Garfield Appeals to Produce Shoppers; One of the Nation's Largest Fruit Packers Signs on Fat Cat to Grow Business; Stemilt Growers, Inc. and Garfield Produce Fruit Promotion.

MUNCIE, Ind. and WENATCHEE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- July 8, 1999--

Stemilt Growers, Inc. and Garfield will come together to promote the consumption of apples, pears, and cherries in a worldwide campaign scheduled to take root in mid-September.

The campaign pairs the nation's largest fruit packer with the world-famous feline to nourish the idea that the daily consumption of fresh fruits has proven health benefits. Consumers in the US, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Taiwan, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, UK, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, and Guatemala will see the fat cat pop up in the produce section of supermarkets until early 2001.

Garfield will appear on Stemilt packing crates, on PLU stickers, in print ads, on point-of-purchase material, and in recipes provided to retail stores that merchandise Stemilt product. Additionally, Stemilt plans various consumer contests for customers that shop those supermarkets. Stemilt, the largest U.S. shipper of Golden Delicious apples, will spotlight different apple, pear and cherry varieties throughout the promotion period. Stemilt grows 18 varieties of apples, 7 varieties of pears, and 5 varieties of cherries (including their organic varieties) on their Northwest-region farms.

"Garfield is known for his love of food and speaks to both parents and children, an audience that Stemilt would like to influence. Garfield will allow us to communicate a valuable message of health and nutrition via recipes suggesting new and different uses of the product. The cat will also create a fun shopping experience for the customer," according to Hans van Someren Greve, General Manager and CEO of Stemilt.

Jim Davis, Garfield creator and founder of Paws, Inc., the licensing and creative studio for Garfield, said, "Garfield is the ultimate food consumer. He has very high standards and Stemilt measures up in every way. It was fun to work on a promotion for a supermarket's produce section. Until now, buying apples was about as much fun as buying paper towels. Garfield's about to change all that."

Stemilt is one of the produce industry's most rapidly growing companies. In 1998, Stemilt shipped over 8.6 million boxes of apples, pears and cherries to buyers in more than 30 countries.

GARFIELD, the comic strip that Davis launched in 1978, appears in dozens of languages in over 2,600 newspapers and is devoured by more than 220,000,000 readers daily. A TV show, "Garfield and Friends," is currently in worldwide syndication and over 700 companies in 111 countries manufacture licensed Garfield goods. Garfield also has a popular Web site, www.garfield.com and an online cyberstore at catalog.garfield.com.