the Mobile advertising agency Blue Fish, agreed that a trademark on the sketch would carry real value, even if it is hard to put a number on it. “I’ve never thought about it,” he said. “It would be very valuable. I don’t know if it would be something somebody could retire off of.” Neto said locking the image down would likely have stifled the very merchandise boom that has kept the story alive. “It’s got a lot more leg on it than if it was trademarked,” he said. Walker, the former anchor, agreed that pursuing a trademark or threatening lawsuits over the image would undercut what makes it fun. “It’ll take the fun out of it,” he said.
Even the question of who first drew the sketch remains murky. Some have credited reporter Brian Johnson, who covered the original story, while others have staked their own claims over the years. A friend of a man named Sean Thomas, who has claimed to be the original artist, said Thomas was unable to comment on the record because of a possible movie deal, but relayed that Thomas made the original drawing and that his sister, Nina Thomas-Brown, sketched the version handed to Johnson for the broadcast. Separately, a man identified only as John once appeared on the Comedy Central series “Tosh.0” claiming to have drawn the leprechaun as a child. Another story making the rounds holds that the rights to the drawing were sold at some point and are now held by a local attorney. Much like the leprechaun sighting itself, none of the competing claims has ever been definitively proven.
Beyond “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and “Tosh.0,” the viral segment has also inspired a sketch on the Comedy Central series “Key & Peele,” cementing its reach well outside Mobile. Mobile City Councilman Fred Richardson, who represents the Crichton area, laughed when asked about the legend’s staying power. “It went worldwide,” he said. “It’s the same as Santa Claus. The leprechaun is the same phenomenon.” Richardson joked that the leprechaun knew exactly what he was doing when he picked Crichton. “The leprechaun is not stupid,” he said. “He did some reconnaissance and he picked the best place.”
That lighthearted attitude was shared by nearly everyone who has built something around the story. Neto said the whole saga is simply funny, and that people who take offense at it need to relax. “It’s innocent,” he said. “We need to stop taking ourselves so seriously and enjoy seeing little things like that when they come along. The world is serious enough.”