Every Dakin Garfield says 1978 on the tag, and almost none of them were made in 1978. The way to date one is to look him in the eyes — and the earliest cats have a strip of orange fur where the eyes should touch.
The short version
- Dakin had the cat first. The Bay Area plush house that invented the impulse-gift stuffed animal picked up Garfield in the early 1980s, and the license drove the company's growth for the rest of the decade.
- The tag dates are copyright dates. "© 1978 United Feature Syndicate, © 1981 R. Dakin & Company" is stamped on Dakin Garfields made across the whole run. It tells you whose art and whose pattern, not what year the cat was sewn.
- The eyes tell the year. The earliest Dakins copy the 1978 strip: small eyes set apart, a gap of fur between them, heavy jowls. As Jim Davis enlarged and pulled the eyes together in the strip, the plush followed.
- The suction cups were a factory error. Davis wanted Velcro paws for curtains. The sample came back with suction cups. "Stuck on You" launched in mid-1987, sold two million in a year, and got car windows smashed in Los Angeles.
- After Dakin, the tag changes. Applause absorbed Dakin in 1995. Play by Play made the big floppy "PAWS" cats of the 1990s; Toy Factory has supplied the crane-machine Garfields since; Aurora and Nanco filled the gift-shop shelf. Each has its own tag and its own face.
Our authority on this subject owns three hundred of them
Owl & Twig does not usually cover plush. The material is hard to authenticate, the condition grading is brutal, and the sources are thin. We make an exception for Garfield because one of us lives with a daughter who owns roughly three hundred of him — a working reference collection that runs from the earliest small-eyed Dakins to whatever a crane machine dispensed last month. What follows is the field guide we wished existed when the collection was at fifty.
The cat before the cat you remember
The Garfield who debuted on June 19, 1978 is not quite the Garfield on a modern lunchbox. The original was a genuinely fat cat — heavy jowls, small features, and eyes drawn small and set apart on either side of a broad face. He walked on all fours. Davis has said the first design was so front-heavy it made the character difficult to animate, and that Charles Schulz encouraged the change that let Garfield stand up on two legs; the feet grew noticeably between June and December 1983. The eyes changed for a more practical reason. As newspapers shrank their comics pages, Davis enlarged Garfield's features — the eyes especially — so the strip would still read at a smaller size. Over the 1980s the eyes got bigger, moved together, and became the dominant feature of the face.
Licensed plush lags the strip by a model sheet or two. That is why the earliest Dakin Garfields look faintly wrong to anyone who grew up with the later cat: the plastic eyes are small for the head and there is a clear band of orange fur between them, exactly as in a 1978 panel. Line up a run of Dakins from the early to the late 1980s and you can watch the eyes grow and migrate toward each other — a change the company never announced, because it was simply keeping up with the art it was licensing.
What the tag actually says
A Dakin Garfield's fabric tag typically carries two copyright lines — © 1978 United Feature Syndicate, Inc. for the character and © 1981 R. Dakin & Company for the plush design — alongside a country of origin, Korea on the early cats and elsewhere on later runs. Sellers list these as "1978 Garfield" or "1981 Garfield," and the dates are real, but they are copyright dates on the art and the pattern, not the year the plush was made. A Dakin from 1989 carries the same two years. The tag rules out the post-Dakin makers and confirms the license. It does not date the cat. The face does.
Dakin, briefly
Richard and Roger Dakin founded the company in 1955 as an import business in the Bay Area. Their first hit was an accident of the shipping trade: velveteen animals packed as freight padding around a consignment of toy trains, which the Dakins pulled out and sold as "Dream Pets" in 1957. Through the 1960s Dakin more or less invented the idea of the stuffed animal as an impulse gift — the plush on the card-shop counter rather than in the toy aisle. A 1967 plane crash killed both founders and much of the family; the company carried on under other hands, and in the 1980s the Garfield license became the thing it was known for. The line, by the company's own later account, "resulted in dramatic growth."
The 1983 Wish Book page is worth reading slowly, because it is the closest thing to a Dakin price list that survives. Nine items, every one of them priced for a Christmas budget:
| Catalog item | Size | Wish Book price |
|---|---|---|
| Standing Garfield ("on the prowl") | 9½ in. long | $13.99 |
| Sitting Garfield | 12½ in. high | $16.99 |
| Odie | 15 in. high | $13.99 |
| Talking Garfield — Gourmet, Grumpy, or Athlete (pull string, eyes move, eight sayings each) | 7½ in., vinyl and acrylic | $17.99 |
| Garfield hand puppet | 11 in. | $7.99 |
| Jogger and Football Player bean bags | 9½ in., poseable | $8.99 each |
Two things stand out. The talking Garfields were the premium item — a pull-string voice box with eyes that moved while he talked, in three personalities, at $17.99 when the big sitting cat was $16.99. They are also the ones that fail: the string frays, the mechanism jams, and the vinyl face yellows differently from the plush body, which is why a working talker is worth the hunt. And the sports bean bags at $8.99 were the cheap end, which is exactly why so many survive; they were bought in twos and threes as stocking stuffers.
