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“Katzenjammer Kids” Merchandise
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The Katzenjammer Kids is a comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks. It debuted on December 12, 1897 in the American Humorist, a Sunday supplement of the New York Journal owned by newspaper king William Randolph Hearst. It is probably the world’s second oldest comic strip, after The Yellow Kid, which ran from 1895–98. The Katzenjammer Kids is today distributed by King Features Syndicate, making it the oldest comic strip still in syndication.

After a series of legal battles between 1912 and 1914, Dirks left the Hearst organization, and began a new strip, first titled Hans und Fritz and then The Captain and the Kids, featuring the same characters as The Katzenjammer Kids, which was continued by Hearst with other artists. The two separate versions of the strip competed with each other until 1979, when The Captain and the Kids, by then illustrated by Rudolph Dirks’ son John, ended its six-decade run.

The Katzenjammer Kids was inspired by “Max and Moritz”, a famous children’s story of the 1860s by the German Wilhelm Busch. The Katzenjammer Kids (three brothers in the first strip, but soon reduced to two) featured Hans and Fritz, twins who rebelled against authority, particularly in the form of their mother, Mama; der Captain, a shipwrecked sailor who acted as a surrogate father; and der Inspector, an official from the school system. Several of the characters spoke in stereotypical German-accented English. Katzenjammer means contrition after a failed endeavour or hangover in German.

The comic strip was turned into a stage play in 1903, inspired several animated cartoons, and was one of twenty strips included in the Comic Strip Classics series of commemorative postage stamps.

Source:  Wikipedia