{"id":25242,"date":"2013-08-30T00:05:57","date_gmt":"2013-08-30T07:05:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=25242"},"modified":"2013-08-28T19:08:50","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T02:08:50","slug":"the-history-of-wheres-waldo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2013\/08\/the-history-of-wheres-waldo\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origin of “Where’s Waldo”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"waldo\"<\/a>

Found him<\/p><\/div>\n

Today I found out<\/a> about the history of Where\u2019s Wally<\/i> (known in the US and Canada as Where\u2019s Waldo<\/i><\/a>).<\/p>\n

The iconic, elusive man in the red-and-white striped shirt was first hidden away in 1987 by British illustrator Martin Handford.<\/p>\n

Handford had been drawing since he was a boy, and was particularly fond of viewing and drawing crowd scenes. He felt crowds contained a certain kind of excitement, and he liked to capture it on paper.<\/p>\n

After three years of art school, Handford started working as a freelance illustrator, drawing crowd scenes for a variety of magazines and advertising companies. He got the idea for a whole book made up of crowd scenes and approached a publishing company about it in 1986. The art director suggested that he make a character to act as a focal point in his pictures of crowds to encourage people to look at the picture more closely.<\/p>\n

After a bit of thought, Handford came up with the distinctive Wally\/Waldo character. The round glasses and pom-pom on top of Wally\u2019s head were definitive of Wally\u2019s personality, which Handford described as something like a \u201ctrain spotter\u201d\u2014a phrase used in England in the 1980s to describe someone who was a bit daft.<\/p>\n

In Handford\u2019s own words,<\/p>\n

I gave him that look because when I originally thought of the character who was lost in all those scenes, I just imagined the reason he was lost was because he was slightly idiotic and didn\u2019t know where he was going.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Handford soon started designing the two-page spreads that would make up the first Where\u2019s Wally?<\/i> book. It took him as many as eight weeks to finish each picture, which were filled with various other characters doing a myriad of entertaining things. Some of the spreads contain upwards of 3,000 to 4,000 tiny figures, which understandably take some time to create\u2014not to mention the crazy backgrounds, which include everything from a cake factory to a band competition.<\/p>\n

The first Where\u2019s Wally?<\/i> book was published in the UK in 1987 by Walker Books, followed by publication in the US by first Little, Brown and Company, then Candlewick Press. It featured Wally visiting a bunch of familiar places like the beach and train station.<\/p>\n

The books have since been widely published throughout the world in nineteen different languages to date. Wally\u2019s name is often changed for these different editions.\u00a0 For instance, he\u2019s “Waldo” in the US and Canada, “Charlie” in France, “Walter” in Germany, “Ali” in Turkey, “Efi” in Israel, and “Willy” in Norway.\u00a0 All total, the books have sold well over 50 million copies and are still going strong.\u00a0 Not bad for what essentially are just books of drawings of a bunch of crowds in various settings.<\/p>\n

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy our new popular podcast, The BrainFood Show (iTunes<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, Google Play Music<\/a>, Feed<\/a>), as well as:<\/p>\n