Toby Twirl Tourtel, an assistant editor of the "Daily Express". Tourtel devised Rupert Bear shortly after the end of World War I, in 1920, when the "Daily Express" was in competition with "The Daily Mail" and its then popular comic strip “Teddy Tail” (featuring a mouse called “Teddy Tail”), as well as with the comic strip “Pip, Squeak and Wilfred” (respectively, these are the names of a dog, penguin, and rabbit) in the "Daily Mirror". Each panel of Tourtel's comic strip story was accompanied by a narrative in rhymed verse. These are the very first ("Daily Express", 8 November 1920): The title
The Adventures of Rupert Bear black-and-white 16mm film. The remaining episodes were thought to be missing. On 21 April 2017, it was announced by Network Distributing that all 156 episodes had been found on their original film elements, and were to be released on DVD in three volumes, the first comprising the first 52 episodes. In April 2017, Network Distributing announced it would be releasing the first 52 episodes from the first two series on DVD (Region 2, PAL format). http://networkonair.com/exclusives/2626-adventures-of-rupert-bear-the-volume-1 The set was made available only directly through Network's site. A second volume containing the 52 episodes from series 3 was released soon afterward,