This Is Where Everyone's High School Mascot was Stolen From

This is reposted every once and a while, it's a generic bulldog mascot that's used for hundreds if not thousands of elementary/middle/high schools (including mine) in the US. I assumed that it was clipart from some lost volume and went looking for a source.

The image being used was originally from a drawing book by Preston Blair in 1980, however, Blair himself didn't create the character...

Here it is in the pages of “Animation: Learn How to Draw Animated Cartoons” By Preston Blair (1980)

https://ia600700.us.archive.org/17/items/PrestonBlairCartoonAnimation/Preston%20Blair%20-%20Cartoon%20Animation.pdf

More pages of Spike. These pages are from the SECOND edition of Blair's animation book. This is an adaptation of Spike by Blair to avoid copyright infringement from his old employer at MGM. Blair had worked on the 1942 MGM Tom and Jerry cartoon titled “Dog Trouble” featuring Spike the Bulldog.

Above is pictures from the FIRST edition of Blairs book, which was published in 1948. It included images of the MGM & Disney cartoon characters he had animated while at these large studios. MGM took issue with this and Blair tweaked all of the characters to look more generic. Since the intent was for the reader to take the character and copy it on their own many, many people did that. You'll even see the copyrighted bulldog mascot from Blair's first book in many places as well.

Sources include: Sam Kressin (https://worlds-deadliest.com/spike-the-bulldog/)