Their name refers to The Yellow Kid, a character created by the American Richard F. Outcault at the end of the 19th century, and considered one of the first comic book heroes.
During the following festival, held in November 1968, the awards ceremony was canceled following protests from the authors, in the context of May 68.
[citation needed] In 2020, as the Lucca festival redubbed itself Lucca Changes amidst a shift to virtual programming during the COVID-19 pandemic,[6] the awards shifted to a new system under the umbrella term Lucca Comics Awards, consisting of 9 categories (3 Yellow Kids, five Gran Guinigis, and one Stefano Beani Award (named for a former festival director), "regardless of nationality, editorial format or distribution method".
Now awarded by the same jury as the Grand Prize, it rewarded audiovisual or cinematographic works and was divided into several categories.
[9] Starting in 1982, the festival began also awarding a special Caran-d'Ache prize for "A Life of Illustration".
In 1990, the festival management also presented the Max Prize for Cartoon Cinema to the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main.