Scrappyland is 20

When I officially launched Scrappyland on January 21, 2005, I don’t recall having a master plan. All I knew was that—as one of my first posts argued—Scrappy mattered. Very little had been written about him at the time. I’d already realized that there was plenty of fodder, such as the unexpectedly vast quantities of merchandise he inspired.

A lot has changed in the subsequent 20 years. Scrappy cartoons, once nearly impossible to see, are in bountiful supply on YouTube. It’s no longer a shocking development when people who aren’t me write about them. There was even a new fan-made Scrappy cartoon a few years ago, a fact that does still boggle my mind.

Basically, when I first started calling Scrappy “America’s favorite forgotten cartoon star”—a line I stole from Friend of Scrappy Jerry Beck—I was joking. Now you can make a decent case that’s just plain fact. If this site has played a role in this Great Scrappy Resurgence, I’m happy to claim my share of the credit.

For me, writing for Scrappyland is a refuge. It’s fun to spend time in a tiny world with Scrappy at its center, where problems don’t get much more severe than the fact that Petey Parrot is, as Paul Etcheverry and Will Friedwald’s filmography rightly pointed out, “arguably the most obnoxious cartoon character of all time.” I may not post incessantly, but I always have stuff in the works, and I can’t imagine losing interest in keeping it going. Recently, I’ve invested a considerable amount of time to renovating the technical underpinnings that will make that possible.

Fun thought: The earliest Scrappy cartoons go into the public domain in two years. Back in 2005, that eventuality was so far off it hadn’t even occurred to me to contemplate it. Now it’s not too early to begin thinking about throwing a party. Mark your calendars. And thanks for your support all these years.