Q: I currently attend a PhD in Communications Sciences at the University of Sao Paulo- Brazil, and my research is about comics in organizational communications. I myself worked with comics and communications in General Motors Brazil for about 20 years. When I was a probationer at the Dealers Department in 1989, I recall there was a technical publication which had a comics character whose name was “Primitive Peter” and is assumed to be created by Walt Disney in 1943 for General Motors. Do you have any piece of information about that?
Ed, Sao Paulo, SP-Brazil
A: Primitive Pete was a character created by Disney for a General Motors training film entitled The ABC of Hand Tools. Pete was supposedly the caveman who first figured how to make a hand tool out of a stick and a rock. The film was delivered to General Motors in 1946, and was used by them as a training tool for many years. There were also several versions of a printed booklet with Primitive Pete on the cover.