I’m not sure how I’ve gone this long without writing anything for Scrappyland. It’s true that I’ve been busy with other journalistic efforts—I wrote Fast Company‘s new cover story about Satya Nadella and Microsoft—but that’s hardly an excuse. In any rational assessment of their relative contribution to society, Scrappy ranks well above Microsoft and should be prioritized.
The good news is that I’m nowhere near running out of stuff to post on this site. In fact, I have an impressive backlog to work my way through, and I promise to chip away at it. And as I do, I’m pretty confident that more Scrappy-related matters will surface. It would be a shame if I ever felt like my work here was done.
For now, here’s the newest addition to the archive: an envelope that someone at Charles Mintz’s studio sent to C.A. Loescher, the postmaster of Menasha, Wisconsin, in November 1932. It’s postmarked on the evening of the day before Thanksgiving.
I show it here, of course, mostly because of that wonderful return address art, which is worth looking at more closely. I think it might be by Dick Huemer, and the inkwell theme is so prominent that I feel like Max Fleischer might have reasonably demanded a royalty.
In 2017, I wrote about 1154 North Western Ave., which was Mintz’s first Hollywood studio. As best I can tell, he relocated to 7000 Santa Monica Blvd. sometime in 1933. He continued to use the artwork from this envelope, with the address updated, for years. It was on the letter of recommendation given to Mintz employee (and eventual Cartoonist Profiles editor) Jud Hurd when he left in October 1936—even though neither Krazy nor Scrappy’s on-screen versions much resembled these designs by that time. Then again, if I had this art, I wouldn’t want to give it up either.
The Charles Mintz Studio gradually changed its name to Screen Gems; I imagine it eventually had stationery and envelopes reflecting that fact. I haven’t seen them, but if this envelope turned up on eBay—and it did—there’s no reason later ones couldn’t someday.
By now, you are wondering why the Mintz people were contacting a Wisconsin postmaster. I’m not sure. The envelope is sealed, but that seems to be an artifact of its age—there’s nothing in it; I’d love to think that C.A. Loescher was a Scrappy fan, but I’m afraid I have no evidence to support that theory. It’s possible that he was one of many postmasters who received envelopes from Mintz, perhaps as part of some marketing campaign.
In any event, we do know what Loescher looked like, thanks to the Menasha Historical Society. In the photo below, he’s fourth from the left in the middle row. (“Backes” is the fellow in the front row at whom the arrow is pointing—maybe a snappy mail carrier?)It’s also clear that Loescher was a pillar of Menasha society—the secretary/treasurer of the Wisconsin Postmasters’ Association, post commander of the American Legion, a speaker at local events, and more. He sounds entirely admirable, and loving Scrappy—which we have no evidence he didn’t do—would only make him more laudable. I’m sorry to say he died in 1941, the same year the final Scrappy cartoon reached theaters.
For years, I’ve known about the Scrappy lamp—a fine little plastic table lamp with color decals of Scrappy, Yippy, Margy, and Oopy on its shade. There are two of them in the Scrappyland archive, and at least one of them still works, though I wouldn’t recommend leaving a 1930s electrical device plugged in except under constant supervision. What I didn’t know was the backstory behind the lamp—including the fact that it was a product of what might have been the largest company ever to hitch its merchandising wagon to Scrappy
Then Scrappy merchant extraordinaire David Welch alerted me to something he was selling on eBay: ads from a 1930s magazine for the premium industry. They were from General Electric, and touted lamps made of a Bakelite-like GE plastic called Textolite. And they spotlighted … the Scrappy lamp.
Did that mean that the lamp was designed to be given away? Well, it was. Or at least I found a 1940 article about a bowling tournament in Meriden, Connecticut where Scrappy lamps seem to have been doled out as last-place prizes. I hope the recipients were pleased nonetheless.
That’s not to say that the Scrappy lamp was manufactured purely for giveaway purposes. Here it is being sold for a buck, which was real money back then—about $20 in 2021 dollars.
And here it is marked down to the irresistible price of fifty cents.
Whatever the price or lack thereof, the Scrappy lamp remains pleasing. GE’s ad copy about Textolite’s durable nature may help explain why quite a few of the lamps have survived in nice shape; at any given time, you can probably find one or more on eBay, should this post leave you coveting one.
If you haven’t seen the lamp in person, here’s a closer look courtesy of photos from a 2017 auction.
