"Gus the Groundhog" is yesterday's news.

At a hearing today on the state Departrment of Revenue budget, Pennsylvania Lottery Executive Director Todd Rucci said that the lottery has pulled the plug on its ubiquitous ads featuring the fictitious Gus, "the second-most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania."

Gus's run as a television star ended this month, Rucci said, though for the time being he still has a presence on the lottery's website.

"We're shifting our marketing in a new direction," Rucci said, "of making people more aware of the great things that the lottery does. We are shifting our instant (lottery) product away from Gus into a new campaign which you'll see hopefully here in early March."

Gus was created in 2004 to help introduce new instant ticket games.

In a state with a peculiar thing for groundhogs, the campaign was enough of a hit that past lottery directors had to expressly reject requests to convert the TV character into a plush toy.

Instant tickets have been the lottery's primary sales growth driver in that time.

But Rucci and the Corbett administration take the view that Gus has reached those he can reach by this time, and they would like to use their marketing dollars to try to tap new market segments.