Eiso Jan Gerhard Toonder

Vocation

Family

First son of Marten Toonder and Phiny Dick. During the holidays in his school years and afterwards, he did internships at various departments of the Toonder Studios. After obtaining the HBS-A diploma, he worked as a copywriter at advertising agencies until the end of 1962. He settled in Ireland, where he set up a subsidiary of the Studios: Toonder Film (Ireland) Ltd. The company focused on the production of TV spots in various techniques, and managed to win a number of awards. For the cartoons 'Kappie', 'Panda' and 'Koning Hollewijn' Eiso wrote many dozens of stories. In addition, he started his own comic strip, 'De Goeroe', which ran from 4 November 1970 till 26 November in De Telegraaf and from 21 December 1985 till 26 February 1988 in The Irish Times under his pseudonym Peter Abel. He also wrote several Bumble Stories for the weekly Donald Duck. For this work, which he silently did in the shadow of his famous father, and with which he stood at the cradle of the cartoon in the Netherlands, he received appreciation with the Bulletje en Boonestaak schaal, which he was awarded in 2011 by the Stripschap. He was always closely involved with the work of his parents: brought order to their archives, mediated and advised on exhibitions of their oeuvre, gave lectures, asked the 'Bommelfilmboek' (about the cartoon 'If you know what I mean') and the Quotation book 'Moving quotations', wrote introductions and forewords for various publications, as well as for merchandising and PR projects. More recently, his collaboration with the Bommelhoorspelserie, and the series of completely revised reprints of the complete Bommelsaga, was released by De Bezige Bij. He also wrote a book in 2012 in which he honored the life and work of his mother, Phiny Dick. He acted as advisor to the Toonder Copyright and Toonder Compagnie BV Foundation Because Eiso was so close to his father's life and work, he was a very valuable source of first-hand information for Toonder Compagnie, and a passionate and committed member of the family. He had an enormous knowledge of the work of his father, and in his forewords for the reissue of the Bumble Stories in both the edition of Panda publishing and the current edition by the Bezige Bij added a personal note. Till the end, he stayed with pleasure involved in Marten Toonders oeuvre. His last contribution to this was the afterword in 'Kappie and the wide distances' in the series of book releases of the Kappie comics by Strippen. The back of that booklet began with: 'aan alles komt een einde' (everything comes to an end).