This was the Netherlands' first full-length animated film.
The animated feature was based on the daily comic strips by famous Dutch comic strip creator Marten Toonder, whose Tom Puss & Oliver B. Bumble series was published in newspapers from 1941 up until 1986. It was extremely popular due to its very creative language, earning a status as literature with Dutch critics (while being almost impossible to translate to other languages). The story of the movie is loosely based on the 77th story, "De Zwelbast" ("The Swellbust"), which was published in 1957. Toonder was not very fond of the movie, which he thought had too much slapstick humor.