Mr. ZIP, informally "Zippy", is a cartoon character used in the 1960s by the United States Post Office Department, and in the 1970s by its successor, the United States Postal Service, to encourage the general public to include the ZIP code in all mailings.
The USPS has described the origin of Mr. ZIP as follows:[1]
Mr. ZIP was based on an original design by Howard Wilcox, son of a letter carrier and a member of the Cunningham and Walsh advertising agency, for use by a New York bank 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. Later, AT&T acquired the design and made it available to the Post Office Department at no 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 at a convention of postmasters in October 1962.
The Post Office had little difficulty in getting mass mailers to use the ZIP Code as they could require its use in order to receive preferential mailing rates, which it soon did. However, there was some resistance to using it by the general public, members of whom would mail items without ZIP Code, almost invariably at the full First Class Mail rate, which by regulation had to be delivered if at all possible and feasible. This was particularly true of older mailers. Mr. ZIP was the Post Office's answer to this, apparently to teach small children to know to always use the ZIP Code as they got older, and also to encourage their parents and grandparents to do so.
Mr. ZIP is a caricature of a mail carrier, wide-eyed and drawn with his letter bag trailing him in such a way as to imply his travelling at extreme speed, and sometimes holding on to his hat with his free hand. His hair was straight, but his skin was somewhat orange, making him non racially-identifiable. His limbs were very thin, almost like those of a stick figure. He was used especially on posters promoting ZIP Code use. The character was largely phased out by the late 1970s, but the Post Office retained rights to the copyrighted figure, which has been revived on the Postal Service's ZIP Code lookup website.[2]
Mr. ZIP appeared on the selvage (non-postally valid areas) of stamp panes (more commonly called "sheets") on many stamp issues, beginning with the 5 cent Sam Houston stamp issued January 10, 1964, although the 5¢ Battle of the Wilderness stamp of May 5, 1964, is sometimes listed as the "first" because it appears earlier in most stamp catalogs due to its inclusion in a five-issue Civil War series. He also appeared on non-postally valid labels in, or on the covers of, stamp booklets. Stamp collectors sometimes collect the corner block of four stamps with the part of the selvage bearing Mr. ZIP; they are called "ZIP blocks". Mr. ZIP appeared in the blank selvage of United States stamps until January 1986.[1]