Toots and Casper

Toots and Casper was a long-run family comic strip by Jimmy Murphy, distributed to newspapers for 37 years by King Features Syndicate, from 1918 to 1956, resulting in many merchandising tie-ins, including books, dolls, paper dolls, pins, bisque nodders and comic books.

Comics historian Coulton Waugh commented on the strip's portrait of a happy, idealized family life: "Like Blondie, Toots is the picture of contentment, and if all homes were like these, the American Dream would be nearly realized."

It began as a gag-a-day strip but soon settled into a successful pattern of serialized stories of romance and mystery involving newlyweds Toots and Casper Hawkins, their child Buttercup and dog Spare-Ribs (which entered a dog race with a $2500 prize in 1933).

Murphy began Toots and Casper for the New York American and other Hearst newspapers during December 1918. He used his wife, Matilda Katherine Murphy, as the model for Toots.

The daily strip was picked up by King Features in 1919, and the Sunday strip began the following year (July 1920). The Sunday page carried a topper strip by Murphy, It's Papa Who Pays! Toots and Casper had a child, a boy named Buttercup, in November 1920. Buttercup remained a baby for over 20 years, eventually growing up as a six-year-old in the early 1940s, as noted by comics historian Don Markstein:

Other characters included Casper's conceited neighbor Colonel Hoofer (alongside his wife Sophie and their son Teddy), who often found himself short on cash. Toots' uncles Everett Chuckle and Abner were also featured. Everett found and married his long-lost sweetheart Elsie in 1929, while Abner married Ellen Sullivan in 1934.

Both the daily and the Sunday strips were popular favorites for decades. In 1934, Murphy began including collectible images (formatted like postage stamps) in his Sunday strips along with paper dolls, and these features proved so popular they were subsequently imitated by other cartoonists.The daily Toots and Casper ran until 1951, with the Sunday strip continuing until 1956.

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