Daffy Duck Postage Stamp Draws Flock of Collectors

“That’s despicable!” some might have hissed.

But no one was saying that Friday as the Postal Service continued the trend of honoring great Americans with postage stamps by unveiling the first of 427 million new Daffy Duck stamps.

Two hundred children wearing plastic duckbills over their faces tooted noisy duck calls outside Mann’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood to celebrate the 33-cent cartoon stamp, which goes on sale nationwide today.

Why honor the conniving, frenetic Daffy? The kids didn’t duck the question.

“He teaches you that whenever somebody says you can’t do something you should keep trying,” said Demiko Payton, 10.

He’s better for a stamp than the president, said Rudolph Tucker, also 10. “More people look up to Daffy Duck than Bill Clinton.”

Explained fourth-grader Christina McDow: “Daffy Duck represents America as a good role model.”

The new stamp depicts Daffy leaning against a mailbox containing letters addressed to him. But he has an irritated look because the postage stamps on the letters bear the likenesses of Bugs Bunny and the cat-and-canary team of Sylvester and Tweety. They were honored with Postal Service stamps in 1997 and 1998, respectively.

It takes a magnifying glass to see those tiny details, drawn by Warner Bros. artists Ed Wleczyk, Frank Espinosa and Brenda Guttman for the Postal Service.

But it’s enough to let the self-adhesive stamp deliver a licking to Disney Studios, the neighboring rival to Warner Bros. “No Disney cartoon stamps are being considered--yet,” Postal Service spokesman Larry Dozier said Friday.

Along with the Windsor Hills Elementary School pupils, the ceremony drew hundreds of collectors anxious to buy the new stamps and get them canceled with a special Daffy Duck “first day of issue” postmark.

Redlands resident Eugene Walker, himself a postal worker, bought 1,500 of them before setting off for as many Los Angeles-area post offices as he could reach to get them postmarked with Friday’s date.

“It’s just for fun,” explained Israel Bick, a Van Nuys resident who is executive director of the International Stamp Collector’s Society and also bought a fistful of stamp sheets.

Tourists who stopped in at the Chinese Theatre were surprised by the hubbub .

“We came out here to see stars and all we see is Daffy Duck,” said the Rev. Tom Watkins, a Presbyterian minister from Raleigh, N.C., who was honeymooning with his wife, Julie.

Julie Watkins said Wonder Woman might have been a more appropriate American cartoon character to honor on a stamp. “After all, she wears red, white and blue.”

What would Daffy Duck’s reaction have been to that? “What a revolting development this is!”