Astro and the Trailhead cast

Salesforce built Astro as the face of Trailhead, the free learning platform it launched in 2014 to teach Salesforce skills to anyone willing to click through modules. Astro is a tanuki, a Japanese raccoon dog, drawn in a soft hoodie with round ears, and the job is to walk new users through trails and badges without making enterprise onboarding feel like a manual. The clever move was not stopping at one mascot. Salesforce built a Trailhead crew around Astro: Codey the bear for developers, Cloudy the goat for admins, Ruth the elephant for architects, Appy for the AppExchange, Brandy and Blaze for the wider business, and Einstein for AI. Their roles are sometimes more clearly defined than their personalities, but that is also why the system works: each character gives a different Salesforce audience a way into the same learning world. The result is an unusually durable enterprise cast, carried from product illustrations into events, walk-around costumes, plush, pins and Trailhead merchandise. Astro remains the lead, but the crew is the real deployment.