That particular Scrappy lamp came with a bonus I’d never seen until I put together this post: the original box, with elaborate artwork depicting Scrappy (praying, with a picture of Margy on his wall) and Margy (reading, with a picture of Oopy on the wall). Yippy somehow made it into both scenes. And so did the Scrappy lamp.
I don’t remember ever having heard of Textolite before, and indeed had forgotten that GE was ever in the plastics business. Then I remembered that Jack Welch, who eventually became the company’s fabulously successful (though in recent years reputationally damaged) CEO, got his start in the plastics division in Pittsfield, Mass, the address mentioned in the Scrappy lamp ad. In his memoir Jack: Straight From the Gut he even mentions his difficulty selling Textolite in the 1960s, though by that time GE was applying the brand to its lackluster answer to Formica.
Like J.C. Penney—which also embraced Scrappy in the 1930s—GE is still with us, but a shadow of its once-mighty self. The company (which sold its plastics business in 2007) recently announced plans to split itself into three parts, ending its long run as as one of the U.S.’s most iconic industrial giants. It just goes to show: Ending a relationship with Scrappy is always bad luck, even if it takes seventy or eighty years to catch up with you.
I don’t mean to brag, but Scrappyland—which will celebrate its 17th birthday later this month—has been around so long that YouTube didn’t quite exist yet when it launched. Back then, Scrappy’s cartoons were surprisingly hard to come by: In an introductory article, I even compared him to the famously missing Judge Crater. For years, all I had myself were a couple of gazillionth-generation VHS tapes given to me by Friend of Scrappy Kip Williams.
Now YouTube has become the most comprehensive archive of old cartoons we have. Nearly every Scrappy cartoon has made its way there. That being the case, it felt like it made sense to embed them here on Scrappyland.
Rather than creating a new section of the site, I decided to stick the cartoons into an existing one: Our online version of the Scrappy filmography that originally appeared in Animania #20 and #21 in 1981. Written by Paul Etcheverry and Will Friedwald, it was a pioneering work of Scrapology at the time. More than 40 years later, it’s still the most comprehensive look at Scrappy’s cinematic oeuvre. In 1981, the idea that you could read it and watch Scrappy cartoons right inside the article would have blown my mind. Maybe it still does.
A few notes on the filmography: Paul and Will didn’t manage to screen every Scrappy cartoon as part of their 1981 research, and so some still don’t have descriptions/critiques. Cartoon #64 in their listing, The Scary Crows, features a blond kid whom the 1981 description says is Scrappy; he appears in a few other cartoons and was dubbed “Sparky” by Jerry Beck in this century. Until someone else creates a Sparkyland site, I’m leaving The Scary Crows in the filmography as it originally appeared.
While adding in the YouTube cartoons, I discovered that Paul and Will’s roster was missing one short that’s unquestionably a Scrappy, though not exactly a career highlight: 1940’s Fish Follies. With Paul’s permission, I’ve added it to the filmography.
Another Scrappy film has come to light since 1981: The promo for his puppet theater, which includes some bizarre animation along with live action of Edith Fellows—and which was preserved by UCLA through Jerry’s generosity. Since it’s not quite a Scrappy cartoon, I will present it to you here rather than trying to backfill it into the filmography.
As rich in Scrappy as YouTube has become, two cartoons are unavailable there: The Chinatown Mystery and Stepping Stones (both 1932). Neither was included in the 1950s Scrappy TV package, which gave us most of the prints on YouTube. They aren’t lost films, thank heavens—just not in readily-available circulation. No complaining, please: The fact that there are only a couple of Scrappy cartoons you can’t watch instantly for free is pretty astounding.
Are you excited by the image above? You would have been, if you ran a TV station in 1955. And maybe even if you were just a kid at home glued to the tube.
As we discussed back in 2013, the state of animation of TV in the early 1950s was pretty darn abysmal. Not counting made-for-TV rarities such as Jay Ward and Alex Anderson’s Crusader Rabbit, it consisted entirely of 800 old theatrical shorts, 90% of which were so long in the tooth that they were silent cartoons. So when a company called Hygo acquired rights to Screen Gems’ Scrappy and Krazy Kat series—which had ended in 1941 and 1940, respectively—TV viewers didn’t regard them as a throwback. Instead, they felt downright fresh.
The fact that Hygo’s ad specifies that the cartoons in question have sound is evidence of just how ancient the competition was. For a moment, I wondered if anyone had a problem with them being in black and white, until I remembered that color TV didn’t exist yet.
