Of all stories adapted for the series, this was the only one which was neither written by the comic's creator and artist Morris, nor by René Goscinny. After Goscinny's sudden death in 1977, Morris decided not to write the scripts all by himself again, but took on scripts from varying writers. Le Magot des Dalton was the first long story in this new era of the comic, written by Vicq and published in 1980. Ironically, it was the first and also the last full-album story written by Vicq.