July 1, 2009

Today the USPS ZIP Code turns 46 years old. However, the cartoon figure, Mr. ZIP, originated serveral years earlier.

Mr. ZIP, was adopted by USPS as the trademark for the Zoning Improvement Plan or ZIP Code, which began on July 1, 1963.

Mr. ZIP was designed by Harold Wilcox, son of a letter carrier and a member of the Cunningham and Walsh advertising agency, for use by Chase Manhattan Bank in New York in a bank-by-mail campaign. Wilcox’s design was a child-like sketch of a postman delivering a letter. The figure was used only a few times, then filed away.

The American Telephone and Telegraph Company acquired the design from the Cunningham and Walsh agency and kindly made it available to the Post Office Department without cost. Post Office Department artists retained the face but sharpened the limbs and torso and added a mail bag. The new figure, dubbed Mr. ZIP, was unveiled by the Post Office Department at a convention of postmasters in October 1962. Mr. ZIP, who has no first name, appeared in many public service announcements and advertisements urging postal customers to use the five-digit ZIP Code that was initiated on July 1, 1963. Within four years of his appearance, eight out of ten Americans knew who Mr. ZIP was and what he stood for.

With the introduction of the nine-digit ZIP Code, or ZIP+4, in 1983, Mr. ZIP went into partial retirement. His image still was printed on the selvage of some sheets of stamps, but that practice ended in January 1986. Mr. ZIP still is used occasionally by the Postal Service.