Doll-A-Day 2019 #189: Dennis the Menace

   Firstly, there were some comments from yesterday that were accidentally deleted somehow. If you left a comment yesterday, please repeat it,because it disappeared when I tried to publish them.
  Korglady,have you received your doll yet? If not, I have to be ashamed of the U.S. postal service,compared to the British postal service. I bought a doll the other day. I made my Paypal payment very late at night Monday,so it was actually early Tuesday morning. The seller,who was in England, wasn't familiar with sending overseas,so I asked her if she could just send it to our niece in Huddersfield. She agreed. On Wednesday Jane messaged me to let me know the doll had arrived! Now the travel time between the two places is an average of about 5 hours,but there is a faster route. Who know which one the post took? The average travel time between Korglady and me is about 4 and a half hours. So,USPS,you're under pressure here. As for the doll,you'll definitely see it when I actually get it in my possession. I'm pretty excited about it myself.
  Well,I got that pesky yard taken care of last night. I still need to go over the side yard, but the front and the tree line are whipped.And it still hasn't rained!
  Today's doll is this little fella.

He is,of course, Dennis the Menace.

This particular Dennis was made by Ideal.

He's 13 inches tall,13 and a half to the top of his cowlick.

He was sold in 1976.

He would have looked like this in his box.

His clothes are removable,and his shirt closes with snaps.

His shoes are part of his feet, and not removable.

There have been A LOT of Dennis the Menace dolls. My favourites are the 1959 vinyl Dennis with cloth clothes...
 

...and the somewhat evil looking 1950's Magic Skin Dennis. My Dennis looks like he did as the Spokescartoon for Dairy Queen.
 

  Dennis and his friends represented Dairy Queen for thirty years, between 1971 and 2001. He was retired as a mascot when Dairy Queen decided younger customers didn't really know him anymore.   Dennis has also acted as a spokescharacter for Unicef, The American Red Cross, and the Boy Scouts of America.
  Dennis the Menace premiered in 1951,as the five and a half year old main character in the comic strip of the same name, drawn by Hank Ketcham. Ketcham got the idea for the comic strip one day after his wife Alice angrily informed him that their four year old son Dennis had...uh...pooped his pants, and proceeded to spread it all over his room.
  In 1959 the TV series began it's four season run,starring Jay North as Dennis. Herbert Anderson,who played Dennis' dad, Mr. Mitchell, actually really looked like the drawings from the comic strip. Jay North,who later starred on the TV series "Maya" with Sajid Khan and an elephant,had to have his strawberry blonde hair dyed platinum blonde for the role of Dennis.

 The 1993 John Hughes' "Dennis the Menace"  movie was approved by Ketcham, as long as Hughes wrote the script himself. Hughes was a long time 'Dennis' fan, and his movie "Home Alone" was very Dennis inspired.
  When Americans think of Denis the Menace, they think of our guy,a somewhat mischievous kid who unintentionally aggravates his neighbour Mr. Wilson. But the British think of this guy:

The British Dennis, and his dog Gnasher, premiered in the children's comic book Beano in March of 1951, just five days after the premier of our Dennis.While American Dennis started out as an evil kid,doing things like hitting people with shovels and intentionally causing fights,he was eventually smoothed out to a merely rambuctious kid who unintentionally caused trouble. The British Dennis the Menace,however, is a truly evil kid. He's just intentionally mean. His slogan is 'The World's Naughtiest Boy'. The Beano Dennis was so popular that in 1974 he permanently replaced Biffo the Bear on Beano's cover.
  The real Dennis Ketcham had a similar reaction to the comic strip that Christopher Robin Milne had to his father's Winnie the Pooh books. He expressed unhappiness with his father using his childhood for his strips. Dennis Ketcham turned out to have some problems. He was kicked out of boarding school,and the older Ketcham has said he regretted naming the character after his son,saying it had 'confused' his son. In the later years of Ketcham's life he and Dennis, (the son), were somewhat estranged. However, son Scott Ketcham,born in 1977,loved the comic strip and cartooning. He became a storyboard artist for TV shows,including The X-Files. Today he is an editor on the Dennis the Menace comic strip.
  That's today's doll. See you tomorrow for another one.