When cartoon characters appear on countless products, the public inevitably grows bored and irritated with them, and the appeal and value of the original work are diminished.” Watterson could have made millions - think about how much Garfield crap you can buy - but chose artistic integrity instead.Īs he wrote in The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book, “I believe licencing usually cheapens the original creation.

This is because Watterson was (and remains) adamantly against licencing his characters for merchandising purposes, something that led to a lot of arguments with his syndication agency, Universal Press Syndicate (now part of Andrews McMeel Universal, who didn’t want to talk to me about pee).

The answer possibly has something to do with the fact you don’t ever see stickers of Calvin doing anything that isn’t peeing.

In 2005, Watterson joked in a rare interview, “I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo.” Before the Ford-Chevy rivalry, which generally remains reasonably civil and jokey although has occasionally descended into violence, adopted online memes as its main culture war weapon, it went all-in on peeing Calvin. It’s a peculiar thing, being so dedicated to the idea that another car sucks that you’ll make your own car look worse, an odd kind of fandom where your love of something is defined as much by how much you hate everything else. This was swiftly followed by NASCAR, with stickers showing Calvin peeing on various drivers’ numbers, and then the thing he is most associated with today: auto manufacturers. Petersburg Times describing “a 25-foot motor home with a sign showing Calvin of Calvin and Hobbes urinating on the letters FSU.”įSU is Florida State University, and the world of college football was the first arena to really embrace peeing Calvin. According to incredibly deep research by Phil Edwards, the first mention of it in the press seems to date from Florida in November of that year, with a story in the St. The peeing-Calvin sticker is thought to have entered the world around 1995, shortly after reclusive creator Bill Watterson retired the strip. That’s a testament to how well it holds its own.” It definitely wasn’t until years later that I even connected this design with the actual character of Calvin. “I have memories of a child going to soccer games and seeing this character urinating on rival team’s shirts, being completely unfamiliar with Calvin and Hobbes at the time. “It’s probably the most iconic bootleg image out there,” says a guy who we’ll call Brendan, an enthusiastic collector of all things bootleg and the proprietor of a legally sketchy webstore selling bootleg Simpsons merch.

Calvin and hobbes tenth anniversary