Garfield is an enigma. Since his debut in 1978, the orange feline has shown no signs of stopping. Comics, cartoons, toys, and hundreds of other things get his lasagne-consuming face slapped on it each year. If it exists, you can be 90% sure there is a Garfield-licensed version of it.
But, why is this the case? Why is Garfield catnip for marketing? Could it be because the public loves cats? Or, could it be that Garfield stands for literally nothing, and thus can be inserted into any situation? He is merely an amorphous blob that you can slap any hat onto, a blank slate who can mouth any words you wish to put within his furry mouth.
But even then, some things bearing the Garfield license are just plain weird. Here is a small sampling of the weirdness so you can decide if Garfield is capitalism’s greatest triumph or the utmost proof of man’s hubris.
Garfield’s Nightmare
Garfield’s Nightmare is an oddly popular name for Garfield media. Not only is it the name of a DS game, but it is also the name of a now-defunct theme park ride. This ride used to be found at Kennywood Park in Pennsylvania. There is nothing uncommon about oddly-themed carnival rides and theme park rides, or for a theme park to use licensing deals which amount to little more than a logo over the queue. However, Garfield’s Nightmare is interesting due to its history as it wasn’t originally made to be a celebration of all things fat cat.
The building for Garfield’s Nightmare originally opened in 1901 as The Old Mill. Like many similar rides, this was a nice boat ride through a building. Over its lifetime, though, it shifted between many themes. Perhaps its most famous theme was “Hard Headed Harold’s Horrendously Humorous Haunted Hideaway”, a design which lasted from 1974 to 1991.
However, in the early 2000s, Garfield creator Jim Davis was considering either making a Garfield theme park or teaming up with another park. Now, most of the big parks already had deals or made their IP in-house. Davis didn’t have many options. Thus, when Kennywood was redoing The Old Mill, Davis jumped on the chance to pour Garfield all over it.
What followed was an interesting redesign headed up by Halloween Productions. Halloween Productions got their start with, predictably, Halloween events, which may just explain why they went for the nightmare theme. Let’s be honest. When most people think of Garfield, they probably don’t think about horror.
When the ride opened, visitors were treated to a strange experience. Riders would travel through neon-painted corridors covered in large dayglo Garfield comics and snack items that looked like they belonged on a strange hippy van. Guests would then go past large dioramas of hardly-moving figures depicting Garfield’s various fears including mailmen, evil food, and the vet.
The ride didn’t lie; it was a nightmare. The color palette mixed with the object’s odd sizes meant that everything had a fever-dream quality about it, something you don’t really associate with Garfield. But really, Halloween Productions did the best they could. A low budget, mixed with the difficulties of having to modify such an old building, really tied their hands. But still, Garfield’s Nightmare is firmly embedded in the memories of many children who experienced the ride… for better or worse.
GarfieldEats
Likely the most well-known entry on this list, GarfieldEats quickly went viral when it was announced. The concept seemed both logical and bizarre at the same time. Sure, branded and themed restaurants are nothing new, and Garfield is known for his love of lasagna. But usually, these restaurants are eat-in affairs. They’re more typically based in theme parks or big tourist destinations. GarfieldEats, however, started with two locations: the first was in Dubai, and the second was in downtown Toronto. Oddly, these restaurants wouldn’t deliver via the usual apps. Instead, it used its own unique app that also acted as a social hub where you could take part in fun activities and watch Garfield cartoons.
The food offered by the restaurant was common for a takeout pizza place. But due to the store’s decision to pitch itself as a healthy and organic eatery, these dishes had a premium price. The menu included Garfield-shaped pizza, lasagna, and various salads. It also served a citrus-flavored coffee drink, called a Garficcino, which was described either as passable or awful depending on who you asked.
Another part of the store’s eco-friendly message was a concept it dubbed “Re-Box.” All of the packaging their food came in could be reused. The store suggests that the pizza boxes could become plates. Okay, maybe that’s logical. But they also say the cups can become pen-holders, and the lasagna tray can become tissue boxes. Though we may think it strange, we can only imagine that a pen, sticky with stains from your Garficcino, and to have one’s runny nose greeted by the residual scent of lasagna, would be exactly how the orange cat would have it.
Alas, during the time it took me to write this article, GarfieldEats declared that its Toronto location was closing its doors and going online-only. We will have to wait and see if it can pull itself from the ashes. Until that day, you can buy their frozen lasagna from their website. No word yet if this container can double as a tissue box.
