Mr. ZIP, informally "Zippy", is a cartoon character used in the 1960s by the
United States Post Office DepartmentThe Post Office Department was the name of the United States Postal Service when it was a Cabinet department. It was headed by the United States Postmaster General....
, and in the 1970s by its successor, the
United States Postal ServiceThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. Within the United States, it is commonly...
, to encourage the general public to include the
ZIP codeThe ZIP code is the system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service . The letters ZIP, a backronym for Zone Improvement Plan, are properly written in capital letters and were chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly, when senders use the...
in all mailings.
The USPS has described the origin of Mr. ZIP as follows:
- "Mr. ZIP was based on an original design by Harold Wilcox, son of a letter carrier and a member of the Cunningham and Walsh advertising agency, for use by a New York bank in a bank-by-mail campaign.
Mr. ZIP, informally "Zippy", is a cartoon character used in the 1960s by the
United States Post Office DepartmentThe Post Office Department was the name of the United States Postal Service when it was a Cabinet department. It was headed by the United States Postmaster General....
, and in the 1970s by its successor, the
United States Postal ServiceThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. Within the United States, it is commonly...
, to encourage the general public to include the
ZIP codeThe ZIP code is the system of postal codes used by the United States Postal Service . The letters ZIP, a backronym for Zone Improvement Plan, are properly written in capital letters and were chosen to suggest that the mail travels more efficiently, and therefore more quickly, when senders use the...
in all mailings.
Origins of Mr. ZIP
The USPS has described the origin of Mr. ZIP as follows:
- "Mr. ZIP was based on an original design by Harold Wilcox, son of a letter carrier and a member of the Cunningham and Walsh advertising agency, for use by a New York bank in a bank-by-mail campaign. Wilcox's design was a child-like sketch of a postman delivering a letter. The figure was used only a few times, then filed away. Later, AT&T acquired the design and made it available to the Post Office Department at no cost. ... Post Office Department artists retained the face but sharpened the limbs and torso and added a mail bag. The new figure, dubbed Mr. ZIP, was unveiled at a convention of postmasters in October 1962."
Post Office use
The Post Office had little difficulty in getting mass mailers to use the ZIP Code as they could require its use in order to receive preferential mailing rates, which it soon did. However, there was some resistance to using it by the general public, members of whom would mail items without ZIP Code, almost invariably at the full First Class Mail rate, which by regulation had to be delivered if at all possible and feasible. This was particularly true of older mailers. Mr. ZIP was the Post Office's answer to this, apparently to teach small children to know to always use the ZIP Code as they got older, and also to encourage their parents and grandparents to do so.
Mr. ZIP is a caricature of a
mail carrierA mail carrier, post carrier, or postman is an employee of the post office or postal service, who delivers mail and parcel post to residences and businesses...
, wide-eyed and drawn with his letter bag trailing him in such a way as to imply his travelling at extreme speed, and sometimes holding on to his hat with his free hand. His hair was straight, but his skin was somewhat orange, making him non racially-identifiable.
His limbs were very thin, almost like those of a stick figure. He was used especially on posters promoting ZIP Code use. The character was largely phased out by the late 1970s, but the Post Office retained rights to the
copyrightCopyright is a form of intellectual property that gives the author of an original work exclusive right for a certain time period in relation to that work, including its publication, distribution and adaptation, after which time the work is said to enter the public domain...
ed figure, which has been revived on the Postal Service's ZIP Code lookup
websiteA website is a collection of related web pages, images, videos or other digital assets that are addressed with a common domain name or IP address in an Internet Protocol-based network...
..
Mr. ZIP appeared on the selvage (non-postally valid areas) of stamp panes (more commonly called "sheets") on many stamp issues, beginning with the 5 cent, Battle-Wilderness stamp of 1964. He also appeared on non-postally valid labels in, or on the covers of, stamp booklets. Stamp collectors sometimes collect the corner block of four stamps with the part of the selvage bearing Mr. ZIP; they are called "ZIP blocks". Mr. ZIP appeared in the blank selvage of United States stamps until January 1986.