Children’s Hour: Stamps Featuring Favourite Cartoon Characters

In early January, the Post Office issued a set of stamps to commemorate favourite children’s TV characters through the decades. Starting with Andy Pandy in the 50s all the way through to Shaun the Sheep, this was a great chance to wallow in the nostalgia of your own children’s TV era. For the younger audience, it probably came as a bit of a surprise that children’s TV did not start with Peppa Pig, and that yes, we did used to have black and white televisions where we watched puppets on strings.

This set us to wondering what other favourite film and tv characters have appeared on stamps over the years.

Disney Stamps
Collecting Disney stamps is so popular that collectors even have their own society – the Dysneyana on Stamps Society. For a stamp to qualify as Disney, it must have been drawn by a Disney artist and officially recognised by the Walt Disney company.

Walt himself appeared on the very first commemorative Disney stamp in 1968 following his death in 1966, but the first Disney characters were featured in 1970 in San Marino, with a series of 10 stamps depicting favourite characters including Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto.

1979 was the International Year of the Child and Antigua, Dominica, Grenada, the Grenadines, the Maldives and Turks & Caicos Islands all celebrated with their own series of Disney stamps.

It wasn’t until September 1998 that Disney made another appearance in the United States with Snow White on the 32-cent stamp.

Bugs Bunny
22nd May 1997
Mickey Mouse may have got there first internationally, but it was Bugs Bunny who had the honour of being the first cartoon character to appear solo on a US postage stamp in 1997.

The Simpsons
7th May 2009
The Simpsons set of stamps was issued by the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate 20 years of Homer. Unfortunately, they rather overestimated the enthusiasm for these stamps, printing 1 billion, leaving them with 682 million unsold –at a loss of $1.2 million. D’oh!

Wallace and Gromit
Christmas 2010
Back in the UK, the ever popular BBC TV characters from Aardman Animations, Wallace and Gromit, had the honour of appearing on the Christmas stamps for 2010.

Gerry Anderson
11th January 2011
In 2011 Gerry Anderson’s iconic stable of ground breaking animations were commemorated, including Joe 90, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds, Stingray, Fireball XL5 and event Supercar.

Pixar
19th August 2011
In 2011 it was Pixar’s turn as the US Postal Service commemorated their innovative animation, featuring some of their great movies. The stamps featured Buzz Lightyear from Toy Story as well as Wall*E, Ratatouille, Cars and Up.