In the early 1960s, Tokar's success working with the juvenile actors on 93 episodes of the TV sitcom Leave it to Beaver encouraged Walt Disney to hire him to direct family features for his studio, which frequently used children in key roles.

After directing the Fred MacMurray picture Follow Me, Boys!, and the Dean Jones/Suzanne Pleshette slapstick comedy The Ugly Dachshund (both 1966), Tokar's next directorial assignment (Walt Disney's last before his death) was the roadshow musical The Happiest Millionaire (1967).

With a Sherman Brothers score and a cast including Fred MacMurray, Greer Garson, Tommy Steele, Lesley Ann Warren, and John Davidson, the studio hoped the film would do as well with critics and audiences as Mary Poppins (1964) had done.

Tokar followed Millionaire with more examples of the high-concept comedies that became the mainstay of the studio in the 1960s and 1970s: The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit (1968), The Boatniks (1970), and Snowball Express (1972).

After directing his only non-Disney feature Where the Red Fern Grows (1974), Tokar made his most commercially successful film; the comedy western The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975).