Those hellaciously patterned children’s bedsheets with pictures of sailboats or rocketships or whatever licensed cartoon character is popular at the moment: approximately when did these become common/popular?
I remember first seeing them in the early 70s. This was a very odd time for fashion in general.
Certainly by the mid/late 1970’s they were very common in advertisements. Nothing that I could find in the 1960’s.
I had Disney sheets when I was a very small child. I’m pretty sure I had them before my sister was born in 1972.
Seventies, early
Before that, all we had were Cannon sheets and towels
When I was a wee lad, I had a set of sheets with rockets and outer space type things. That was in the early 60’s. My brother had a set with cowboys and indians. I don’t think you could consider either bright colored though, mine were light blue and all the stuff on them were in other shades of blue. My brother’s were tan with everything in shades of brown.
We have a set in the museum in which I work from the 1950s with cowboys printed all over them. Certainly, they were capable of printing sheets earlier than that-- we have a set from the 40s which have huge, gaudy flowers.
If I had to take a guess, I’d say late 40s, early 50s.
The technology might have available earlier, but sheets were generally white and only white through the '60s. Brightly-patterned for kids and more sophisticated patterns for adults both started in the early '70s, and were common by the late '70s.