GRAND CHUTE - The Wisconsin Timber Rattlers have had plenty of unveilings over the team's 25 seasons.

Every year there are new promotions, new merchandise, new bobbleheads. They've rebranded as the Wisconsin Brats and debuted uniforms that look like lederhosen. Fang the mascot has been given updates and makeovers. Players have rocked R2-D2- and C3PO-inspired jerseys for "Star Wars" nights.

Nothing's grabbed hold of the public's attention quite like the Udder Tuggers.

"We've had a lot of very positive experiences with these sort of unveilings, which isn't always the case," said Timber Rattlers president Rob Zerjav. "Usually people don't always like change and it's very negative. … This was just at another level for us."

Earlier this month, the Timber Rattlers — now in their 11th year as the Milwaukee Brewers' class A affiliate — unleashed their plans for a one-night-only rebranding for Salute to Cows Night. The team will take the field for Thursday's game against the Clinton LumberKings as the Wisconsin Udder Tuggers, complete with cow-print uniforms.

The hope for an announcement like this, Zerjav said, is for it to go viral. And go viral it did.

The branding — with its aggressive-looking dairy cow logo charging ahead udders first — caught the attention of sports fans and media outlets nationwide. Barstool Sports tweeted it "might be the greatest team name of all time," a claim that has been retweeted more than 1,000 times.

Darren Rovell, the go-to sports business guy at ESPN, also tweeted out news of the name to his more than 2 million followers and showed off the caps and jerseys.

ESPN's "SportsCenter" featured the Udder Tuggers during earlier this week, with hosts Elle Duncan and Matt Barrie sporting hats and jerseys and throwing out their most shameless dairy puns. (Barrie: "You know what? They should probably milk this for all it's worth.")

Even folks from the dairy industry reached out to express appreciation for the team's salute, which falls during National Dairy Month.

"It was great, the whole experience," Zerjav said. "It's a time in the dairy industry in Wisconsin when things aren't going the greatest so anything we can do to shed light on that and help in any way is a nice addition to the story."

Merchandise on the move

Along with the announcement of the promotion came a fresh line of Udder Tuggers caps, T-shirts and jerseys.

The initial supply of merchandise for the online store sold out in about five hours. That rush included more than 400 individual orders. In the two weeks since they've had to re-up a second time and now have sold gear to all 50 states and Canada.

Zerjav said while past events, including a similar rebranding as the Wisconsin Brats for a ballpark celebration of Wisconsin's German heritage, the Timber Rattlers have never had a promotion or any other event move product at this clip.

"The Brats went over extremely well. That was really good," he said. " ... Los Cascabeles (the team's Hispanic identity, also new this year), that's gone over extremely well this year as well, but nothing to the extent of the Udder Tuggers. It's been hard to keep up."

MORE:Wisconsin Timber Rattlers unveil updated logos and caps

MORE:Timber Rattlers to temporarily rebrand for America's Dairyland

At the Snake Pit Team Store, the hats, shirts and other gear hit the shelves on June 3 and was wiped out by June 5. The store will be restocked for Thursday's game for the first time since that initial wave.

There's another opportunity to bag some Udder Tuggers gear: The jerseys worn by the players are up for bidding in an online auction through 9 p.m. Thursday and the proceeds will go to Farm Aid. As of Tuesday evening, the highest bid was $320 — for the jersey to be worn by the Brewers' first round pick Brice Turang.

'I don't know if we could do that'

Along with the Timber Rattlers, the organization responsible for swatting the promotional grand slam is the San Diego-based company Brandiose.

Brandiose was co-founded by Jason Klein and and Casey White in 2000 and has made a name for itself through buzzworthy rebrandings and redesigns in minor league baseball. (They're the guys behind the Staten Island Pizza Rats and the Rocket City Trash Pandas, to name a few.) Klein said the company has designed more New Era cap logos than anybody in history.

"We're designers but most of our expertise is going through a name-the-team contest, understanding what resonates with the community, guiding teams into campaign launches — what do you produce? How do you introduce it? — what an unveiling looks like," Klein said. "We're very involved with making sports teams famous."

