Alice thought she had never seen such a curious croquet-ground in all her life...the croquet-balls were live hedgehogs, and the mallets live flamingoes, and the soldiers had to double themselves up and stand on their hands and feet, to make the arches.
Chapter VIII
Since its publication, enterprising manufacturers have sought to capitalize on Alice’s popularity. Carroll was inundated with requests to approve items such as biscuit tins, carved parasol handles, and albums.
The amount of Alice-related merchandise has only increased in the 150 years since its publication. Fans can now own Alice clothing, jewelry, and lingerie, furniture and housewares, pinball machines, and drug paraphernalia, and can visit Alice-themed stores, restaurants, and theme parks for an immersive Carrollian experience.
Carroll himself became involved in merchandising Alice. This stamp case, his own invention, contains slots for carefully arranging one’s stamps by price, and was accompanied by Carroll’s jocular letter-writing guide. This is Carroll’s own copy of the set.
Alice’s popularity with readers of all ages has led to its use selling more than just merchandise for children. Guinness brewery’s popular “Guinness is good for you” campaign in the 1920s and 30s included a series of Alice-related ads, including this parody of “You are old, Father William.”
American illustrator Jessie Willcox Smith created this illustration of Alice for the 1923 storybook Boys and Girls of Bookland.
Popular games are one of the most recognizable motifs in the Alice books; unsurprisingly, game manufacturers have created a number of Alice-themed card and board games, and more recently, video games and apps as well.
The countercultural movements of the 1960s and beyond frequently co-opted characters from Alice (and not just the hookah-smoking caterpillar seated on a magic mushroom).
Blotter collector Mark McCloud created a series of Alice-inspired blotters to contain hundreds of doses of LSD.
