Main track

The technological advances of the late 19th century made it both easier and cheaper to print in color. The daily press now saw the opportunity, and newspapers such as the New York Times and the New York Journal began printing Sunday supplements with color comics. At this time, many people still had limited reading skills, and the newspapers hoped to reach a larger audience with the help of the comics' clear imagery.

In 1895, the New York World published "Hogan's Alley" for the first time, created by Richard Outcault. The main character, Mickey Dugan, is seen as the first comic strip character. Dugan was an Irish child from the slums of New York and was called "The Yellow Kid" because he was always dressed in a yellow nightgown. "The Yellow Kid" was also used to advertise various products, such as toys, chewing gum, and candy.

Another early comic strip that gained great importance is Katzenjammer Kids by Rudolph Dirks. It is translated into Swedish and is here called Knoll and Tott. The series started in 1897 in the New York Journal and quickly became a huge success. Katzenjammer Kids is more reminiscent of the modern series and has several frames and a plot. Katzenjammer Kids is now the oldest cartoon series in the world still published and is still quite similar, in style and plot. In Sweden, the Christmas albums about both Pigge & Gnidde and Knoll & Tott were published until 1977. Here at the Stockholm Toy Museum you can see some of the Christmas albums from the 1920s and 1930s.

A few years after Katzenjammer Kids comes Krazy Kat. It is considered by many to be a precursor to both the beatnik era and the underground comics. The series with its surrealistically desolate desert landscapes first appeared in 1910 with the somewhat strange title The Dingbat family. The series revolves almost exclusively around Krazy Kat and his antagonist, the mouse Ignatz. A popular comic strip character that was a hit from the start was E.C. Segar's Popeye (Karl-Alfred in Sweden), the sailor with the bulging arm muscles and his great love of spinach. Popeye, or Thimble Theatre, as the series was originally called, first appeared in 1919.

The first American series presented as a series of squares was Mutt and Jeff by Bud Fisher. This is a simply narrated comedy series full of slapstick humor. The series became an international success, and was translated in Sweden as Storklas och Lillklas. The series survived until 1983. Here at the Stockholm Toy Museum is one of the rarest Mutt and Jeff books.

By the end of the 1920s, almost every daily and weekly newspaper in the United States had comic strips in some form. All the features we today think a modern comic strip should have are a result of the experiments with color, form, style, image and storytelling techniques that the early comic strip creators played with.

The small mechanical toys in the glass box depict Lil Abner and his Dogpatch band from the popular post-war folk series Lil Abner. Lil Abner was created by Al Capp (1909-1979).