1987: the suction cups
The best-known Garfield plush of all was not supposed to exist. Davis wanted a cat with Velcro on its paws so it would appear to be climbing a curtain. The prototype came back from the factory with suction cups instead. "It came back as a mistake with suction cups," Davis told Mental Floss. "They didn't understand the directions. So I stuck it on a window and said, 'If it's still there in two days, we'll approve this.'"
It was still there. Dakin shipped Garfield Stuck on You in mid-1987, marketed for washing machines, pianos, and television screens. Nobody had suggested cars, and cars are where every one of them went. Dakin sold two million in the first year — the biggest product in the company's thirty-year history — on the way to roughly $50 million in sales, and kept the fad alive by costuming the cat in dozens of variants: sunglasses, sports gear, holiday outfits, slogan shirts. The mania had a dark side that reads like a period piece: in late 1987 more than forty cars in Los Angeles had windows smashed by thieves who took nothing but the Garfield. A suspect explained that teenagers were stealing them as gifts for girlfriends.
The category cooled as fast as it had warmed. Plush sales fell 44 percent at wholesale in 1988, and by the end of the decade the cat in the rear window was a punchline. Which is, of course, precisely when a collectible begins.
Suction cups: the part that does not survive
The clear cups on a Stuck on You Garfield are the first thing to fail — they yellow, harden, split, and eventually fall off, and a cat with four original supple cups is far scarcer than the cat itself. Replacement cups are sold openly and are not dishonest, but a listing that says "original suction cups" should show them up close. Check for cloudy plastic, cracks at the stem, and cups that are all the same age.
Reading a Garfield by maker
The tag is the first sort. The face is the second. Here is the working sequence, drawn from the collection rather than from any official history, because no official history exists.
| Maker and era | Tag | How to spot it |
|---|---|---|
| Dakin, early 1980s | © 1978 United Feature Syndicate; © 1981 R. Dakin & Co.; Korea | Small hard-plastic eyes set apart with fur between them. Big cheeks, small feet, often sitting on all fours. The 1978 model sheet, in plush. |
| Dakin, mid to late 1980s | Same copyright line | Larger eyes drawn together, the familiar half-lidded look. Slogan shirts ("I'm not fat, I'm under tall," "No sweat"), sports and holiday outfits, bean-bag bottoms on the small ones, pull-string talkers with vinyl faces and moving eyes. |
| Dakin "Stuck on You," 1987–89 | Same, plus the Stuck on You hang tag when present | Four suction cups on the paws, arms out in a spread-eagle. Costume variants by the dozen. |
| Play by Play, 1990s | "PAWS" on the tag with Play by Play | Big and floppy — the lying-down cats in the 14- to 25-inch range, softer fur, embroidered or printed eyes rather than hard plastic. |
| Toy Factory, recent decades | Toy Factory | The crane-machine and carnival Garfield, standing, sometimes in fluorescent colors. Sold to amusement operators, not to stores. |
| Aurora, Nanco, and others, 2010s on | Maker's own tag with a Paws, Inc. license | Gift-shop plush: Aurora's "floppy" cats, Nanco's prize plush. Modern proportions — huge eyes, small body. |
Two cautions. First, "Fun Farm" is not a separate maker. The Wish Book fine print spells it out — "Fun Farms, Division of R. Dakin and Co." — so a "Fun Farm by Dakin" Garfield is a Dakin. Second, the corporate story has a seam in it: Dakin merged into Applause in 1995, and Garfields from around that transition can carry either name.
What they are worth
Honestly: not a great deal, individually, which is what makes the category so pleasant to collect. Ordinary small Dakins in played-with condition are offered in the $25 to $45 range, and sellers have only recently begun flagging the early open-eyed cats as a rare variant, at roughly the same money — a gap the market has not fully priced in yet. Stuck on You cats are everywhere; the price is in the costume and the cups. The larger Play by Play cats sell on size and cleanliness. Where the money starts to move is in the unusual outfits, the sealed or hang-tagged examples, and anything with a store display or promotional tie-in, and even there we are talking about the price of a nice dinner rather than the price of a car.
