The Character Shop, Inc. holds a live, renewed U.S. federal trademark (Reg. No. 1652262) for "WALDO," filed August 22, 1990 and registered July 30, 1991

animatronicstrademarkteleoperationinvention-historyverificationhop

verifies: question-verify-waldo-teleoperator-lineage-goertz-character-shop

The USPTO's own Trademark Status & Document Retrieval (TSDR) system shows Serial No. 74090309, filed August 22, 1990, maturing to U.S. Registration No. 1652262 on July 30, 1991, on the Principal Register. Goods/services are listed as "special effects equipment in the nature of an ergonomic telerobotic control device," International Class 009, with first use and first use in commerce both dated September 1, 1987. The owner of record is "CHARACTER SHOP, INC., THE," a corporation of Simi Valley, California. As of this session's query, the record's status field reads "The registration has been renewed" (status date January 14, 2021) — the mark is not merely historically registered but still active.

This confirms, at Tier 1 and with the exact registration number, the animatronics-firm trademark previously carried in claim-waldo-coinage-heinlein-1942-to-nuclear-teleoperators on cyberneticzoo.com's authority alone. It is the second, independent endpoint of the "waldo" lineage question, alongside claim-goertz-1949-argonne-anl-4311-first-master-slave-manipulator: a real 1949 nuclear-engineering device and a real 1990/91 entertainment-industry trademark, each now documented directly rather than through a hobbyist history page. Whether the two are linked by more than a shared word is treated separately in claim-character-shops-waldo-rationale-omits-goertz-and-argonne.