Are these characters in the public domain?

[sallieforth]

Hello

There are certain characters I would like to use on my merchandise but I don't know if they are still covered by copyright or not or if copyright was renewed or not. I have tried to find people who might know or who might be able to give me written permission/commercial licence to use them but have drawn a blank (mainly because publishers have closed down or artists have sadly died and I don't have details about their heirs etc). I would be grateful if anyone can help me regarding the following:

Cartoon character Muggy-Doo from the 1960s the cat version not the fox version
The original Little Audrey cartoon character (not the 'Playful Little Audrey' cartoon character later used)
Little LULU the cartoon character that preceded Little Audrey
Casper the friendly Ghost
Mopsy the teenage girl cartoon character
Little Eva
Eb and Flo

If they are still under copyright I'd be grateful for the contact details of who owns the copyright.

Thanks

[AndyJ]

Hi again Sallie,

The short answer is that the artwork for all these characters is protected by copyright, and in some instances the names and graphic representations of the characters (eg Caspar) will be also be registered trade marks. Copyright lasts for the lifetime of the author plus 70 years after their death. In the case of joint authors, it is the lifetime of the longest surviving author which matters.This means that you most definitely need permission to reproduce the characters graphically, and in most cases I suspect that you will need to negotiate an exploitation licence before you can produce any merchandise.

As you have indicated, you need to contact the originator or their publisher or agent to get permission. This will mean doing a bit more research than you appear to have managed thus far. Just to get you started, it took me less than two minutes to establish that the author of the Ebb and Flo characters is Jane Simmons and she has a website here: https://janesimmons.com/
Similarly, Caspar the Friendly Ghost was created by Seymour Reit (1918-2001) and Joe Oriolo (1915-1985). They sold their rights in the Caspar cartoons to Harvey Publications, which in turn was bought out by Dreamworks, so I suggest they would be a good starting point to discuss a sub-licensing deal: https://www.dreamworks.com/classics

I don't have time to do the same for all the characters you mention, so I will leave you to see what else you can discover.

Good luck