What Toy Company Made The First Beatrix Potter Animals
PETER RABBIT, STILL FRISKY AT 80
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December 13, 1981
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Section 3 , Folio
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P ETER RABBIT Plant nursery Ware. Peter Rabbit's Natural Foods Cookbooks. Peter Rabbit and Family Serving Trays. Beatrix Potter'south Coloring Book Featuring Peter Rabbit. Beatrix Potter Wallpaper. The Beatrix Potter Elevator-Out Jig-Saw Puzzle ...
Proliferating like bunnies, as it were, books and wares written and inspired by Beatrix Potter accept been best sellers for generations and the products of a multimillion-dollar, globe-girdling empire.
In these pre-Christmas weeks, sales of Potter merchandise have been cheeringly brisk despite the recession, Miss Potter'southward longtime New York publishing house, Frederick Warne & Company, reports. Roughly xxx percent of its Potter book sales come up in the fall-and-Christmas season - and this year, they have been running xv percent college than in the comparable menstruum last twelvemonth.
That operation is especially envied in the competitive children's book manufacture because it comes fully 80 years subsequently the shy Miss Potter, a British amateur creative person and naturalist, brought out the first edition of ''The Tale of Peter Rabbit.'' The outset 250 copies appeared in Dec 1901 in Britain, with illustrations she did herself.
That trickle of books has swelled to a mighty stream of merchandising revenue: In the United States lone, sales of Warne's Potter books, and revenues from other Peter- and Potter-related merchandise it has licensed, will come to an estimated $7 meg or more for in this, the 38th twelvemonth later Miss Potter'southward decease. And Potter book proceeds worldwide dwarf those recorded in this country, co-ordinate to the Warne company, a 100-twelvemonth-old subsidiary of the London publishing house of Frederick Warne, which looks after Miss Potter'due south literary estate.
The British company'southward stock is closely held - the majority is endemic by the Warne family unit and a connected clan, the Stephenses - and it does not hash out its operating results. But Potter books have been translated into a dozen languages and practise surprisingly well in such unlikely bailiwicks equally Nihon, where more than 500,000 copies, in Warne-authorized Japanese translations, are sold each twelvemonth.
It was in 1902 that Warne, after earlier turning ''Peter'' downwardly, brought out its own kickoff edition of the book, which is about the adventures of a naughty young rabbit who lives with his family unit in a sandbank. Warne'southward large-scale printing was a quick commercial success, and at that place followed 22 other children's books, which have become classics. These include ''The Tale of Benjamin Bunny,'' ''The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin,'' ''The Tale of Johnny Town-Mouse,'' and ''The Tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse.''
With ''Peter Rabbit'' and some other Potter titles in the public domain in this state, other houses have joined the rabbit carriage. The Outlet Book Company, for instance, says that two collections of Potter tales, published under its Derrydale and Avenel imprints, are among its best-selling children'southward books.
Miss Potter's volition gave the Warne parent company command of rights to publish the Potter books and license the employ of her characters. Which is only natural, considering her close professional and personal ties to the Warnes: They published most of her works, and she became engaged to a member of the family, Norman Warne, who died of leukemia only weeks afterwards.
Warne executives in Britain do not say what their company does with the revenues from the Potter literary estate, but in knowledgeable publishing circles information technology is suggested that she evidently bequeathed all or nearly of its earnings to the Warne family unit, its London house, or both. She married late and died childless, and her attorney-husband, William Heelis, died not long subsequently.
Every bit for profits, Richard Billington, chairman and president of Warne's American subsidiary, said the Warne companies have been in clover for many years. The parent business organization has been doing well since World State of war I and the New York house for decades, he said. All told, Mr. Billington calculates, Warne has sold nearly 20 million Potter books in this country, including more than three million copies of ''The Tale of Peter Rabbit.''
Unit of measurement sales and revenues of Warne'south Potter books in this country have been increasing from year to year, Mr. Billington reports, except for 1980, when the economy's woes kept them apartment. This yr they will be up nearly v percent, he says, amounting to more than than 300,000 copies, including roughly 100,000 of ''Peter Rabbit.''
What'southward the surreptitious of the appeal of Peter Rabbit, Squirrel Nutkin, Jemima Puddle-Duck, and the other Potter animal-characters? ''Beatrix Potter was i person who managed to wearing apparel animals up while still retaining their true brute likenesses,'' says Mr. Billington. ''Peter Rabbit is really a rabbit; he merely happens to have a jacket on - he's not a Bugs Bunny, is he?''
Publishing experts add that grownups generally buy the children's books they liked when they were immature. Mr. Billington, who is 58, agrees. He raised his son, at present 29, on Potter books. Simply he argues that the underlying reason the works alive on is that once children are introduced to them, ''they dearest them, and ask for them to be read over and over.''
Part of the charm of the books, he says, is their dimunitive size - almost four by v inches. Miss Potter, he reports, ''said they should be 'petty books for petty hands.' '' He also stresses her choice of names and words: ''Jemima Puddle-Duck. Is there a better description for a duck?'' he asks. ''Beatrix Potter had a great sense of the sound of words; she knew how to make them interesting to children.''
At the Outlet Book Visitor, Alan Mirken, president, emphasizes the Potter illustrations. ''There's a warm tone to them that makes people of all ages feel comfortable looking at them,'' he says. ''There's an extraordinary ability, apparently, for different generations to spend fourth dimension reliving the tales.''
The opposition is particularly impressed. ''The success of the Beatrix Potter books is incredible,'' says John Briggs, president of Vacation House, a rival children'southward book publishing company. It puts out two books that have come to exist known as modern classics - ''The Shrinking of Treehorn'' and ''Treehorn's Treasure'' - both written past Florence Parry Heide and illustrated by Edward Gorey.
''It's encouraging that books of outstanding quality can survive from one generation to some other,'' says Mr. Briggs. ''The Beatrix Potter books accept a special appeal that's universal; they sell all over the world.''
The American Warne company'south Potter books by and large sell all over this country, says Mr. Billington, who is a British-born American denizen. They accept been doing best in California and in the Northeast, merely have been faring ameliorate lately in the South and Middle West.
His company has nourished sales in recent years by packaging the 23 $iii.50 Potter books in $75, maroon-wrapped sets, and marketing fourbook Potter sampler sets at $eleven.95. Information technology has besides begun publishing $1.95 paperback editions of Peter Rabbit and iii other books.
In addition, the house purveys a number of books that are about, or related to, Miss Potter. And information technology has licensed xix manufacturers to plough out merchandise that is identified with her and her characters. All told, American sales of the licenced products corporeality to $v 1000000 or more a year, Mr. Billington says, and revenue from licensing is particularly welcome to his company since about all of information technology flows straight downwardly to the bottom line.
The licensee companies range, rather spectacularly, from the C.R. Gibson Company (birth announcements, jigsaw puzzles and the like) and the Quiltex Company (snowsuits, crib sheets and whatnot) to Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Inc. (earthenware nursery sets, children's tea sets etc.) and Eden Toys Inc., which makes stuffed animals depicting Peter Rabbit and 14 other Potter critters.
Eden doesn't divulge sales figures for the animals, but it says Peter Rabbit does best, and good sellers include Benjamin Bunny, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Jeremy Fisher, which is a frog. In January, stores will brainstorm selling a new addition to the Eden-Potter line: Samuel Whiskers, which is a rat.
''These are more than than just children's toys,'' says Barbara Goldberg, the company's product promotion manager. ''They entreatment to all ages. They take a certain style to them. They're whimsical. They're collector'due south items!''
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/13/business/peter-rabbit-still-frisky-at-80.html
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