Over on Facebook, Jerry Beck alerted me to the existence of a poster designed by Chip Kidd that features blown-up partial images of Oopy and Yippy. My jaw dropped when I saw it, and I immediately wondered if it was a harbinger of some imminent Great Scrappy Revival.

It turns out that it was produced a dozen years ago, for the 2004 Miami Book Fair. And here it is:

I only had to glance at it for a millisecond to recognize the source imagery that Kidd mined:

That’s the legendary Scrappy Puppet Theater, and Kidd clearly zoomed in on Oopy and Yippy’s heads, then made minor adjustments such as filling in Oopy’s cowlick, which is normally–and oddly–the same color as his skin. (Oopy with a filled-in cowlick looks a lot like Scrappy, which makes sense.)

A few questions:

Do I know why Kidd and/or the fair thought depicting Oopy and Yippy was a relevant way to celebrate books? No, especially since the characters’ only appearances in print were in a few kids’ tomes such as a Big Little Book about 80 years ago.

Did Kidd credit Mintz or Columbia, or otherwise acknowledge that his work was a Roy Lichtenstein-esque borrowing of existing art? Not that I can see, though perhaps it’s there in type too small to read. If he didn’t, I think that’s a shame, especially since hardly anybody attending a book fair in 2004 would know.

Would I hang the poster on my wall? Maybe, if I could find a copy for sale.

You’re waited more than long enough for another installment of the Scrappy newspaper comic strip, which may never have appeared in an actual newspaper, but did run in Wags, a comic weekly published in Australia and the UK. (Here, in case you missed them, are the first six strips.)

The Scrappy strip was produced by Eisner & Iger Associates. I’m still not the least bit sure which artist or artists in its employ worked on it–more thoughts on that in a future post–but I find that the strip, while a bit crude, is surprisingly engaging. These strips introduce Mr. De Welth, the kleptomaniac millionaire, who’s a genuinely entertaining character. And whoever is drawing this seems to be having fun.

Bottom line: I think that the odds are that the persons or persons responsible for this work did other comics, too, and we’ll be able to figure out who deserves the credit.

I find one panel in this sequence especially tantalizing:

With its dramatic staging, that’s either a one-panel contribution by someone other than the person who drew the rest of Scrappy, or proof that the Scrappy artist also did stuff other than a silly strip drawn in a very rough approximation of a third-tier animation studio’s style. Could it be Lou Fine? Mort Meskin? Will Eisner himself?

Anyhow, here’s more Scrappy for you. Stay tuned for further adventures.

Have I ever mentioned that Scrappyana is the best imaginable subject to pursue as a collector? On one hand, it’s small enough in scope that it’s possible to be a completist. On the other, it’s full of surprises, since it’s not so well documented that you know exactly what’s out there to collect.

In the case of Scrappy wrappers for Runkel Bros. chocolate, I knew that they existed–in fact, I’d written about them–but wasn’t sure I’d ever get my hands on any examples. After all, how much packaging for 1930s candy has survived for eighty years? But I’m now the proud owner of the circa-1935 wrapper you see above–which, since it has a Scrappy drawing and “jingle” on its flipside, was designed to be collected. (There were apparently at least 113 in the series.)

The highpoint of Scrappy’s association with the Runkel people was Scrappy’s Own Magazine, which was sponsored by the chocolatier and apparently published in late 1935. Here’s a page from the publication, showing some Scrappy chocolate and explaining that his relationship with Runkel came about because he tried their products and was impressed.

I didn’t know much about Runkel Bros., so I Googled around and found a site run by a contemporary Runkel. He seems to say both that the company folded in 1936 and that it was acquired by Nestle in 1982. So take your choice–being associated with Scrappy either almost immediately drove it out of business, or led to decades of success and the attention of one of the biggest names in chocolate.

In either case, eBay has some nice examples of other Runkel Bros. packaging–the kind that doesn’t have Scrappy on it. Here’s some Runkel Liberty cocoa, which sure looks more patriotic than Swiss Miss.