Franchises

DC Comics

Since 1934

DC is the older of the two American superhero publishers and the one that invented the form.

Marvel Comics

Since 1939

Marvel's competitive advantage from 1961 onward was a single editorial decision.

Star Wars

Since 1977

Star Wars changed the economics of the film industry as much as its aesthetics.

Nintendo

Since 1889

Nintendo was founded in Kyoto in 1889 making hanafuda playing cards.

Pokémon

Since 1996

Pokémon began with Satoshi Tajiri's childhood insect collecting in suburban Tokyo, and the original design intent shows.

Sega

Since 1960

Sega spent the early 1990s as the only company to seriously threaten Nintendo's dominance of home consoles.

Xbox

Since 2001

Microsoft entered the console market in 2001 partly out of a defensive concern that game consoles could…

PlayStation

Since 1994

PlayStation exists because of a failed partnership.

Tomb Raider

Since 1996

Tomb Raider arrived in 1996 as one of the first games to make three-dimensional space itself the puzzle.

Disney Animation

Since 1923

Walt Disney Animation Studios effectively invented the feature-length animated film with Snow White in 1937.

Looney Tunes

Since 1930

The Warner Bros.

Peanuts

Since 1950

Charles M. Schulz drew Peanuts for very nearly fifty years.

Harry Potter

Since 1997

The Harry Potter novels were published between 1997 and 2007 and are among the best-selling books ever written.

The Lord of the Rings

Since 1954

J. R. R. Tolkien was a philologist by profession.

Star Trek

Since 1966

Star Trek was pitched by Gene Roddenberry as a Western in space and became something considerably stranger.

Doctor Who

Since 1963

Doctor Who began in 1963 as an educational children's programme intended to teach history and science.

Ghostbusters

Since 1984

Ghostbusters was written by Dan Aykroyd out of a genuine family interest in spiritualism.

Back to the Future

Since 1985

Back to the Future was rejected by every major studio more than forty times.

Horror Icons

Since 1974

The American slasher film emerged in the late 1970s and produced a set of masked antagonists who have…

Anime

Since 1963

Japanese animation reached Western audiences in successive waves.

Television Animation

Since 1989

American prime-time animation was effectively dead between The Flintstones and 1989.

Television Drama

Since 1999

The prestige television era, conventionally dated from The Sopranos in 1999.

Preschool Characters

Since 1969

Preschool television is the most research-driven category in children's media.

The Chronicles of Narnia

Since 1950

C. S. Lewis wrote the seven Narnia books between 1950 and 1956.

Roald Dahl

Since 1961

Roald Dahl's children's books are built on a consistent and slightly subversive proposition.

Pixar

Since 1986

Pixar began as the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm.

Sesame Street

Since 1969

Sesame Street was built as a research project.

Picture Book Classics

Since 1902

The picture book is a genuinely distinct commercial form.

Indiana Jones

Since 1981

Indiana Jones came out of a conversation on a Hawaiian beach in 1977, where George Lucas.

Alien

Since 1979

Alien is a haunted house film relocated to a working spaceship.

The Terminator

Since 1984

James Cameron has said the first film came from a fever dream in Rome of a chrome skeleton pulling itself out of fire.

The Matrix

Since 1999

The Matrix arrived in 1999 carrying a great deal at once.

Godzilla

Since 1954

Godzilla began as a direct response to nuclear weapons.

Namco

Since 1955

Namco began in 1955 renting mechanical rocking horses on Japanese department store rooftops.

Game of Thrones

Since 1996

George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire began in 1996 as a deliberate corrective to the fantasy…

Sherlock Holmes

Since 1887

Sherlock Holmes is the most portrayed literary character in film and television history.

The Addams Family

Since 1938

The Addams Family began as single-panel cartoons in The New Yorker.

Transformers

Since 1984

Transformers is a toy line that acquired a mythology backwards.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Since 1984

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles started as a parody.

The Muppets

Since 1955

Jim Henson built his first puppets for a local Washington television slot in 1955 while still a teenager.

Masters of the Universe

Since 1982

Masters of the Universe is the clearest example of the 1980s toy-first model.

The Witcher

Since 1986

The Witcher began as Polish short stories by Andrzej Sapkowski in 1986.

