Twitter User Unearths McGruff The Crime Dog's 80s Album, And It Goes Surprisingly Hard

The year is 1984, and America is trying to curb the use of recreational drugs through children's media. There are a series of "very special episodes" on television in which your favorite cartoon characters take a break from punching bad guys to tell the audience that drugs are really bad. Around this time, McGruff The Crime Dog, a trenchcoat-wearing bloodhound invented by advertising executive Jack Keil, tells kids to "Take A Bite Out Of Crime." His commercials ran for several years on American television, but what few people knew until recently is that he also recorded an album in 1984. And it kind of rocks.

Yesterday, Twitter user @bloodberry_Tart posted a clip from McGruff's Smart Kids Album, specifically the song "Inhalants," noting it sounded like New Order.

i can’t stop listening to this McGruff the Crime Dog song about the dangers of inhalants that sounds like New Order pic.twitter.com/zPs9hEfojK

— Berry 🍓🍰🖤 (@bloodberry_tart) July 14, 2021

Later on in the thread, user @swksomal posted McGruff's song about alcohol, which sounds like it's straight off a Steely Dan album.

unbelievable pic.twitter.com/t0RvTi0PGU

— Don Quikzotic (@swskomal) July 14, 2021

The unexpected quality of the instrumentals on McGruff's album (sadly, Keil voices McGruff and is neither a proficient vocalist or lyricist) had Twitter users hunting for the whole thing. Defector wrote a lengthy blog post about it comparing it favorably to Weird Al Yankovic.

The entire album is, thankfully on YouTube. Highlights include Side A's "No, No, No!" and "Marijuana," both of which are actually highly competent 80s pop songs. Granted, Keil's voice is particularly grating around track 5, and he insists on calling every drug mentioned on the record "really insane," but it is very much worth a laugh and a fascinating look back at some lost 80s ephemera.