One Sheet: The Pink Panther Paper Doll

One Sheet is a series about single objects from the boxes.

Somebody made a paper doll you iron on

This is the oddest object in the cartoon boxes. A Pink Panther sheet by Roach Studios — with cut-out clothes. A paper doll, printed as a heat transfer.

Think about what that asks of a customer. You buy it, and then you either iron the whole thing on, clothes and all, or you cut it up and use pieces. There’s no obvious right answer, and we suspect that was the point — it’s a transfer that’s also a toy.

Why it exists

It exists because Roach were working the Pink Panther licence hard. We hold eight designs: disco, tennis, basketball twice, bicycle racing, butterflies, “Think Pink,” and this.

Eight variations of one character is what a licence looks like when a company has paid for it and intends to earn the money back. And by the eighth idea you are, inevitably, reaching. The eighth idea was a paper doll.

The character behind it

The Pink Panther came out of a 1963 title sequence by DePatie-Freleng for a Blake Edwards film. He was a credits animation. He outlived the films, got his own series, and was still earning licence fees fifteen years later — which is how he ended up as a paper doll on a shop wall in the American Midwest.

See the sheet · Browse the cartoon transfers