2006 - A319 "The Death of Bosnian Happy"

Happy’s launch was an almost unmitigated disaster. After 3 aircraft were unveiled in the livery at its official announcement, plans to rapidly repaint the rest of the fleet into the new livery were scrapped. A small number of aircraft were slowly repainted into the new livery, but most of Star’s fleet still proudly displayed the red, white, and blue on its side. There were many criticisms of the new livery. For one, children generally found Happy to either be off-putting or downright disturbing – as did some parents. Further, the airline received substantial pushback from some elements of the media for its allegedly intentional removal of the American flag and other American aspects of its identity. Before Bosnian Happy (his internal name for many years) could ever fly, he was shot down. However, the airline did not have the luxury of going back to the 70s, scrubbing all of the paint off of their aircraft and eschewing the whole concept of a livery (although one executive did suggest this repeatedly in meetings). Star contracted a much more expensive design firm to clean up their image. In the meantime, despite the flux in the airline’s appearance, it was making strides in its operational sphere. The new public board, confronted with the increasing age of the MD series, opted to begin the introduction of the A320 series of aircraft. Also, the airline finally (for the first time in its history) began to re-register their used aircraft into a standard scheme that allowed the mass adoption of real fleet numbers.
Finally, by late 2005, the new design firm finally had some headway on rescuing the brand’s identity. They had considered scrapping Happy and the Star concept entirely but that would meant basically throwing away all investment that had been made in the unsuccessful rebrand. Instead, the firm chose to embrace Happy but instead portray him as they believed the original designers had intended: a child’s drawing. However, the new team decided that Happy should be drawn by a child guided by a professional. The result (internally Happy 2.0, Happymus Prime, or American Happy) was extensively tested with product groups before it was accepted that this design was not widely disturbing. The livery itself returned the American flag to a prominent position to quiet the media’s moanings and swapped the yellow found on the original new livery for an orange that was thought to be more weather proof. The design agency also suggested naming each of the aircraft in the fleet to further lean into the Star branding and each aircraft received a name in the format of [POSITIVE ADJECTIVE] [Star]. Finally, intime for the 2006 winter holiday season, the livery was ready and began its life with moderate praise. It was the beginning of a new millennium for a now publicly owned Star and it only took an extra year to develop.