The concept of baby talk dates back centuries but never has it been more comedically conveyed and deftly handled than in Sheldon Mayer’s Sugar and Spike. Two cherubic little toddlers – Sugar a sweet blonde in a red frilly dress and matching hairbow and Spike a redhead with a smattering of freckles – who can’t speak actual words but can speak to each other began showing up in their own 1956 comic book.

Mayer got the idea for his take on communicating babies by watching family film footage. He started by imagining how his own small children must’ve viewed the world and how the grownups surrounding them must’ve sounded – before the children understood English.

The bimonthly comic lasted 15 years and 98 issues, reinventing itself first subtly, then outrageously along the way. The preschool buddies Sugar and Spike spent many of their first issues learning to navigate their own world without really interacting with the incomprehensible adults around them. Later, though, Mayer decided to go change the setting, sending the kids to foil robberies and tag along with adventurers.

In 1971, Mayer’s eyesight began to fail, and the series was postponed as a result. Though Mayer’s eyesight was later restored through surgery, DC Comics did not continue publishing the creator’s new stories. He did find an audience overseas, however, until he passed away in 1992. The US did see the toddlers again in the early ‘80s, when Nickelodeon’s Video Comics aired Sugar and Spike stills with voiceovers portraying the young stars.