After Scrappy ended his theatrical run, there wasn’t much reason for anyone to create new artwork of him, so his depiction in this ad is a rare reappearance. (Here’s another.) Whoever drew him seems to have had fun with the assignment, though I can’t quite tell whether Scrappy is turning on the TV he’s already appearing on. Or changing the channel. Or maybe controlling the horizontal or the vertical. (I won’t dwell on the fact that he has four fingers on one hand but only three on the other.)
Scrappy’s reign as a TV kingpin did not last long—newer cartoons starring more popular characters arrived soon after he did. In 1956 and 1957, for instance, a company called AAP acquired TV rights to Warner Bros.’ pre-1950 cartoons and all the Popeye cartoons. By the late 1950s, lots of new animation was being produced specifically for broadcast.
Scrappy stuck around for awhile: The “Mr. Cartoon” and “Happy Hal” ads shown here are from 1961. But the onslaught of new cartoons—in color, even!—eventually left him seeming as out of date as the silent shorts he had displaced. I don’t remember him still being around by the time I started my TV cartoon-watching days in the late 1960s, and a quick search of TV listings Newspapers.com does not indicate that he was.
Anyhow, Scrappy has been so obscure for so long that it’s invigorating to remember a moment when he was hailed as a hero. It probably won’t happen again. But it would be nice if he at least got the chance.
Meanwhile, here’s an only vaguely related oddity I came across when researching this article. It’s from an Algona, Iowa newspaper, and reports the winners of a Scrappy cartoon contest at a local theater…
If this was from a 1930s newspaper, I would not have been that intrigued: Holding a Scrappy cartoon contest would have been a totally normal thing to do. But this was from a 1964 paper. Scrappy was still the subject of drawing competitions held at theaters then?
Well, no. More careful inspection revealed that the item was in a section of the paper devoted to republishing old news stories—in this case from 1934. That made sense.
And here’s the kicker: The paper was recapping the Scrappy contest in its edition for April 2, 1964, the day I was born. Scrappy, bless him, managed to welcome me by being in the news, at least sort of, if only in Algona. It might not have been an omen, but I for one find it to be an entertaining coincidence,
Samuel and Rose Davidavitch of Yonkers, New York had four sons who went into the animation business–all after changing the family name to Davis. There was Art, who–at least here at Scrappyland–is best remembered as part of the Mintz brain trust that gave us Scrappy. (His later work as a director and animator at Warner Bros. has its fans, too.) There was Mannie, who stayed in New York and was a key Terrytoons employee for decades. There was Sid, who was also known as Butch and worked alongside Art at Mintz after it became Screen Gems. And there was Phil, who also worked with Art at Mintz/Screen Gems.
Except that in March 1933, Phil left the studio and returned to New York. A few years later, he’d come back and head the Screen Gems in-between department. But his coworkers didn’t know that Phil would be back when they filled a scrapbook with drawings wishing him well as he departed. (Many of them were also New Yorkers who’d headed west–and in some cases would themselves go back and continue their animation careers on the east coast.)
Over at Patreon, Devon Baxter–whose presence there is a must for cartoon fans–has posted dozens of these drawings, courtesy of Art Davis’s granddaughter Sharon Davis and her husband, Steve Marshall. They’re a remarkable collection of work by people who were major figures in the animation industry long after Scrappy left the stage.
Like all good behind-the-scenes gag sketches, these ones are full of in jokes, some of which we probably don’t get. (I do believe that the references to pool in several of them involve the fact that there was a pool hall on the ground floor of the studio’s building.) They feature studio characters diverging from their on-screen behavior, are occasionally racy, and sure look like the people who drew them were having fun. (A few of them even contributed more than one piece.)
You should head to Patreon to see all the drawings–but Devon generously allowed me to share a few here. Naturally, I picked those most closely related to Scrappy.
First of all, here’s Dick Huemer himself, with a fine drawing (given that Scrappy isn’t in it, at least). That’s a self-caricature of Dick–himself a New York transplant–in the foreground. I imagine the whip references his supervisory capacity at the Mintz studio. Within a few weeks, he was at Disney, having left Scrappy and Mintz behind for the studio that would occupy most of this time for the rest of his career.
