With the peace symbol becoming dated by 1972, a new KSHE logo was introduced. The logo was a pot-tokin’, sunglass n’ headphone wearin’ pig. By 1974 to further the logo’s identity, a contest was launched on the airwaves.
The contest, brought forward by the KSHE's Chief Engineer Bobby Cox in was simply to give the listeners a chance to name the pig. Mike Benedick was a junior at Bayless High School in Afton when he heard about the contest. Although he would go on to win, the result wouldn't change much in his young life with one exception – his diet.
Benedick was a fan of KSHE, loved going to rock shows and had been frequenting concert venues for several years. For each show he attended he clipped out newspaper photos, concert ads and short articles. He then pasted them in his scrapbook. After the show he made sure the ticket stubs wound up on the same page. You can see his collection of stubs and ads on the left. Above is his 1974 Missouri driver's license photo.
On one day while Mike strolled along the store windows in Crestwood Plaza across from KSHE, a book titled "The Sweetmeat Saga" caught his eye. KSHE had taken to the airwaves their desire to "name the pig" the station's wildly popular mascot. So Mike wrote his idea on a postcard, dropped it in a mailbox and promptly forgot about it. Weeks later, "my firends called me up and told me they heard my name on KSHE." To his surprise, the name "Sweetmeat" was selected from the thousands of entries. Mike was invited to the station to pick up the prize: 50 pounds of bacon. His mother was elated upon hearing the news.
Mike and a friend took the family station wagon to the KSHE studios. Without ceremony or a live broadcast he accepted several grocery bags of bacon in the lobby of the station. "I felt intimidated and didn't even ask for a tour of the station," recalls Mike. The family's good fortune was doled out to the neighbors, friends and consumed by the family. "I ate a lot of bacon for a while," said Mike. "I had bacon for breakfast and BLT sandwiches for a while." That year he graduated from high school and enlisted in the Navy.
He now lives in the St. Louis area and occasionally tells people of his brief fame, "I came up with Sweetmeat." Most people respond with "Yeah right." But he really did.
Ironically "The Sweetmeat Saga" was a book about hippies in the late 1960s. The logo was complete, with artwork swiped from an album cover and the name from a book's title.
