Skippy is an American comic strip written and drawn by Percy Crosby, and published from 1923 to 1945. A highly popular, acclaimed and influential feature about rambunctious fifth-grader Skippy Skinner, his friends and his enemies, it was adapted into an Oscar-winning 1931 film starring Jackie Cooper, a novel and a radio show. An early influence on cartoonist Charles Schulz and an inspiration for his Peanuts, Skippy is considered one of the classics of the form. Nothing like it had ever been seen before in the comic strips. The brilliance of Skippy was that it was the first kid cartoon with a definable and complex personality grounded in daily life.
Today, the most well-known extension of the Skippy name is peanut butter. When the California food packer Joseph L. Rosefield began to sell its newly developed hydrogenated peanut butter in 1932, it was labeled "Skippy" without Crosby's permission, resulting in Crosby invalidating the trademark in 1934. Rosefield persisted in using the name. After Crosby was committed to a mental institution and after the passage of the Lanham Act in 1946, Rosefield was granted rights to the trademark.
Rosefield sold the brand to Best Foods in 1955. Its successor companies claimed rights to the trademark over the objection of Crosby's heirs, and much litigation has occurred on this point over the decades. Skippy is currently manufactured by Hormel Foods, which bought the brand from Unilever in 2013. Skippy is the second oldest leading peanut butter brand after Peter Pan (1920).
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