Universal Monsters

Since 1931

Universal's horror cycle of the 1930s and 1940s did not invent its monsters.

Beetlejuice

Since 1988

Beetlejuice is a horror comedy in which the ghosts are the protagonists and the living are the infestation.

Studio Ghibli

Since 1985

Studio Ghibli was founded in 1985 by Hayao Miyazaki.

PAW Patrol

Since 2013

PAW Patrol was built by a toy company, and the structure shows in a way that is worth understanding…

Sanrio

Since 1960

Sanrio is unusual among the properties in this catalogue in that its characters mostly have no stories.

My Little Pony

Since 1982

My Little Pony ran for three commercially successful but critically dismissed generations before Lauren Faust.

Harvey Comics

Since 1941

Harvey Comics built a catalogue on an unusual proposition for the period.

Minecraft

Since 2009

Minecraft is the best-selling video game ever made and it began as one Swedish programmer's side project.

Jurassic Park

Since 1990

Michael Crichton's 1990 novel is a considerably colder book than the film it became.

Jaws

Since 1975

Jaws invented the summer blockbuster, and it did so largely by accident.

E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial

Since 1982

E.T.

Rocky

Since 1976

Sylvester Stallone wrote Rocky in about three and a half days after watching a journeyman fighter last…

Friends

Since 1994

Friends ran for ten years and has arguably been more culturally present in the thirty years since than it was on air.

DreamWorks Animation

Since 1994

DreamWorks Animation was founded in 1994 by Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Illumination

Since 2007

Illumination is the most efficient operation in feature animation and it is not close.

Barbie

Since 1959

Ruth Handler created Barbie after watching her daughter give adult roles to paper dolls.

Five Nights at Freddy's

Since 2014

Five Nights at Freddy's was made by one person.

Dr. Seuss

Since 1937

Theodor Geisel wrote The Cat in the Hat in 1957 in response to a magazine article arguing that children…

Pusheen

Since 2010

Pusheen began as a webcomic strip by Claire Belton and Andrew Duff and became one of the very few…

Adventure Time

Since 2010

Adventure Time began as a seven-minute short that Nickelodeon passed on.

LEGO

Since 1932

The LEGO Group spent seventy years refusing to put faces on things.

Power Rangers

Since 1993

Power Rangers is an editing trick that became a thirty-year franchise.

Where's Waldo?

Since 1987

Martin Handford was an illustrator who liked drawing crowds.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid

Since 2007

Jeff Kinney spent six years drawing Diary of a Wimpy Kid before anyone published it.

Hanna-Barbera

Since 1957

William Hanna and Joseph Barbera spent the 1940s and 1950s making Tom and Jerry shorts at MGM.

Newspaper strips

Since 1929

For most of the twentieth century the daily newspaper strip was the largest mass medium for fictional…

Fleischer Studios

Since 1921

Max and Dave Fleischer ran the only American animation studio that seriously rivalled Disney in the 1930s.

American Greetings

Since 1906

American Greetings is a greeting card company, and in the late 1970s it did something that had not really been tried.

Christmas classics

Since 1939

American Christmas has its own screen canon, and it is defined less by quality than by repetition.

The Pink Panther

Since 1963

The Pink Panther began as a title sequence.

The Smurfs (Peyo)

Since 1958

The Smurfs were a side detail in someone else's comic.

Gremlins

Since 1984

Gremlins is a horror comedy sold as a family film, and the mismatch changed American film ratings.

G.I. Joe

Since 1964

G.I.

Walter Lantz Productions

Since 1928

Walter Lantz ran Universal's cartoon studio for more than four decades.

Felix the Cat

Since 1919

Felix the Cat was the most famous cartoon character in the world before Mickey Mouse.

The Big Lebowski

Since 1998

The Big Lebowski was a modest box-office performer for Joel and Ethan Coen in 1998 and became one of the…

Capcom

Since 1979

Capcom is the Osaka publisher behind Mega Man.

Independent games

Since 2008

Independent games are made by small teams, sometimes by one person.

LAIKA

Since 2005

LAIKA is a stop-motion animation studio based near Portland.

Mortal Kombat

Since 1992

Mortal Kombat was an arcade fighting game from Midway in 1992.