Troy Walker

Troy Walker is an American cartoonist, toy inventor, producer, and founder of TWP Cartoon Studios.^[1] Walker created the children's novelty fad, Hairy Pops finger puppets, used as a promotional tool in the late 1990s by the Supercuts chain of hair salons.

Bob Spongee

The comic strip "Bob Spongee, The Unemployed Sponge” featured, as the main character, a creature with sponges for eyes, legs, and arms. During the early 1990s, Walker packaged a homemade Bob Spongee doll with comic strips and sold them throughout Northern California. A decade later, this character would be the focus of a lawsuit filed by Walker with the producers of SpongeBob SquarePants.^[2]

Hairy Pops

Walker's first commercial break came in 1998 when he created the novelty finger-puppet lollipop toppers called Hairy Pops. Hairy Pops were picked up and distributed by Supercuts, leading to an initial order of 18,000 in the first 30 days and a second order of 50,000 for the next month. The Hairy Pops were on a list of the craziest fads at the time.^[3]

Royalties from the Hairy Pops venture helped fund Walker's new Bay Area-based production studio, TWP Cartoon Studios.

SpongeBob lawsuit

In March 2007, the Contra Costa Times reported on a legal battle between Walker and Nickelodeon Studios regarding the origins of the popular SpongeBob SquarePants character. The lawsuit filed by Walker argued that the design and concept for SpongeBob was lifted from Walker's Bob Spongee character, which he produced and published, almost a decade before SpongeBob became a hit. Viacom, Nickelodeon's parent company, publicly stated that they believed the claim is baseless.^[2][4]

On January 4, 2008, a settlement conference was conducted between Troy Walker and Viacom, Paramount Studios and Nickelodeon Studios at the Northern District Federal Courts in San Francisco. No settlement was reached and the parties were ordered to return to court for another settlement conference set for May. A jury trial was set for June 2008. The matter was dropped before trial after a summary judgement in Viacom's favor.

One of Walker's claims involved the titles of Bob Spongee/SpongeBob stories. In 1992, Bob Spongee mail order advertisements were published in the Oakland Tribune under the slogan "Sponge for Hire." In 2004, Paramount Studios released a SpongeBob video with the same "Sponge for Hire" title. As part of the court hearing, the first episode of SpongeBob SquarePants entitled "Help Wanted" (airdate May 1, 1999) was entered as part of the evidence in Walker vs. Viacom.

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