Vintage Casper and Wendy Kite

Who doesn't love Casper the Friendly Ghost? Or Wendy the Good Little Witch? OK... you may not be familiar with them, but they were wonderfully wholesome characters introduced in the post-war era.

Casper was a ghost-child with a New York accent, lived... sorry, haunted a dilapidated hovel with 4 adult ghosts. All 4 revelled in terrorizing the living, but not Casper. He was a kind and gentle soul, despite scaring every living soul he met.
Wendy was the same - an oft-typecast character, in this case a witch, who aims to do good and help the downtrodden. They were both created in the 30s by a pair of gents, but when one went away for service during WW2, the other sold the rights to the characters to Paramount Pictures. They quickly tested Casper and received a very favourable reception. In 1945, Paramount created the full-motion origin story, above. A regularly-programmed cartoon was developed and released in 1950. He continued with great success through the 50s with several characters introduced into Casper's tollerant entourage. Wendy was one of those characters, but her popularity led to her own series in the 60s. Although his friends eventually faded, Casper went on to grace the lives of children all the way to the 90s, including a motion picture with Christina Ricci. He continues varied levels of success, even today.

This kite is part of the tide of paraphernalia released by the owners of Casper's character, in the 50s. Harvey Comics had been massively successful with their rights to comic publication of Casper and in 1959, Alfred Harvey purchased the rights to Casper, outright. He subsequently formed Harvey Famous Cartoons and released a deluge of promotional swag that saturated young-American bedrooms, cereal boxes, lunchboxes and sugar-fuelled Saturday mornings. This great little kite is one of those pieces.

It is in very good condition. I've tried to show the interior - it is complete and remarkably solid. Measuring 29 cm x 22.5 cm, it would make a wonderful addition to any mid-century or vintage cartoon collection.

As always, should you have any questions or comments, please feel free to drop me a line. I'm always happy to chat.

Thanks for reading!