Going Down the Garfield Rabbit Hole

You may have noticed that “The Garfield Movie” was the No. 1 movie in America last week, earning $14 million and taking over the top spot from the infinitely more hyped “Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.” It has grossed $55 million in North America and $156 million globally in two weeks.

After more than 45 years of daily strips (that still get made every day), three feature films, 76 books, three animated series, dozens of video games and a literal boatload of merchandise, we may ask, how did we get here?

In an attempt to answer that question, we took a trip down the Garfield rabbit hole.

So Much Merchandise

The first thing you come across is the merchandise. There are T-shirts, phones, watches, furniture, clocks, slippers, tents, wallets, trading cards, eye shadow and roller skates with Garfield’s leering image.

There was even a Garfield toilet seat cover. “It turned out to be a great product. It was real colorful,” Garfield’s creator, Jim Davis, told The New York Times in 2019. (There are, in fact, numerous Garfield toilet seat covers.)

This is no accident. Davis released the three-panel newspaper comic strip in 1978 with an eye toward selling his creation.