Merchandising
Bill Watterson insists that cartoon strips should stand on their own as an art form, and has resisted the use of Calvin and Hobbes in merchandising of any sort. Watterson explained in a 2005 press release:
Actually, I wasn't against all merchandising when I started the strip, but each product I considered seemed to violate the spirit of the strip, contradict its message, and take me away from the work I loved. If my syndicate had let it go at that, the decision would have taken maybe 30 seconds of my life.
Almost no legitimate Calvin and Hobbes merchandise exists outside of the book collections. Exceptions produced during the strip's original run include two 16-month calendars (1988–1989 and 1989–1990), and the textbook Teaching with Calvin and Hobbes, which has been described as "perhaps the most difficult piece of official Calvin and Hobbes memorabilia to find."
On July 16, 2010 the United States Postal Service released a set of postage stamps honoring five comic strips, one of them Calvin and Hobbes.
Uclick, the digital division of Andrews McMeel Universal, offers licensed prints of Calvin and Hobbes strips through its website GoComics.com.
The strip's immense popularity has led to the appearance of various counterfeit items such as window decals and T-shirts that often feature crude humor, binge drinking and other themes that are not found in Watterson's work. Images from one strip in which Calvin and Hobbes dance to loud music at night were commonly used for copyright violations. After threat of a lawsuit alleging infringement of copyright and trademark, some sticker makers replaced Calvin with a different boy, while other makers made no changes. Watterson wryly commented, "I clearly miscalculated how popular it would be to show Calvin urinating on a Ford logo."
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