Talk:Weepul

History of the weepul
Because I have created this article by merging three existing articles (weeples, wuppie and weepul), the following piece of text arised:

"It is not exactly clear who created the first weepul. One story says the popularity of weepuls started in the 1970s in the United States, but originally under the name weeples. Another story says the weepul was created in 1979 by the Oklahoma City promotional firm, Bipo Inc. It was named by customer Tom Blundell after a stuffed doll his parents had tried and failed to market several years earlier. Blundell figured the little-people stick-on would only be a flash in the pan, “but it just got a life to it, and it still isn’t ready to die.”"

The question is: it might just have started by 1979, and the article "weeples" might be created by someone who misunderstood the word "weepul". In that case, the text should be replaced by:

"The weepul (sometimes mistaken for weeple) was created in 1979 by the Oklahoma City promotional firm, Bipo Inc. It was named by customer Tom Blundell after a stuffed doll his parents had tried and failed to market several years earlier. Blundell figured the little-people stick-on would only be a flash in the pan, “but it just got a life to it, and it still isn’t ready to die.”"

SietskeEN 10:12, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to be a whiner, but the "part" about Albert Heijn is a bit too commercial for me, going into details about how many euro's a customer has to spend or what colors of "Weepuls" there are. It's true that these colors are the colors that Albert Heijn offers, but that doesn't mean (and this article tends to imply otherwise) there aren't any other colors available. Although AH has made the Weepul come back, it certainly has very little to do with AH and I think this article smells liks spam for AH. --RobIII 15:57, 21 June 2007 (UTC) Just my 2 (euro)cents.


 * You can remove it if you like... the AH-action was a short but strong hype in The Netherlands lately, but for the international community it is probably not that important. By the way, you can sign your comments simply by adding four tildes (like this: ~ ), your name and the time are then appearing automatically on saving. SietskeEN 07:17, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

i think we should make like a list of all the weepuls ever made. EvilHom3r 15:32, 16 September 2007 (UTC)

I was born in 1961 and my friends and I played with Weepuls some time during our grade school years. Grade school for us was from about 1966 (kindergarden) through 1972 (6th grade) so the story about these things being invented in 1979 simply isn't possible since I graduated from high school in 1979 and I know I wasn't playing with them at that time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jimrhoads (talk • contribs) 19:16, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I know weeples were around pre-1979. The "feet" from this time period were made from vinyl, not paper.

Grubbycup (talk) 16:16, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

I, Tom Blundell, created the original Weepul in June, 1971. I had just been discharged from the Army and went to work for my parents, Bill and Polly Blundell. My parents took a short, well deserved vacation, and they left me in charge of the company in their absence. At the time the company was a stuffed animal manufacturer. After starting the employees to work on the first morning, I began to play around with various components that I found in my parents office. I initially glued two small plastic "rolling" eyes on to a small pompon. When I placed it on top of my desk, the weight of the eyes caused the pompon to roll over until the eyes were on the bottom. As I looked around in the office, I found some small feet shaped pressure sensitive stickers that my father had printed and diecut. I stuck a right foot to a left foot in a V-shape and then I glued the pompon with the eyes on to the feet. The item now stood on it's own with the eyes looking back at me. I left the design on the desk quite by accident. When my parents returned a few days later, they discovered the small character. My mother actually added the antennas to the design and the "Weepul" was born. The name came from a former creation by my parents that never took off. We all thought the character looked like a little person or "wee people", thus the name Weepul seemed to be natural. Between 1971 and 2012, Bipo Inc produced and sold approximately 400,000,000 Weepuls. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.199.79.146 (talk) 06:12, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

A&W Restaurant Chain Promotion as Wuppets
Weepuls (under the name Wuppets) were widely distributed in the USA by the A&W restaurant chain during the 1980s, and would be worth mentioning in the article. The only sourcing I could locate is an old A&W television advertisement from 1982 - ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVB9lMT34Vs ) The advertisement is for "character" Wuppets, but they also had the standard kind with the antennae - ( https://live.staticflickr.com/39/93153867_02641685cf_b.jpg ) Dulcimerist (talk) 04:32, 27 August 2022 (UTC)