The relationship stretches back to the formation of the Fond du Lac Dock Spiders, a Northwoods League team started up in 2018 and run by the Timber Rattlers. The two parties went through a lengthy brainstorming process to come up with a concept that was hyper-local yet interesting to a national audience.

"We were going through names, had a name-the-team contest," Klein said. " ... We were throwing out ideas and somebody was like, 'Obviously we're America's Dairyland, we have to come up with some names that speak to the dairy industry. It was my partner Casey who came up with this idea for the Udder Tuggers and everybody started laughing, like, 'I don't know if we could do that.' So it didn't even make the short list of names for the actual Fond du Lac team."

While the idea was a little too, shall we say, out there to be a permanent nickname, Zerjav put a pin in it.

"It was always kind of lingering in the back, like as a great minor league baseball name," Klein said. "It was outrageous, it would potentially generate a ton of publicity and this offseason [Zerjav] called us up and said, hey, I think for a promotion night, a tribute to America's Dairyland, we want to bring the Udder Tuggers to life. And away we went."

'It's everything you hope for'

The back-and-forth that followed was much simpler than the other times the Rattlers and Brandiose went through the process, whether for the Brats, the Dock Spiders, the refresh of the core logos this past offseason or the new Brews on Third social space at Fox Cities Stadium. Klein's group had a sketch of running cow logo ready in a day or two and pretty much nailed it, Zerjav said.

"I think at first, and I feel bad even saying this, we saw the horns on the cow and we said it's not a bull, we need a cow," he said. "But we started doing our research and as a lifelong Wisconsin resident I feel bad, but yeah, cows do have horns as well. At least some do, so it fit and I really liked it."

Fast-forward to June 3 and with the publishing of a few social media posts, the Timber Rattlers — by way of the Udder Tuggers — were the talk of minor league baseball unlike any other time in their quarter-century history.

"It was an off day and we actually had our charity golf outing at that point," Zerjav said. "All of a sudden we started getting messages from our retail director (saying) we're selling this stuff, it's flying off the shelves. Then we see this response on social media and it's blowing up and taking off.

"It's everything you hope for."

If you go

What: Clinton LumberKings vs. Wisconsin Udder Tuggers

When: 7:05 p.m. Thursday

Where: Fox Cities Stadium, Grand Chute

Tickets: $9 and up, available at the stadium ticket office and timberrattlers.com

Bonus: The first 1,000 fans receive a Timber Rattlers beach towel. Like other Thursday night home games, it's Craft Brews & Brats Night, meaning brats and a variety of 12-ounce craft beers are $2 each. It's also a peanut-free night.

Stirring up Wisconsin

The San Diego-based company Brandiose has a reputation for building buzzed-about brands across the country and Wisconsin is no different. In recent years Brandiose has been behind the branding of the Northwoods League's Fond du Lack Dock Spiders and the Green Bay Booyah (formerly the Bullfrogs), the temporary rebranding of the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers as the Wisconsin Brats and the Wisconsin Udder Tuggers, plus the refresh of the Timber Rattlers' logos and caps heading into their 25th anniversary season. They're also currently working on a rebrand of the Madison Mallards.

Brandiose co-founder Jason Klein said the goal with a rebrand is always to get people talking — the name should be unusual and generate a reaction. Same for the logos.

The Booyah iconography, unveiled late last year, hit the mark.

"The Booyah was one of those things where all of the names that were submitted made us go, Wow, because one of the challenges is you want the name to be hyper-localized but you also want it to appeal to all of America," Klein said. "And so, you know, as Californians we had never heard of booyah but thought it was a great sports name.

" ... These are not classic sports names. They're not like Bears, the Tigers or the Lions. People know what those are but when you hear a name like the Udder Tuggers or the Booyah, you know, you can't just overlook it. You have to be like, 'I gotta see this.'"

Contact Shane Nyman at 920-996-7223 or snyman@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @shanenyman.