This one does show Scrappy and Oopy bidding Phil farewell. It’s by Carl Urbano, whom I didn’t realize worked at the Mintz studio. He later directed industrial cartoons for John Sutherland and eventually ended up at Hanna-Barbera before dying in 2003–relatively recently for a Scrappy artist.
Here’s another Scrappy drawing by Marshall Dunning, who worked at Columbia and Disney–but spent most of his career as a political cartoonist. This sketch references WWI, which Dunning served in–and maybe Phil Davis, too, since he would have been old enough.
Reuben Timmins had a long career in animation spanning both coasts and lots of studios, from Fleischer to Filmation. He crammed a lot into his farewell drawing for Phil Davis, starting with a hula girl causing an earthquake–surely the Long Beach one which had occurred the previous week and caused about 115 fatalities. Also in the drawing is Scrappy with a random message for Fleischer animator Dave Tendlar, whom I’m guessing had fallen out of touch with his former colleague Timmins; and Krazy Kat seemingly encouraging Phil to look up Reuben’s relatives in NYC (“Dewey 5888” would have been their phone number).
Lastly from Phil’s Scrappy-book, here’s an amazing drawing with Bimbo, Koko, Betty Boop, Scrappy, Oopy, Mutt, Jeff, Krazy Kat, Mickey Mouse, and a dame whom apparently enjoyed Phil’s company during his time in California. Devon and I am not sure who did this. It’s tempting to wonder if it’s someone who worked on all these characters, but I’m not sure if anyone had in 1933. (Dick Huemer had worked on Mutt and Jeff cartoons and spent time at Fleischer–and left Mintz later in 1933 for Disney–but was gone from Fleischer before Betty Boop arrived.) Perhaps one of you knows who might have done this–Don Yowp’s list of Mintz staffers from 1933 could provide a clue.
[Update: Devon now says: “I’ve talked it over with some trusted experts, and we believe it’s the work of Rudy Zamora. To borrow an observation from Mark Newgarden: ‘The handwriting is a reasonable match with his signature here [on this Fleischer Christmas card]. The way he handles hands & feet & line strokes all check.'”
Bonus material: This Mintz studio gag drawing isn’t from Phil Davis’s scrapbook–it was recently auctioned off by Howard Lowery. It’s by Preston Blair and features caricatures of himself and a “Joe” whom the Lowery listing says is Mintz composer Joe De Nat. I have no reason to doubt that identication, but will note that it’s not readily identifiable as De Nat based on the photos I’ve seen of him. I’m not sure about the precise meaning of the “The March of Time” caption, but it’s presumably a reference to either the radio show (which started in 1931) or the more famous newsreels (which debuted in 1935), both of which were spinoffs from TIME magazine.
I may be the proprietor of the National Scrappy Gallery, but I’m not the only serious Scrappy collector out there. I’ve known that for a long time, if only because I’ve occasionally been outbid at online auctions by one or more competitors with seemingly limitless budgets for Scrappyana.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen someone else’s extensive Scrappy collection though. Until just recently, that is, when Doug Nichols sent me photos of his.
Doug currently lives in the Bay Area–which, since it’s also my home, may well be the epicenter of Scrappy collecting in the U.S. But he’s getting ready to move to Portland, and has decided to downsize.
I can’t imagine living a Scrappy-less life myself, but Doug’s loss may be someone else’s gain. He’s selling his all his Scrappy goodies, and hopes to do so in one fabulous lot: “Any reasonable offer accepted! Likely any unreasonable offer! They need a new home.”
What’s up for sale includes nearly everything in these photos:
As you can see, the Nichols Collection includes the Scrappy pull toy (in variants both with and without Margy), two Scrappy dolls (one in a possibly homemade knit outfit), Scrappy Christmas lights, the wonderfully-boxed Scrappy modeling clay, Scrappy home movies, multiple copies of the Scrappy Big Little Book, several Scrappy banks, and more. Having spent close to 20 years assembling my own Scrappy collection, I know how tough it is to find some of this stuff. Like Doug, I hope there’s someone out there who wants all of it (except for a couple of items which I didn’t have and Doug was nice enough to offer to me).
If you covet these prize examples of the Scrappy Franchise Department‘s work, drop Doug a line. As with Patek Philippe watches, you never actually own Scrappy collectibles–you merely take care of them for future generations. But it would be nice to find someone to safeguard these ones for Scrappy fans yet unborn.
