{"id":1027,"date":"2013-11-02T18:47:42","date_gmt":"2013-11-03T01:47:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/?p=1027"},"modified":"2013-11-02T18:49:36","modified_gmt":"2013-11-03T01:49:36","slug":"the-art-of-the-mintz-button","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/2013\/11\/02\/the-art-of-the-mintz-button\/","title":{"rendered":"The Art of the Charles Mintz Pinback Button"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in the 1930s, a company called Western Theater issued pins of cartoon characters<\/a>, which I presume were intended as movie-theater giveaways. It did an impressive job of lining up licenses, producing pins featuring everybody from Harold Teen to Betty Boop to Oswald the Rabbit. And — as you’ve already surmised — the Mintz characters.<\/p>\n

Here are Scrappy, two slight Yippy variants, Vontzy and, for good measure, Krazy Kat.<\/p>\n

\"Mintz<\/a><\/p>\n

These being Mintz characters, it’s not surprising that the approach to naming is…well, surprising. We all know that Scrappy’s dog is Yippy, but he’s usually a pint-sized, terrier-like pooch. Except when he’s a big old hound dog, as he is here. (This pet was also known to go by the name of Woofus.)<\/p>\n

Scrappy’s brother Vontzy, meanwhile, was generally known as Oopy — in fact, this is the only piece of merchandise I know about which calls him Vontzy. Eighty years later, this is still a point of confusion: The Big Cartoon Database thinks<\/a> that the Scrappy series involved bullies named Vonsey and Oopie.<\/p>\n

Unlike a lot of Scrappy merchandising art, these pieces were done with care, apparently by a Mintz artist. Here’s the original art for the only Mintz-related Western Theater pin back I know of that’s not shown above:<\/p>\n

\"Kitty<\/a><\/p>\n

That’s Krazy Kat’s girlfriend, Kitty Kat, who seems to be a dog. I hope that George Herriman didn’t know about this — or, if he did, that he was amused rather than outraged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in the 1930s, a company called Western Theater issued pins of cartoon characters, which I presume were intended as movie-theater giveaways. It did an impressive job of lining up licenses, producing pins featuring everybody from Harold Teen to Betty Boop to Oswald the Rabbit. And — as you’ve already surmised — the Mintz characters. … Continue reading The Art of the Charles Mintz Pinback Button<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[10,14,11,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artifacts","category-curios","category-merchandise","category-original-art"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2D9Zl-gz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1034,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027\/revisions\/1034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scrappyland.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}