Tag: Animal

“Thrifty Saver” Duck

Image of a duck character from a disney short that bears resamblence to Scrooge McDuck. He's wearing a plaid kilt and a tammie cap leaning on a cane

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.

Notes

  • Because this short was commissioned by the US government it was automatically public domain upon release.
  • While this is undoubtedly a prototype for the character, Scrooge McDuck is not public domain and is still copyrighted and trademarked by Disney.

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Garfield

black and white drawing of a chubby cartoon cat with large cheek

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

Notes

  • The modern iteration of Garfield is still under copyright as is any that was published after 1978.
  • Garfield is a registered trademark of Paws Inc. (subsidiary of Nickolodeon)

Dumbo

drawing of a grey elephant holding a brown feather, the elephant has green eyes and large ears

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.

Notes

  • The original book prototype did get registered for a copyright in 1939 but was not renewed therefore making its copyright expire after 28 years. Its record number is AA 296948.
  • The Disney film and any subsequent appearances and designs are not in the public domain and Dumbo is a registered trademark owned by Disney.
  • The image used on this page was drawn by Tinyel and has been released into the public domain.
  • The original book is now considered lost media.

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