Most of the icons from the 1970s are gone now: the Ford Pinto, smiley-face buttons, peace signs, crocheted ponchos. But one '70s image is still hanging on.
He still has a weight problem, is still in therapy and still has a dog that looks just like him.He is Ziggy.
This year, Ziggy creator Tom Wilson celebrates 25 years of Ziggyness. The pudgy character first appeared in newspapers in 1971 - a year that also brought the United States deeper involvement in the Vietnam War, Amtrak, Walt Disney World and a Supreme Court order to end segregation in public schools through busing.
To celebrate the comic strip character's anniversary, "The First 25 Years Are the Hardest" will be published in April.
Ziggy, a likable loser, has universal appeal. There are 1 million Ziggy books in print, and 200,000 Ziggy calendars are sold each year. He has helped charities, decorated a musician's CD, starred in his own TV show and entered the Latino marketplace.
During a phone interview from his Cleveland office, Wilson said he thinks Ziggy's mass appeal is attributable to people's insecurities.
"I think growing up is a very Ziggy experience, and, as a child, being unsure and not knowing where you're going or what you are doing, are very Ziggy experiences. We all remember what it was like to be one. I think in our own heads we're never all that confident. I'm not."
To begin his 25th year with Ziggy, Wilson, 64, orchestrated a major business deal. He left American Greetings after a 38-year partnership and signed on with Hallmark Cards. It was a greeting card coup for Hallmark, a company that has garnered success with fellow comic strips "Peanuts," "Garfield" and "Cathy."Long before he invented Ziggy, Wilson began his career with American Greetings as an art director. He retired from the company in 1992 but continued the licensing agreement until the end of May 1995.
"American Greetings did a good job. I'm not knocking them," he said. "I did a lot of good work with them."
But Hallmark is the leader in the greeting card business, with $3.8 billion in annual sales, and the opportunity to give Ziggy more exposure appealed to Wilson, whose strip appears in more than 600 newspapers.
No matter how much his surroundings and color change, Ziggy is still the same old character who is thrilled when a vending machine works on the first try and is stumbling along in life wondering, "Why me?"
And once in a while he may have wondered, "Why the name Ziggy?"
"When I had to get serious about syndication, I had to get serious about who he was," Wilson said. "I wrote down a whole list of names such as Lenny, Ernie and Danny. None seemed to fit him. They all ended in a "y" or "ie," that must be because I wanted people to care about him, and those letters are friendlier sounding, more lovable.
"I thought `Ziggy' was good because there's a "z" on the front establishing his alphabetical order in life. I wanted it short, and I liked it because there hadn't been anyone anywhere named Ziggy."
In an era that has seen the departure of the beloved comic strips "Li'l Abner," "Bloom County," "The Far Side" and "Calvin & Hobbes," "Ziggy" keeps on truckin'.
In fact, the good news for true Ziggy fans is that when Wilson is ready to retire from the comic strip world, Tom Wilson Jr., 38, is poised to take over the Ziggy kingdom.
The younger Wilson started out adding ink to his dad's drawings and now contributes art and ideas. He used to draw his own syndicated comic strip, "UG," which appeared in 80 papers.
"In a way, Ziggy has been with me most of my life. When I was 14, I remember Dad drawing Ziggy at the breakfast table," Tom Jr. said in an issue of Ziggy Newz, a bimonthly newsletter published by Wilson's licensing company, Ziggy & Friends Inc.
Even Tom Jr.'s son, 8-year-old Miles, draws Ziggy.
Wilson said his goal wasn't to push the family business on his children (his daughter Ava is a painter), but it "pleased me a great deal that Tom wanted to work with me," he said.