Where’s Waldo? He won’t be difficult to find once the 25th anniversary kicks off for the bespectacled, and beloved, children’s book character. England will get the global party started Thursday night, when it lights up its popular tourist attraction, the London Eye, in red and white stripes emulating Waldo’s classic jersey. On Friday, New York’s Empire State Building will follow suit when it, too, is lighted up in red and white.
For better or for worse, Waldo, who has already graced the pages of more than 58 million books sold in 30 languages worldwide, is about to become even more famous. And it has nothing to do with his creator, Martin Handford. The British illustrator, who dreamed up the picture-book adventurer back in 1987 and placed him in elaborately detailed, oftentimes humorous search-and-find backdrops from Hollywood to the Great Pyramids, sold the property in 2007 to Classic Media, a New York licensing company that has long had its eye on Sept. 21, 2012, as the start date for a Waldo revival.
“There are a lot of properties we grew up with as children, but Waldo has transcended into a pop culture icon,” said Nicole Blake, executive vice president of global marketing at Classic Media, which is working with 130 different licensing partners to promote the character. “Where’s Waldo? is now vernacular for any time you’re trying to find someone who’s been lost in a crowd.”
Known as Waldo in the U.S., the character is called Wally in most other parts of the world, including his native U.K. He is known as Holger in Denmark and Walter in Germany. But his image is the same in every country: that of a smiling world explorer, walking stick in hand, pom-pommed cap perched on his head, black glasses resting on nose.
In the books, Waldo is often spotted in colorful scenes packed with outlandish goings-on, such as a skier towed through the snow by a sport boat, or a camper pinned under a collapsed tent. Readers’ enthusiasm for searching through these far-out scenarios for Waldo built the books into bestsellers, then a worldwide cultural phenom.
“When ‘Where’s Waldo’ first came out, video games were still primitive, so you had this book that was kind of a game that was very portable that kept the kids busy for hours because once you found Waldo, you had a list of other things to look for,” said Steven Ross, a story-time reader at Vroman’s bookstore in Pasadena, Calif., on staff since 1989. “It was the gift that kept on giving.”
Waldo did, however, occasionally get in trouble. “Where’s Waldo?” landed on the American Library Association’s list of most challenged books for an image that appeared in the original 1987 picture book: A topless sunbather’s breast was exposed in a beach scene crowded with hundreds of other beachgoers.
NONFICTION: ICONIC PHENOM
ICONIC PHENOM
Where’s Waldo?: The 25th Anniversary Edition
by Martin Handford (Candlewick Press)
