Betty Boop and Blondie enter the public domain in 2026, accompanied by a trio of detectives

Betty Boop and “Blondie” are joining Mickey Mouse and Winnie the Pooh in the public domain.The first appearances of the classic cartoon and comic characters are among the pieces of intellectual property whose 95-year US copyright maximum has been reached, putting them in the public domain on Jan.1.

That means creators can use and repurpose them without permission or payment.The 2026 batch of newly public artistic creations doesn’t quite have the sparkle of the recent first entries into the public domain of Mickey or Winnie.But ever since 2019 — the end of a 20-year IP drought brought on by congressional copyright extensions — every annual crop has been a bounty for advocates of more work belonging to the public.“It’s a big year,” said Jennifer Jenkins, law professor and director of Duke’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain, for whom New Year’s Day is celebrated as Public Domain Day.“It’s just the sheer familiarity of all this culture.”Jenkins said that, collectively, this year’s work shows “the fragility that was between the two wars and the depths of the Great Depression.”Here’s a closer look at what will enter the public domain on Thursday, based on the research of Jenkins and her center.Betty Boop began as a dog.

Seriously.When she first appears in the 1930 short “Dizzy Dishes,” one of four of her cartoons entering the public domain, she’s already totally recognizable as the Jazz Age flapper later memorialized in countless tattoos, T-shirts and bumper stickers.She has her baby face, short hair with groomed curls, flashy eyelashes and miniature mouth.

But she’s also got dangling poodle ears and a tiny black nose.Those would soon morph into dangling earrings and a tiny white nose.She started as essentially the Minnie Mouse to a popular anthropomorphic dog named Bimbo, whom she would eventually outshine — and push aside.

She’s got a supporting role in “Dizzy Dishes,” performing a slinky song-an...