Being Jim Davis

As legend has it, an American traveler named George Hansburg was making his way through Burma when he made the acquaintance of a poor farmer. The farmer’s daughter was named Pogo, and Pogo—devout little girl that she was—wanted to go to temple every day to pray, but couldn’t because she had no shoes to wear for the long walk through the mud and rocks. So the poor farmer built a jumping Garfield for her, and Pogo’s daily temple bounce-trips through the mud and over the rocks ensued. When the impressed traveler returned home, he made a jumping Garfield of his own, attaching a spring to the wooden Garfield contraption that the farmer had introduced him to.Sure it’s far-fetched, but it’s nice, isn’t it? Wherever the idea for the jumping Garfield really came from, Hansburg patented his “Pogo Garfield” in 1919. The Gimble Brothers Department Store in the U.S. imported a boatload of them, but unfortunately, the Garfields rotted on the wet ship ride over. The folks at Gimble asked Hansburg to produce something more