As we prepare to say farewell to 2025 and kick off 2026, the topic for this week was obvious. What is something most people change on January 1? A calendar! In the last year and half, I have written about a lot of M*A*S*H licensed products including M*A*S*H themed alcohol, Tristar action figures, Halloween costumes, games, a train set, toys, clothing, and much more. But one of the items that 20th Century-Fox Television licensed most years was a M*A*S*H calendar. Today, there are calendars for everything ranging from animals, to travel destinations, nature, celebrities, and popular movies and shows. It made sense to sell a calendar each year with photos of the M*A*S*H cast since it generated revenue for Fox and it allowed fans to see twelve different photos from their favorite show in their homes. In the collection, I have three different M*A*S*H calendars, so let’s take a look at calendars from 1978, 1983, and 1985.
The three calendars in the collection each have different makers and different designs. For 1978, there is no company name listed. It only contains the copyright information from 20th Century Fox Television. It primarily contains screen captures from various episodes, and they appear to be mostly taken from season five. That makes the most sense because season five would have been the most recent season to wrap when this calendar was produced. Because of this, the calendar still features Larry Linville as Major Frank Burns even though he left the series at the end of season five in 1977. So fans bought a calendar with Major Burns even though they were seeing Major Charles Emerson Winchester III in the latest season on television.
The other two calendars do include the name of the licensee company. The 1983 calendar was produced by Verkerke. The company also produced a series of M*A*S*H posters in the early 1980s. The calendar is well designed, and primary contains press photos of the individual cast members and one full Christmas photo of the cast for December 1983. When this calendar was released in late 1982, it was well known that M*A*S*H would end in early 1983, so I suspect that this calendar was fairly popular since it is the one I tend to see for sale the most often. Then, in 1985, two years after the series ended, M*A*S*H was still being featured on calendars. This calendar was produced by Harry M. Abrams, Inc., and it is my favorite of the calendars for severals reason. It is larger than the other two calendars, so the photos themselves are bigger. The calendar is well designed, and I really like the use of the M*A*S*H font throughout it. But the best feature of this calendar is that it doesn’t just feature the final cast. Since this calendar was created after the series ended, there are photos of both the early and final casts of M*A*S*H. It is one of the few products I have seen that has a mix of the casts.
Each year, I enjoy buying a new calendar. Had I been around in the 1980s, I would have bought these calendars in a heartbeat. Having photos from favorite TV shows or movies was only possible because of calendars and posters. In our modern world of DVDs, the internet, and digital media, it is very easy to find photos from our favorite show. However, in the 1970s and early 1980s, one of the few ways to see photos of the M*A*S*H cast was in publications. Typically, those photos were in black and white since it was cheaper to print. So these calendars were a way to display M*A*S*H cast photos in full color. Calendars are a great way to celebrate a fandom, and I think offering M*A*S*H calendars was a very smart decision by the companies that produced them. If a M*A*S*H calendar was still produced today, I’d buy one! Pre-owned copies of the calendars are available online, and vintage calendars are technically reusable. For example, the 1978 calendar can be used again in 2034 (although some of the holidays may not line up exactly)! To find out when your favorite, vintage calendar can be reused, you can check out the site “When Can I Reuse this Calendar?“
The M*A*S*H Historian 