Erling Haaland was the star of Norway’s World Cup soccer team. He returned to Norway carrying the Whiskey Raccoon he picked up in Dallas during his visit to Wild Bill’s Western Store. Like Freddy, Haaland is helping us see ourselves as others see us — with renewed appreciation. Now that Halland has returned home, I have imbibed Aakash Gupta’s mareketing retrospective on X:
Nike pays Erling Haaland roughly $20 million a year to be photographed with their products. A family-run western store in Dallas just got the same treatment for free. Better than free: Haaland paid them $750 for a taxidermy raccoon hugging a whiskey bottle.
The backstory makes it better. Haaland walked into Wild Bill’s Western Store during Norway’s World Cup run and bought cowboy hats, exotic boots, a longhorn belt buckle, and a shirt reading “Y’all can kiss my Dallas.” The owner says Haaland knew nothing about cowboy hats and had to be fitted for his first one.
Then Norway’s Cinderella run ended in the quarterfinals, and the tournament’s breakout star, seven goals, carried the raccoon off the plane in Oslo himself. Caption: “It followed me home.” Then he ran an Instagram poll asking fans to name it.
The results for a boot shop that’s been family-owned since the 1970s: the Whiskey Raccoon is sold out. The Dallas shirt is nearly gone. Their $500 Belligerent Squirrel, a taxidermy squirrel smoking a cigarette and holding Jack Daniel’s, is down to low stock. Local shoppers are lining up at a store most of them had walked past for years.
Sports brands run entire celebrity seeding departments trying to manufacture exactly this: a global superstar genuinely delighted by a product, on camera, unprompted. Every one of those campaigns reads as an ad, because it is one.
Brands spend $20 million a year renting Haaland’s image. Wild Bill’s sold it to him for $750.
This is too funny.
Went to Wild Bill’s yesterday and bought Haaland’s cowboy hat for my son. Wild Bill had nothing to say but great things about Erling’s visit. pic.twitter.com/KdieaIXh8f
— Alex Price (@AlexAtSnowflake) July 13, 2026
One literate observer on X concisely comments: “No one has loved America this much since Toqueville[.]”
