I’m not surprised that you could buy Scrappy stationery in the 1930s. But I didn’t know for sure until recently, when I acquired this letter written on it. It features Scrappy and Yippy in an iconic pose, and–well, you can read it for yourself:
If you didn’t get through the whole thing, it’s from a girl named Mary Sue. She gave her mother a brief account of a lovely wedding (Aunt Marie wore an orange silk dress), and part of it is by a third person—most likely Mary Sue’s father. Whoever Mary Sue was, I hope she was a raving Scrappy fan rather than merely someone who had received a box of Scrappy notepaper as a gift.
After all these years of writing Scrappyland, I’m still uncertain just how well-known Scrappy was in the 1930s. We do know that he wasn’t Mickey Mouse. He probably wasn’t even Porky Pig. I do feel he was probably more recognizable than Flip the Frog, though I have no way to prove it. But I’m intrigued by the fact that this Scrappy stationery feels no need to identify the character. Maybe that’s a tiny sign that if you wrote someone a letter on it, there was a decent chance they’d know who he was on sight.