Toonerville Folks
Toonerville Folks (The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains) is an American newspaper comic strip feature by Fontaine Fox, which ran from 1908 to 1955. It began in 1908 in the Chicago Post, and by 1913, it was syndicated nationally by the Wheeler Syndicate. From the 1930s on, it was distributed by the McNaught Syndicate.
Toonerville Folks
C. G. Cook · eBay · Public domain
- Creator
- Fontaine Fox
- Language
- English
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
Toonerville Folks (The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains) is an American newspaper comic strip feature by Fontaine Fox, which ran from 1908 to 1955. It began in 1908 in the Chicago Post, and by 1913, it was syndicated nationally by the Wheeler Syndicate. From the 1930s on, it was distributed by the McNaught Syndicate.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Toonerville Folks. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q7824171 · wikipedia · Toonerville Folks
In this article
Key facts
Key facts
• Title — Toonerville Folks • Author — Fontaine Fox • Status — Concluded daily & Sunday gag panel • First — 1908, syndicated beginning in 1913 • Last — Feb 12, 1955 • Syndicate — Wheeler Syndicate (1913–1916) Bell Syndicate (1916–c. 1930) McNaught Syndicate (c. 1930–1955) • Publisher — All-American Publications Eastern Color Printing • Altnames — The Toonerville Trolley That Meets All the Trains • Genre — Humor
Characters and story
Characters and story
The single-panel gag cartoon (with longer-form comics on Sunday) is a daily look at Toonerville, situated in what are now called the suburbs. Central to the strip is the rickety little trolley called the "Toonerville Trolley that meets all the trains", driven in a frenzy by the grizzly old Skipper to meet each commuter train as it arrives in town. The many richly-formed characters include Suitcase Simpson, Mickey McGuire, the Powerful Katrinka, the Terrible Tempered Mr. Bang, Aunt Eppie Hogg, Little Woo-Woo Wortle, The Little Scorpions, and "Stinky" Davis.
Origin
Origin
Fox described the inspiration for the cartoon series in an article he wrote for The Saturday Evening Post titled "A Queer Way to Make a Living" (February 11, 1928, page six): After years of gestation, the idea for the Toonerville Trolley was born one day up in Westchester County when my wife and I had left New York City to visit Charlie Voight, the cartoonist, in the Pelhams. At the station, we saw a rattletrap of a streetcar, which had as its crew and skipper a wistful old codger with an Airedale beard. He showed as much concern in the performance of his job as you might expect from Captain Hartley when docking the Leviathan.
Reprints
Reprints
• Illustration — Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Folks (1917). Between 1934 and 1940, comic book reprints of the panel appeared in many issues of All-American Comics, Famous Funnies, and Popular Comics. In 1995, the strip was one of 20 included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative United States postage stamps. In 1972, Herb Galewitz and Don Winslow compiled Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley, a 184-page book of daily panels, for Weathervane Books, an imprint of Charles Scribner's Sons.
Namesakes
Namesakes
Communities in Colorado, Kentucky, Missouri, and Pennsylvania were named after the comic strip.
Advertisement for the American comedy short film The Skipper's Narrow Escape (1921) with Helen Gerould Rose, Dan Mason, Robert Maximillian, and Wilna Hervey aka Wilna Wilde, on page 28 of the October 23, 1920 Exhibitors Herald. One of the "Toonerville Trolley" films.
Betzwood Film Company / Associated First National Pictures · Exhibitors Herald (Oct. - Dec. 1920) on the Internet Archive
Wilna Wilde aka Wilna Hervey, silent film comedies, from the film The Skipper's Narrow Escape (1921).
J. Willis Sayre Collection of Theatrical Photographs
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
- United States
Named but not plotted · 1
Toonerville Folks is associated with United States.
Country
Films
Between 1920 and 1922, 17 Toonerville silent film comedy adaptations were scripted by Fox for Philadelphia's Betzwood Film Company. These starred Dan Mason as the Skipper with Wilna Hervey as Katrinka. Only seven of those 17 shorts survive today. Four are preserved in the Betzwood Film Archive at Montgomery County Community College, Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. • Illustration — Toonerville Trolley with Wilna Hervey, 1920. 1920 • The Toonerville Trolley 1921 • The Skipper's Treasure Scheme • Skipper's Flirtation • Toonerville Tangle • The Skipper Strikes It Rich • Toonerville Tactics • The Skipper's Narrow Escape • The Skipper Has His Fling • The Skipper's Scheme • Toonerville's 'Boozem' Friends • Toonerville Follies • Toonerville's Fire Brigade • The Skipper's Treasure Garden 1922 • The Skipper's Sermon • Toonerville Topics • Toonerville Blues • Toonerville Trials • The Skipper's Policy Mickey Rooney starred as Mickey McGuire in more than 55 comedy shorts filmed between 1927 and 1936. Rooney (né Joe Yule, Jr.) adopted the professional name Mickey McGuire for a time before finally settling on the last name Rooney. Three Toonerville cartoons were produced by Van Beuren Studios in 1936 as part of the Rainbow Parade series. Distributed by RKO Radio Pictures Katrinka was animated by Joseph Barbera. • Release date — Title • January 17, 1936 — Toonerville Trolley • July 3, 1936 — Trolley Ahoy • October 2, 1936 — Toonerville Picnic A Toonerville Trolley cartoon, "Lost and Found", was included in Simple Gifts, a Christmas collection of six animated shorts shown on PBS TV in 1977. Over the years, various Toonerville characters acted as spokesmen for popular products of the day. Skipper, Flem Proddy and Katrinka appeared throughout the decades in advertisements for Drano, Kellogg's cereals and Chef Boyardee foods.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Markstein, Don. Toonopedia: Toonerville Folks
- 2.Are you following the doings of Toonerville Folks?. Fort Worth Star-Telegram. 17. August 14, 1925.
- 3.Smith, Sherwin D. Fontaine Fox's Toonerville Trolley. The New York Times. BR–15. September 3, 1972.
- 4.Benham, Alyce Hand. Antiques & Collectibles: Toonerville Town Cutout Sheet was a popular premium. The Press of Atlantic City. January 17, 2015.
- 5.The Surviving Betzwood Films
- 6.Lenburg, Jeff. The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons. Checkmark Books. 127–128. 1999. 0-8160-3831-7.
- 7.Joseph Barbera: My Life in 'Toons: From Flatbush to Bedrock in Under a Century, Turner Pub, Nashville 1995, , p 44
- 8.Toonerville characters as product spokesmen.
- 9.Scriba, Jay. From Sleepy Eye to Chicken Bristle, USA. The Milwaukee Journal. 15 October 1970.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Comics and comic art
9,920 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Tony ValenteArtist
- Tony VelasquezArtist
- Too Cute CrisisSeries
- Toon van DrielArtist
- Toothpaste for DinnerSeries
- Toots and CasperSeries
- Top 10Series
- Toppu GPSeries
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a copy of Toonerville Folks?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.