A ladder leans against a building. A sign has just been installed, reading “THE LIBRARY OF ALL THE BOOKS THAT ARE NOT COLLECTED IN A LIBRARY.” Two librarians gaze at the sign with satisfaction. One says: “Now all we have to do is stock it.”
Percy Crosby is the most shamefully forgotten cartoonist of comicdom’s Golden Age. Skippy was his crowning achievement. Skippy was a very big deal in the 20’s and 30’s, with millions of avid fans. There were Skippy dolls, Skippy candy bars, and a hit Skippy radio show. 1931’s Skippy movie (which launched Jackie Cooper as a child star) won “Best Director” at the Academy Awards. Its influence was huge, and there would be no Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes without Skippy.
Below is a not-very-representative example, but one I like because it shows Skippy torn between the two most exciting things in the world to a child of the Depression — a championship prizefight on the radio and a building on fire down the block:
In 1933, “Skippy” peanut butter was launched. The label used a font very similar to one used in the strip, but the product wasn’t licensed by Crosby. The peanut butter people claimed they had no intention of misleading the public. That doesn’t pass the smell test. That would be like launching “Harry Potter (no relation) Cereal” today. Litigation ensued.
Crosby eventually fell victim to two of a cartoonist’s worst enemies: alcohol (which is bad) and politics (which is worse). He became a vehement FDR-hater and his diatribes hurt the strip, which was discontinued in the mid-40’s. At the same time, Crosby was being hounded by the IRS; this he attributed to the enemies he’d made in the Roosevelt administration, or, sometimes, a conspiracy by the peanut butter people. He spent the last sixteen years of his life committed to a mental ward. His children didn’t even know where he was.
His heirs are still in litigation with Big Peanut Butter, in what looks like a hopeless Jarndyce v. Jarndyce type affair. As crazy as it sounds, a lot of Crosby’s allegations about the peanut butter conspiracy look pretty plausible, at least to my cursory reading of the case. The family is hopelessly outgunned by the peanut butter brand’s corporate owners (currently Hormel) so if any of you are trademark litigators looking for a windmill to tilt at, here’s your chance.
Anyway, be like Percy Crosby, but not as tragic, and draw one of my cartoons.