Where on Earth is Wally?

As I'm going to a Where's Wally fancy-dress party this evening, I thought a mention of Martin Handford's work would be appropriate. There is a stigma attached to the Wally books (or 'Waldo', as the character is bastardised in America). Disgruntled children who dislike reading in all its forms, and are forced to enter a library, will often immediately gravitate towards an available copy. In turn they will circle Wally with a black biro in every spread, ruining the fun for the rest of us. Therefore, there is a sense of them being refuges for the illiterate. Nevertheless, they are fine examples of illustration, and hold a strong nostalgic value for many people (including me). Handford would spend up to eight weeks drawing a scene. Although painstaking, this level of dedication is repaid by the level of scrutiny that people then give to his illustrations. Beyond searching for Wally there are visual jokes to be found and recurring characters to be discovered. Hopefully, the rewards for developing a keen eye encourage young people to be as equally observant about the world around them. If this is the case then this has to be Where's Wally's redeeming feature for being permitted in a library.

A Vancouver student spotted an opportunity to use Google Earth to pay homage to Wally, by painting a large-scale version of the character on a roof somewhere in the city. This would have been an excellent promotional device had it been utilised by Wally's publishers, carrying Hanford's playful spirit from the world of illustration over to an entirely new format. Because of its novelty, it had a viral quality, and received a lot of column inches from newspapers and webloggers. In March 2009, a similar idea was tried again when it was revealed that a man dressed as Wally was visible somewhere on Google Street View. As the message proliferated through the media, web-users trawled through countless street images of Britain's biggest cities. The announcement - perhaps unsurprisingly - came from Google. It served them well: free promotion for their new Google Maps feature and an incentive for people to familiarise themselves with it. In both cases the Wally brand will have benefitted from the free publicity as well; it's just nice to know that in a world that is increasingly moving to digital media and away from print, that Wally still has his place.