Comics-Red Ryder & Little Beaver TB

This travel bug has the modest goal to circulate more than five years and to be moved by at least 25 cachers.  As of 27-Jul-19 it had survived for 1.1 years and had been moved by 7 cachers.

Please drop it in rural OR Premium Member Only caches.  Do not place it in an urban cache or abandon it at a caching event.  Transport the bug in the original plastic bag for as long as the bag lasts; the bag keeps the trackable clean, protects the number and prevents tangling with other items.  Otherwise, take the travel bug anywhere you wish.  No permission is needed to leave the U.S.

Travel bug photos are appreciated and will be re-posted here.

My youth was in the late 1940s and early 1950s.  Drawing from that period, this is one of a series of travel bugs made to commemorate favorite characters from comic books, comic strips, movie cartoons, B-movies and animated feature-length movies.  Some of the characters had only a brief existence, some survived as radio and early TV programs and some have been digitally-modernized into some of the blockbuster movies of today.  There were many other characters, but these are the ones on which I was willing to spend my dimes (comic books) and quarters (movie and popcorn).  However, I didn’t pay for the daily comic strips or Sunday funnies that came with the newspaper.

Red Ryder was a popular long-running Western comic strip created by Stephen Slesinger and artist Fred Harman.  Beginning Sunday, November 6, 1938, Red Ryder was syndicated by Newspaper Enterprise Association, expanding over the following decade to 750 newspapers, translations into ten languages and a readership in the United States of 14 million.  The 26-year run of the strip came to an end in 1964.

After an earlier failed comic strip In 1938, Harman met publisher/comic syndicator Leon Schlesinger.    Slesinger brought Harman to New York and worked with him for a year before Red Ryder was ready to go.  Slesinger then embarked on a successful campaign of merchandising and licensing with a seemingly endless parade of comic books, Big Little Books, novels, serial chapters, radio programs, events, rodeos, powwows and commercial tie-ins.

The most successful of the licensed products was the Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun, which remains the longest-continuous license in the history of the global licensing industry.  The appeal of the Daisy Red Ryder BB Gun to youngsters was depicted in the Christmas classic film A Christmas Story, adapted from the autobiographical fiction of Jean Shepherd, by permission of Red Ryder Enterprises, Inc.  I wanted one as well, but got a Benjamin pellet rifle instead.

Astride his mighty steed Thunder, Red was a tough cowpoke who lived on Painted Valley Ranch in the Blanco Basin of the San Juan Mountain Range with his aunt, the Duchess, and his juvenile Native-American sidekick, Little Beaver.  Little Beaver spoke in the pidgin English now considered an offensive caricature.   Other notable characters were ranch hand Buckskin Blodgett, Red's gal pal Beth, and bad guy Ace Hanlon.

Harman was eventually acclaimed as one of the finest Western pen-and-ink artists, known for his dramatic sense of perspective and authentic action.  Harman left Red Ryder in 1963 to concentrate on his paintings.

Red Ryder appeared in more than 35 movies and serials. They began in 1940 with the 12-chapter Republic movie serial The Adventures of Red Ryder, played by Don "Red" Barry, who got his nickname "Red" from the role and Tommy Cook as Red Ryder's young Indian sidekick Little Beaver. S ubsequently Wild Bill Elliott and Allan "Rocky" Lane portrayed Red Ryder in a number of films, both working with Robert Blake as Little Beaver