Where's Wally?

Where's Wally?, known as Where's Waldo? in North America, is a puzzle book series for children created by English illustrator Martin Handford. The first book was released on 25 June 1987. Each book is made up of detailed two-page illustrations, with every scene showing many people engaged in various amusing activities at a specific location. The reader’s task is to locate the character Wally, along with his friends, who are concealed somewhere in each picture.

Primary books

Wally stands out because of his red-and-white-striped shirt, bobble hat, and glasses. However, many illustrations include red herrings—objects with similar red-and-white stripes that can mislead the searcher. As the series continued, additional targets were added for readers to find in each scene. The books have also led to two animated television series (one in 1991 and another in 2019), a comic strip, and several video games.

By 2007, over 73 million copies of Where's Wally? books had been sold worldwide since the series began in 1987. The books have been translated into 26 languages and are published in more than 50 countries.

History

The series began in 1986 when illustrator Martin Handford, a graduate of the University for the Creative Arts in Kent, was asked by art director David Bennett at Walker Books in London to create a book of detailed crowd scenes. Bennett had been inspired by the Busy Places book series by Philippe Dupasquier. While preparing the book for the Bologna Children's Book Fair, someone at Walker Books suggested that Handford hide a distinctive character in the crowds for readers to find. Handford then came up with the idea of "Wally," a traveler through time and space who wears red and white stripes.

The first Where's Wally? book was published on 25 June 1987. It was first released in the United Kingdom by Walker Books. In the United States, it was introduced under the title Where's Waldo? because an executive at the initial American publisher, Little, Brown and Company, disliked the name "Wally" as it reminded him of Wallis Simpson. Later, American publishing rights were taken over by Candlewick Press, the American subsidiary of Walker Books.

The books became extremely popular internationally, and the character’s name was localized in many regions. For example, Wally is known as Walter in Germany, Charlie in France, Van Lang in Vietnam, Jonas in Lithuania, and Ubaldo in Italy.

The franchise also expanded into other media with more story-driven formats, including a 1991 television series, a comic strip, and video games. In the early 1990s, a Where's Waldo? puzzle that showed a topless beachgoer caused controversy in the United States, leading BJ's Wholesale Club and some school libraries to remove the book from shelves. This incident placed the book on the American Library Association’s list of the 100 most frequently challenged books of the 1990s.

Handford kept publishing new books in the series. Sometimes it took him up to eight weeks to draw a single two-page illustration of the elusive Wally and the many characters around him. He made Wally progressively harder to find by reducing his size on the page and surrounding him with more people.

In the first book, Wally measured about 0.99 cm² on average. This shrank to 0.80 cm² in the second book, 0.33 cm² in the third, and between 0.20 and 0.17 cm² in the fourth through seventh books. The number of characters also increased, from 225 on the first page of the first book to about 850 on the first page of the last book.

In January 2007, Entertainment Rights bought the Where's Wally? franchise. On 1 April 2009, Entertainment Rights went into voluntary administration. That same day, Boomerang Media acquired all of Entertainment Rights' subsidiaries, including Entertainment Rights itself, Big Idea, and Classic Media. The following month, Boomerang Media began unifying the former British and US subsidiaries under the name "Classic Media," while Big Idea continued under its own name.

The Entertainment Rights PLC company was dissolved in December 2010. In 2012, Classic Media was bought by DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks Animation was then acquired by NBCUniversal in 2016, giving Universal Pictures the rights to most of Entertainment Rights' catalogue.

The main character, Wally, had his name localized for certain international editions—for instance, Waldo in North America and Sweden. Over time, more characters were added for readers to find in each scene. Wilma, Wally’s girlfriend, first appeared in the Ultimate Fun Book.

She was later replaced by her identical twin sister Wenda after both appeared together in Where's Wally: The Magnificent Poster Book. Wenda, a friend of Wally, replaced her twin sister Wilma for the book In Hollywood, though she had previously appeared alongside Wilma in The Magnificent Poster Book. Odlaw, Wally’s arch-enemy, made his print debut in The Magnificent Poster Book.

He looks almost identical to Wally, except his clothes are yellow and black striped instead of red and white, his glasses have a blue tint, and he has a moustache. In the television series, he speaks with an English accent. Although it is said that "his bad deeds are many," he is not shown doing anything particularly nasty in the books. In the TV series, however, he often tries to steal Wally’s magical walking stick.

His name "Odlaw" is simply "Waldo" spelled backward (from the American editions), though he is still called Odlaw in the United Kingdom as well. Woof, Wally’s dog, first appeared in The Ultimate Fun Book, where he was identified as Wenda’s dog. Only his tail can be found in most illustrations, except on the final page of Where's Wally: The Wonder Book, which shows all of Woof, and in the six activity books released between 1993 and 1995, starting with The Truly Terrific Activity Book, where Woof appears fully.