One Sheet: Taz, the Character Merchandising Saved

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

A character Warner Bros threw away

Robert McKimson built the Tasmanian Devil in 1954. He appeared in five shorts, total, and then Warner shelved him. By the mid-sixties he was a footnote — a minor character from a studio with dozens of better-known ones.

Then something odd happened. Merchandising brought him back. Not a film, not a series — t-shirts, decals, lunch boxes. By the eighties Taz was one of the most licensed characters Warner had, and he got a television show in 1991, thirty-seven years after his debut.

This sheet is part of that

A 1970s Taz transfer exists because of licensing, not because of cartoons. There were no new Taz shorts. There was demand for the face on a shirt, and a licence to satisfy it.

At $70 it’s one of the dearer cartoon sheets we hold, and that’s straightforward scarcity — we have one.

The wider point

We tend to assume merchandise follows fame. Sometimes it works the other way. Taz became famous because he was on things, and the transfer wall was one of the places that made him so.

Which means these sheets aren’t only a record of what was popular. Occasionally they’re part of the reason.

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