Post 23 was quite interesting.
Hopefully you sent some derisive mocking letters to this company’s brass insulting them and their genius rep.
They ended up hiring another firm to sell that which was no longer salable. That firm even approached us a couple of years later to make us a good offer, but we politely told them our staff was too busy with other characters and had no interest in bringing back a failure. I have no idea what happened after that.
Do you remember Popeye the Sailor Man?
Yomiuri Shimbun, one of the leading daily papers, signed on to represent Popeye in the 1950s. The fellow who was assigned to the project semi-retired in the 1980s. But he still had a desk at the paper which he shared with another retiree and came in a couple of days every week to do the Popeye business . . . a fairly remarkable example of how long continuity can be in Japan.
Another example is the RCA Victor dog. Japan Victor Company bought the world rights to the dog when RCA decided he was no longer worth much of anything. He still appears in JVC ads from time to time.
Moral of the story is never, ever p*ss on the people who generate your royalty check.