This is an excellent read entitled, The Cheapening of the Comics. It was a speech given in 1989 by Bill Watterson. In it, he discusses his thoughts on merchandi

This is an excellent read entitled, The Cheapening of the Comics. It was a speech given in 1989 by Bill Watterson. In it, he discusses his thoughts on merchandising, the business aspects and details of licensing, etc. http://web.archive.org/web/20060210115506/http://hobbes.ncsa.uiuc.edu/comics.html http://web.archive.org/web/20060210115506/http://hobbes.ncsa... The above speech provides a lot of insight as to why he answered the following interview question the way that he did [1]: Q: What led you to resist merchandising Calvin and Hobbes? A: For starters, I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo... Actually, I wasn't against all merchandising when I started the strip, but each product I considered seemed to violate the spirit of the strip, contradict its message, and take me away from the work I loved. If my syndicate had let it go at that, the decision would have taken maybe 30 seconds of my life. [1] http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/calvinandhobbes/index.html/pw_watterson.html http://www.andrewsmcmeel.com/calvinandhobbes/index.html/pw_w...