Pet Force
In the late ’90s, everything needed a gritty reboot. Everyone and everything got in line to suckle at the teat of Rob Liefeld to be reimagined into something full of both action and terrible bodily proportions. For Garfield, Pet Force was that. What every newspaper comic needed, after all, was a multiverse.
In the Pet Force series of novels, Garfield and his pals get pulled into a parallel universe in which their parallel selves are actually superheroes. However, these heroes have been captured by the evil Vetvix, forcing Emperor Jon (because someone saw fit to put Jon “accidentally drinks dog semen” Arbuckle in charge of something) to use magic to pull Garfield-prime into his world. Emperor John hopes that Garfield and his friends can don the capes of their parallel selves and defeat the evil Vetvix.
For context, these heroic selves look like what would happen if one wrestler from the 1980s’ WWF ate three other wrestlers also from the 1980s’ WWF, and washed it all down with a steroid smoothie. Seriously, the amount of muscles on the super Garfield made him look like a Tom of Finland drawing if Tom of Finland had done some sketching after downing a bucket of Nyquil and spilled his orange juice on the resulting sketch as he passed out. Also, Garfield’s hero power is gamma-radiated hairballs, making him one of only a small group of heroes who defeats his foes by vomiting on them. In 2009, a direct-to-DVD film of these books came out, and honestly, it looks even more terrifying than you’d expect due to the laughably cheap CGI used. The film is one of the world’s most effective drowsiness cures, as 15 minutes of it will prevent you from sleeping for at least a week.
Garfield Live
To end, let’s indulge in some high culture. It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that when any brand gets any form of recognition, someone will try and make a live stage show out of it. That applies even when the characters would look utterly terrifying when scaled up to be the size of a normal actor. Garfield Live took this rule and applied it to the Garfield franchise. Originally planned to debut in 2010, the musical got pushed back to 2011, where it was thrown onto the hallowed stages of Muncie, Indiana. This musical with cattitude (the show’s words, not mine) was set on Garfield’s birthday.
But alas, Garfield’s friends had forgotten all about this sacred and most holy of days, and thus, a bummed-out Garfield runs away. Of course, as fate would have it, he learns his lesson and returns home in the end. Or, at least, I presume he does, as the day a Garfield property breaks the status quo is the day a wormhole rips open and consumes us all.
The show had a short tour in the US followed by another tour in Asia. Strangely, very little of the musical exists online. It didn’t really catch on like Shrek: The Musical, or other high-brow theatre classics. However, it isn’t uncommon for smaller theatre companies to perform the play. The highlight of these local performances has to be the variance in costumes. Some companies go the Cats route and simply put cat ears on their actors. Others have decided to perform the musical in full mascot costumes, complete with dead, unblinking eyes that stare unrelentingly into the audience’s soul for the entire runtime. And really, isn’t that the perfect summation of the Garfield brand?
Garfield’s flexible nature means it is a matter of if, not when, we’ll see his face adorn another weird product. Are you an entrepreneur looking to give your product a shiny orange coat of paint, out to reach people who hate Mondays and like lasagna? Perhaps you too should consider pitching it to Garfield’s people. Sure the result won’t make sense, but you’ll find yourself in a long lineage of companies who have decided that a fat orange cat is a surefire route to superstardom. What’s next? A Garfield space station? A Garfield cloning kit? Garfield neural microchips? As society advances, who knows what other Garfield-branded strides technology is sure to make real.
Jonathon Greenall is a freelance writer, artist, and tabletop roleplaying game designer who has written for CBR, Polygon, Nintendo Life, Gayley Dreadful, Enbylife, and many other publications. They have also published several popular and highly-praised tabletop roleplaying games including “You Have One Ability….The Ability To Fuck This Up,” “Macarons, Milkshakes, And Magic,” and “Wander Wizards.”
Jonathon has always been fascinated by media, from the big hitters to the small, obscure, and often overlooked titles that linger on the sidelines, capturing both the on and off-camera stories that make these shows so fascinating.
Jonathon is also a major anime fan, having been exposed to the medium through shows like Sailor Moon and Revolutionary Girl Utena. Since then, Jonathon has maintained a passion for anime, watching most new shows each season and hunting down overlooked gems from previous ones.