DAVID ADAMS digs up the origins of Mr Tickle and co…
|
ENTERTAINING CHILDREN EVERYWHERE: Mr Daydream, Mr Dizzy and Mr Forgetful. |
It’s 40 years this year since Brit Roger Hargreaves started creating his Mr. Men books, with the first of the shapely characters – Mr Tickle – drawn after his son Adam asked what a tickle looked like.
Other characters featured in the initial six books – first published on 10th August, 1971, and initially known as the Mister series – included Mr Happy, Mr Nosey and Mr Bump. The array of characters grew as the years passed with Hargreaves eventually publishing more than 40 Mr. Men books..
In 1981 he launched the Little Miss series with Little Miss Bossy. This has since gone on to include more than 30 books.
The books, which were made into a BBC series in the 1980s, have since gone on to sell more than 120 million copies and have been translated into 15 languages.
Hargreaves died in 1988 – in 2004 his widow Christine sold the rights to the characters to the Chorion for a reported £28 million.
In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the book’s creation, Adam Hargreaves – who now illustrates the books – has recreated some of the most popular characters to show to reflect the changes of the last four decades.
They include Mr Greedy as a mobile-phone carrying banker from the 1980s, Mr Rude as a 1970s punk and Little Miss Chatterbox as a Noughties woman carrying an iPad.
Adam Hargreaves was also responsible for the creation of Little Miss Princess earlier this year in recognition of the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton. In 2007, he created Little Miss Stella, only 1,000 copies of which were printed to be used as invitations to Stella McCartney’s fashion show.
FOR MORE:
Mr. Men website
Fansite, Mr Men & Little Miss Toybox
If you have a word you’d like to know the origins of, simply send an email to [email protected].