The collector's real currency in this category is completeness, not cash. A run that shows the eyes migrating across the 1980s is worth more as a set than as a sum, and it is the sort of thing a museum of popular culture would want.
Before you buy one
- Read the tag, then ignore the dates. Dakin plus 1978/1981 confirms the maker. The country of origin and the face do the dating.
- Measure the gap between the eyes. Fur between them means early. Eyes touching or overlapping means later. It is the single most reliable tell in the whole line.
- Smell it. Plush that has lived in a car window for thirty years smells like it. Sun-fade on one side and a clean other side is the Stuck on You signature, and it cannot be reversed.
- Check the eyes for scuffs. Hard-plastic eyes scratch and cloud. The pupil paint on the early cats is on the surface and wears through.
- Turn the cups over. Original suction cups are all the same color and flexibility. Four mismatched cups have been replaced. That is fine — just pay accordingly.
Why a cat nobody takes seriously is worth taking seriously
Garfield's whole joke is that he does not care, and his merchandise has been treated the same way — the plush went out with the yard sale and the car, and the tags were never meant to be read. That is exactly what makes the Dakin run interesting now. It is one of the very few licensed plush lines where you can watch a cartoon character's face change in real time, stitched into fabric, across a single decade, by a company that was only trying to keep up. Most character plush is a snapshot. This one is a flip book.
And every so often one turns up at an estate sale with small, separated eyes and a Korea tag, sitting on all fours the way he did in 1978, and it is worth more than the two dollars on the sticker. Not in money. In the flip book.
Dakin Garfields are listed under a dozen descriptions and almost never by year. We built a free sourcing dashboard that searches seventeen vintage marketplaces at once — run a few of these and watch the eyes.
Search "Dakin Garfield plush" Search "Garfield Stuck on You"Sources
- Mental Floss — The Great Garfield Car Window Toy Craze — the Davis quote on the suction-cup mistake, the mid-1987 launch, two million units in year one as Dakin's biggest product in thirty years, roughly $50 million in sales, the Los Angeles car break-ins and the 1988 end of that spree, the 44 percent wholesale decline in 1988.
- The News Wheel — The Peculiar History of the Garfield Window Cling Fad — the Velcro-for-curtains original plan, the costume variants Dakin used to keep the fad going, and the fade by decade's end.
- Gifts & Decorative Accessories — Plush Beginnings: Dakin Turns 45 — Richard and Roger Dakin, the 1955 founding, the 1957 Dream Pets from freight padding, the 1967 plane crash, the 1980s Garfield line's "dramatic growth," and the 1995 Applause acquisition.
- FundingUniverse — History of Applause Inc. — Dakin's origins as an import business and its role in marketing plush as impulse gifts, Stuck on You as a hot seller during an industry downturn, and the late-1995 merger with Applause.
- Wikipedia — Garfield (character) — the original four-legged design, Schulz's role in the redesign that let Garfield stand, and Davis enlarging the eyes in response to shrinking comics pages.
- Garfield Time — style evolution 1978–2019 — the rapid design changes within 1978, the June–December 1983 growth of the feet, and the observation that the eyes and feet have grown over time.
- eBay listing — Dakin Inc Garfield Plush, 1978, 1981, Wide Open Eyes — a 5.5–6 inch early Dakin made in South Korea, offered at $27.86, with the wide-eyed version described as the rare variant.
- Etsy listing — Vintage 1978 Garfield Plush by Dakin — a 7-inch Dakin with oversized plastic eyes and the © 1978, 1981 tag, offered at $43.50.
- eBay listing — Garfield 25" Plush, Play By Play, Paws Inc — an example of the 1990s Play by Play "PAWS" tag on a large floppy Garfield.
- Toy Factory — Garfield licensed plush — the current standing, assorted, and fluorescent Garfields in 1- to 8-inch sizes, sold to amusement and crane operators rather than the public.
- Amazon — Aurora World Garfield Floppy 10" Plush — the modern Aurora gift-shop Garfield.
- Dakin magazine advertisement, "Big, Fat, Furry Garfield," © 1981 R. Dakin & Company / © 1978 United Feature Syndicate — the "Makin' Friends" campaign and the copyright lines reproduced on the tags.
- Sears Wish Book, 1983, page 145 — the Dakin Garfield line with catalog numbers, sizes, and prices, and the "Fun Farms® Division of R. Dakin and Co. 1981" design credit.
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