Whose Year Is It? Reading Copyright Dates on Licensed Transfers

Two Road Runner sheets in our holding carry a 1966 copyright line. That’s the earliest year printed on anything we own — earlier than the 1967 R. Crumb, earlier than the 1968 motorcycle sheets.

It would be very easy to write “1966 Road Runner transfer” and move on. We don’t, and the reason is worth explaining, because it affects how you should read every dated licensed sheet you ever see.

The problem

When a printer licenses a cartoon character, the artwork arrives with the studio’s copyright notice attached. That notice refers to the character art — not to the day this particular sheet came off a press in California.

So a Warner Bros sheet marked 1966 might have been printed in 1966. Or 1971. Or 1978, using art the studio registered in 1966.

There is often no way to tell from the object.

Why we think these are later

Circumstantially, the Road Runner sheets are probably not from 1966:

• The iron-on transfer boom is a seventies retail phenomenon
• Roach’s own dated work — where the year is plainly theirs, on original designs — starts in 1968
• A studio licence of that scale usually indicates an established company, not a start-up

But “probably” is not evidence. So we describe them as “carrying a 1966 copyright line” and let the reader weigh it.

Where the year is the year

The distinction is clean once you separate two kinds of sheet:

Original designs. Harvey Wallbanger 1972. Asphalt Animal 1968. Olds 442 1969. Shrooms 1971. Nobody else owned these images. The date on the sheet is the printer’s own, and it means what it says.

Licensed art. Road Runner 1966. Any studio property. The date belongs to whoever owned the character.

Roach’s documented run from 1966 to 1984 rests almost entirely on the first category — which is why we think it holds.

Why we’re making a fuss

Because dealers repeat each other. One listing says “1966 Road Runner iron-on” and within a few years it’s a fact that everyone knows and nobody checked.

We’d rather be the source that says “this is what’s printed on it, and here’s what that does and doesn’t tell you.” Slightly less satisfying. Considerably more useful.

It also cuts the other way: if you own an early-dated licensed sheet and can establish its actual print year from a catalogue, an invoice or a memory, you’ve got something genuinely valuable to the record.

If you know how the transfer houses handled licensed art — whether they added their own year, whether the studio required the original notice — please write: irononstation@gmail.com

How to date a transfer · The Roach Studios timeline