Creator Ross Bagdasarian debuted his animated music group, Alvin and the Chipmunks, in 1958. The comic books, TV series, and albums that followed in the next decade ranked the characters #1 in popularity with kids. In 1981, the holiday classic, A Chipmunk Christmas premiered and sparked a re-launch of Alvin and the Chipmunks as an Emmy-winning animated series during the 1980s and ’90s that rated #1 on Saturday mornings with kids for almost a decade. Top-grossing films and Grammy-winning soundtracks released between 2008 and 2011 prove once again that Alvin and the Chipmunks is a brand with true staying power.
