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."
Characters and story
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:
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