Clifford is a big red dog who belongs to Emily and causes mischief but is ultimately a good dog.
While Clifford the Big Red Dog was registered for copyright in 1963 upon its publication it was not renewed in 1991 therefore the first book and only the first book is public domain.
The Pink Panther as many likely know is a creation from the 1963 film The Pink Panther which is primarily about a jewel with that name. The Pink Panther was created for promotional material, the trailer and the opening.
He first appeared in the trailer for the film, pictured above which did not have a copyright notice making it public domain. The film itself obviously isn’t but it creates the situation of the Pink Panther, the cartoon panther being public domain.
Pink Panther is a registered trademark so keep that in mind and any later appearances obviously aren’t public domain.
Matilda is an elephant who has motherly instinct to sit on an egg until it hatches. This is an early Dr Seuss story for Judge Magazine published in 1938 called Matilda, the Elephant with a Mother Complex.
The story was never renewed therefore it’s another Dr Seuss story that’s in the public domain.
The story itself would be reworked into the Horton book “Horton in Horton Hatches the Egg”, making Matilda like a proto-Horton.
Horton won’t be public domain until 2036 but Matilda already is.
This character is from a Donald Duck short called the Spirit of ’43. This was a WW2 propaganda short about paying your taxes to support the war effort at the time.
The character here isn’t really named but has a Scottish accent and is on the side of saving your money and paying taxes.
The character was designed by Carl Barks and is the prototype for what would become Scrooge McDuck.
Garfield is a lazy and irritable cat who always wants food. He belongs to Jon who is a cartoonist.
The comic strip Jon was a strip that Jim Davis created before launching the now famous Garfield comic strip. Jon focusing more on the titular cartoonist and his social life rather than being focused on Garfield.
This earlier iteration of Jon & Garfield from the 1976 comic strip was unearthed by youtuber Quinton Reviews who made the scans available online which showed that these comic strips did not have copyright notice on them at a time where that was a requirement
Dumbo is based on a book that was made and illustrated by Helen Aberson-Mayer, Harold Pearl before the now famous movie came out. This book, published by Roll-A-Book Publishing is actually considered lost media since it was made as something akin to a prototype for an interactive toy where you’d scroll through the story with a lever.
Dumbo is an elephant with big ears and can fly, at first seemingly due to a magic feather but then he finds out he was able to fly by himself.
