Betty Boop and 'Blondie' enter the public domain in 2026, accompanied by
a trio of detectives
[January 02, 2026]
By ANDREW DALTON
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Betty Boop and “Blondie” are joining Mickey Mouse and
Winnie the Pooh in the public domain.
The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are
among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year U.S. copyright
maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on Jan. 1.
That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or
payment.
The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn't quite have the
sparkle of the recent first entries into the public domain of Mickey or
Winnie. But ever since 2019 — the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on
by congressional copyright extensions — every annual crop has been a
bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public.
“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of
Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, for whom New Year's
Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day. “It's just the sheer familiarity
of all this culture.”
Jenkins said that, collectively, this year's work shows “the fragility
that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.”
Here’s a closer look at what will enter the public domain on Thursday,
based on the research of Jenkins and her center.
Cartoons and comics bring the boop-a-doop
Betty Boop began as a dog. Seriously.
When she first appears in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four of
her cartoons entering the public domain, she's already totally
recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless
tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers. She has her baby face, short hair
with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and miniature mouth. But she's also
got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose. Those would soon morph
into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.
She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic
dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine — and push aside.
She's got a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky
song-and-dance in a tiny black dress. She's not named, but sings “boop
boop, a doop.”
Jenkins suggests this canine Betty Boop could be rich for exploitation
in new works, and has a free idea: “She was bitten by a radioactive dog,
that’s why she had this weird backstory,” she said with a laugh. “This
movie needs to be made.”
The character was designed and owned by Fleischer Studios, and the
shorts were released by Paramount Pictures. She was based at least in
part on singer Helen Kane, known as the “Boop-Oop-a-Doop Girl,” thanks
to a hit 1929 song. Kane would lose a lawsuit over Betty Boop's
character and use of the phrase. During the proceedings the defense
alleged Black singer Esther Lee Jones used similar phrases first.
Artists are now free to use this earliest Boop in films and similar
work. But making merch won't be free. In an important distinction often
raised by Disney over Mickey Mouse, a character's trademark is distinct
from the copyright of works that feature them. The Fleischer Productions
trademark of Betty Boop remains intact.
Boops and doops were apparently in the air in 1930. Blondie Boopadoop
was, like Betty, a young flapper, and the central character of Chic
Young's newspaper comic strip that debuted in 1930. It inspired a film
series and radio show, and is still running today in papers that still
have comics.
The strip followed her carefree breeze through life with her boyfriend,
Dagwood Bumstead. The two would marry (and she would change her name) in
1933, and the strip would become the sandwich-heavy domestic comedy
familiar to later readers. Though the strip was meant to be based on a
woman's life, Dagwood would in many ways become its breakout star — a
proto- Adam Driver, if you will, as the breakout actor from “Girls.”
Nine new Mickey Mouse cartoons also are becoming public domain, two
years after “Steamboat Willie” made the first version of him public
property. He's joined this year by his dog Pluto, who, in 1930, was
known as Rover. (He would get his long-term moniker the following year.)
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Dean Young, writer of the"Blondie" comic strip, draws in his studio
in Clearwater, Fla., July 12, 2005. (AP Photo/Robert Azmitia, File)
Books bring big detective debuts
The books entering the public domain this year open the door to three
iconic detectives from the 20th century:
— The teen sleuth Nancy Drew, whose first four books came in 1930,
starting with “The Secret of the Old Clock.” They were written by
Mildred Benson under the pen name Carolyn Keene.
— The middle-aged(-ish) sleuth Sam Spade, who debuted via the full-book
version of Dashiell Hammett’s “The Maltese Falcon.” (It had been
serialized in a magazine the previous year.)
— The elderly sleuth Miss Marple, who solves her first mystery in Agatha
Christie's “Murder at the Vicarage.”
A year after his “The Sound and the Fury” became public, William
Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” becomes public domain. It would help lead to
his Nobel Prize in literature.
And kiddie lit legends Dick and Jane, who taught generations to read and
became essential parody fodder for decades, become public via the “Elson
Basic Readers” textbooks.
Films include Marxes, Marlene and Oscar winners
A year after their film debut, “The Cocoanuts,” entered the public
domain, the Marx Brothers' beloved “Animal Crackers” joins it, as they
entered their prime of high cinematic antics. The film finds Groucho,
Harpo, Chico and Zeppo invading a Long Island society party celebrating
an explorer of Africa.
Other movies entering the public domain include:
— “The Blue Angel,” the German film from Josef von Sternberg that
emblazoned Marlene Dietrich's top-hatted image into film lore.
— “King of Jazz,” featuring the first screen appearance of Bing Crosby.
— A pair of Oscar best picture winners, “All Quiet on the Western
Front,” which won in 1930, and “Cimarron,” which won in 1931. The award
was known as “Outstanding Production” then, and the Academy Awards
eligibility period didn't sync with the calendar year.
The coming decade will bring a true bounty of Hollywood Golden Age films
into the public domain. 2027 will be a truly monster year, literally,
with the original 1931 Universal Pictures versions of “Dracula” and
“Frankenstein” among the titles due.
Dreamy and embraceable tunes ring in the 1930s
As in the last several years, a whistle-worthy stream of tunes from the
Great American Songbook will become public:
— Four cherished classics written by George Gershwin, with lyrics by his
brother Ira: “Embraceable You,” “I've Got a Crush on You,” “But Not for
Me” and “I Got Rhythm.”
— “Georgia on My Mind,” written by Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell.
— “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” written by Gus Kahn, Fabian Andre and
Wilbur Schwandt.
Different laws regulate the actual recordings of songs, and those newly
in the public domain this week date to 1925. They include Rodgers and
Hart's “Manhattan” by the Knickerbockers, “Nobody Knows the Trouble I've
Seen” by Marian Anderson and “The St. Louis Blues” by Bessie Smith,
featuring Louis Armstrong.
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