Throughout the series, he goes on many adventures with his canine companion "Fitz the Dog", who would later evolve into Bimbo in the Betty Boop cartoons.

[1] The character originated when Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope, a device that allowed for animation to be more lifelike by tracing motion picture footage of human movement.

After tracing the film footage amounting to some 2,500 drawings and a year's work, the character that would eventually become Koko the Clown was born, although he did not have a name until 1924.

The hyphen was dropped due to legal issues associated with the bankruptcy of the Fleischer's partnership company, The Red Seal Pictures Corporation.

Due to alleged mismanagement under Alfred Weiss, the Inkwell Studios filed bankruptcy in January 1929, and Koko was put into retirement for two years.

In 1931, the legal entanglements regarding Koko were resolved, and he returned to the screen beginning with "The Herring Murder Case" (1931) and became a regular in the new Fleischer Talkartoons series with costars, Betty Boop and Bimbo.

In 1958, Max Fleischer set out to revive Out of the Inkwell for television, and a series of 100 color episodes were produced in 1960–1961 by Hal Seeger using the voice talents of Larry Storch.