You’ve been waiting for this for almost five years–or, in a way, more than 80. Or maybe not. But I hope you’ll enjoy these four examples of the ill-fated Scrappy newspaper comic strip, which seems to have failed to … well, appear in any newspapers.
Though Will Eisner and Jerry Iger couldn’t get U.S papers interested in the strip in 1937, they did sell it to comics publications overseas, including France’s Bilboquet and the U.K. and Australia’s Wags. Eventually, they lightly retouched it and ran it as “Shorty Shortcake” in Wonderworld comics. The strips below are from Wags, and as far as I know they haven’t been reprinted anywhere since their original appearance in 1938.
By the time the strips below appeared, the style had morphed and I don’t have any bright ideas about who drew them–could be Eisner, could be somebody else. The one person whom we can be positive had nothing to do with them is the guy who signed them: Charles Mintz.
Except for starring Scrappy, Margy, and Yippy, these comics have almost nothing to do with the Scrappy theatrical cartoons. By this point in the chronology, even the fact that Scrappy is a small boy has stopped making sense. But whoever was drawing the strip by this point had fun and deserves at least a little belated glory. So I hope the mystery artist doesn’t remain a mystery forever.
How did the Scrappy comic strip come to be? Did Columbia approach Eisner and Iger, or did they come up with the idea? How hard did they try to sell it to newspapers before shipping it overseas? We’ll probably never know, and I’m just sorry I didn’t ask Will Eisner, who was still attending comics conventions I was also at in this century. (Don’t blame me for not seizing the opportunity: I didn’t know of his Scrappy connection at the time.)
I still have some more Scrappy strips to run, but for now, I’ll leave you with this page from Wonderworld #3 (July 1939), which repurposed the above material and claimed it involved Shorty Shortcake, Suzy, and Woofy.
Charles Mintz, creator of Krazy Kat for the screen, has just produced another cartoon comedy character. The new animated cartoon is called “Scrappy.” Instead of the usual animals featured in the current cartoons, the central figure will be a mischievous little character called “Scrappy.” Most of the comedy will be pantomime, but interpolated dialogue, music and sound effects will play an important part in the short.
—“Star Dust” newspaper column, June 14, 1931
If you went to the movies 90 years ago—on July 16, 1931, to be precise—you might have ended up as one of the first people in the world to see a Scrappy cartoon. That’s the day that the first one, Yelp Wanted, debuted, unleashing Dick Huemer, Sid Marcus, and Art Davis’s creation on the world. Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, here it is again:
It shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone that Scrappyland is marking Scrappy’s first nine-tenths of a century by sharing his first cartoon. But here’s something you probably woudn’t have anticipated seeing here: a new Scrappy cartoon. As far as I know, it’s the first time anyone has animated Scrappy and Oopy since 1941’s The Little Theater:
Scrappy’s 90th Anniversary was produced by Noah Stone and a bunch of other Scrappy fans, all credited at the short’s end; I think them for relighting the torch after so many decades. I’m sorry that my friend Dr. Richard Huemer isn’t around to see it.
Here’s a Scrappy/Oopy drawing—also made to celebrate the anniversary—by Noah:
When Scrappyland debuted in 2005, Scrappy was a mere 73. Now it seems quite possible that this site will be around to mark his 100th birthday in 2031. Or at least I hope it will: I certainly have enough material to keep going, and it would be sad to think that the world might run out of Scrappyana to rediscover.
It’s been great fun helping to keep Scrappy from being entirely forgotten, and it seems fair to say that he’s at least a little less forgotten than he was when I came up with the odd idea of devoting a website to him. May the great Scrappy resurgence continue unabated.
Oh, and a footnote: It wasn’t until this very night that I realized that my wife was born on the anniversary of Yelp Wanted’s release. That’s right—I married someone who shares Scrappy’s birthday. Now I’m horrified at the thought that it could have been any other way.
Back in 2017, I wrote about Some Scrappy Art I Probably Won’t Be Buying. It consisted of several production drawings that someone was trying to sell on eBay, with a minimum bid of $499 per piece. That was way too rich for even my Scrappy-loving blood.
Fast forward to 2021. Another someone is selling drawings of Scrappy (and other Screen Gems characters) on eBay, clearly from the same stash as the 2017 ones. This time, however, the asking price isn’t just reasonable–it’s dirt cheap for vintage animation art. (In fact, it’s roughly what the sales tax would have been for the 2017 ones.) So I bought some. After all, original Scrappy art of any kind is rare stuff.
