A Teenie Weenie amount of ‘Goodwill’: Cross-media character brand merchandizing in the 1920s

Abstract

This article analyses correspondence and legal documents pertaining to William Donahey’s efforts to merchandize his Teenie Weenies comic strip in the 1920s, with particular emphasis on Donahey’s negotiations with toy distributor Geo. Borgfeldt & Company. I argue that neither the Teenie Weenies’ value as intellectual property, nor Donahey’s creative authority as licensor nor Borgfeldt’s as licensee preceded the negotiations between these two parties, but rather, that they were created through the tactical discursive exchange of what John Caldwell labels ‘trade stories’ designed to establish each party’s ‘career capital’. These trade stories were, in turn, inspired by the particular socio-historical and industrial contexts in which they were told; in this case the post-First World War pre-Depression era children’s market and its construction of an imaginary child consumer. Moreover, I argue that the interactions between Donahey and Borgfeldt reveal how the concept of ‘goodwill’ was understood and given meaning through discourse in an era prior to the codification of secondary meaning into trademark law. Early debates over what constituted ‘goodwill’ would have profound effects on Donahey’s authority over the Teenie Weenies as a brand as well as on how managerial stewardship would come to be understood as essential to establishing and maintaining brand equity. Rather than view correspondence between Donahey and Borgfeldt as evidencing particular industrial norms, I argue that it reveals as much about the uncertainties of extending character brands as it does about the tenuous positions held by both licensor and licensee at an historical moment where the value of intellectual property – and, more precisely, who was responsible for ensuring that value – was in flux.