Thanks to Jerry Beck, I now know that all of these drawings are from Practice Makes Perfect, a 1940 Screen Gem that was–depending on how you count–either the seventh or sixth next-to-last Scrappy cartoon. I’m not sure who did this art (or if it’s all by one person), but the credited animators on the short are Harry Love and Peter Falk’s pal Lou Lilly. Herewith, highlights of the art I bought, plus (as best I can tell) the corresponding frames from the finished product.
Scrappy looks like at least two different characters in different portions of this film, but in all cases he’s been redesigned to suit the animation industry’s tastes of the late 1930s, which were considerably more ornate and pseudo-realistic than when the Scrappy series started in 1931. The way Scrappy is drawn with a fastidiously ragged cowlick reminds me of how modern computer animators obsess over details like the pores in Mr. Peabody’s nose.
I’m intrigued by the notes on these drawings and wonder what stuff like “UCT BAL” means. Maybe any animators out there reading this can fill me in. Also interesting: The peg holes on all these drawings have been reinforced with bits of heavier paper, seemingly by hand. Most of the cartoon is devoted to gags involving Oopy interfering with Scrappy’s piano practice. He too has been given a vaguely Fred Moore-esque redesign. This drawing looks like he’s conducting, but he’s actually messing around with Scrappy’s metronome. Here’s a hammer from inside the piano (inevitably, Oopy has climbed inside it for the sake of a gag) with a note to the BKGRDDEPT on making it match the other ones. What does “CUT OUT” mean, and is it relevant that it’s crossed out? Scrappy in close up, also with elaborate hair. Whoever drew this started with some construction lines in red pencil. Like Mickey Mouse–and most good cartoon characters in general–Scrappy is instantly identifiable in silhouette, or would be if people remembered him. Here he’s holding his pup–is he a redesigned Yippy?–by the tail.
Rather than being Scrappy at his best, Practice Makes Perfect is a bland. unfunny remnant of his decline and fall. Still, I’m glad to own these drawings. It’s fun to think about someone sitting at an animation desk making them at 7000 Santa Monica or 861 Seward (or possibly both: the studio moved in 1940, but I’m not sure exactly when).
Here’s the short in its entirety. Don’t you agree that YouTube’s single greatest contribution to society has probably been making it easier to watch long-unwatched Scrappy cartoons?
There’s only one downside to thinking as much about Scrappy as I do: He may well take over your brain. Or at least I tend to see him–or hints of Scrappyness–in the darndest places.
The most recent instance came when I was reading an article about Israel’s COVID-19 vaccination program. In the background on some signage, a cartoon kid brandished a medicine bottle and beamed. He looked like Scrappy to me.
More specifically, he looked like Scrappy in a familiar stock pose, in which he wears a cap backwards and sticks out his right hand in salutation, often with Yippy by his side. The Mintz studio must have liked it, since it pops up frequently in one form or another.
Israel’s kid turned out to be a mascot for Clalit, the country’s largest healthcare organization. He predates the current pandemic but has turned his attention to promoting vaccines in recent months.
It’s true that he lacks the basketball-head proportions of Scrappy as depicted in the above examples. (Scrappy later developed a slightly more realistic physique himself, but by then he’d stopped wearing a cap regularly.) But the Clalid kid still has a Scrappy vibe to him–if Sony decided to make new Scrappy cartoons in CGI, he might well look like this.
However, when I went in search of other images of Clalid’s mascot, I discovered that he usually doesn’t sport a cap–and without it, he ceases to be Scrappy’s doppelgänger. (Actually, he looks more like Charlie Brown.)
I also found a line drawing of him in which even I would not detect the slightest tinge of Scrappyness.
Even with his hat on, the Clalit kid’s resemblance to Scrappy is presumably a coincidence, unless Israel is more familiar with Scrappy than I’d guess. Bottom line: Stick a cartoon boy with big black eyes and a grin in a red shirt, short pants and cap, and then put him in a jaunty pose, and the odds are pretty good that he’ll look kind of like Scrappy. To me, that is.
It’s also clear that Loescher was a pillar of Menasha society—the secretary/treasurer of the Wisconsin Postmasters’ Association, post commander of the American Legion, a speaker at local events, and more. He sounds entirely admirable, and loving Scrappy—which we have no evidence he didn’t do—would only make him more laudable. I’m sorry to say he died in 1941, the same year the final Scrappy cartoon reached theaters.
