welcome and enjoy!

Hi and welcome to my blog about comics from other people’s childhood! It is dedicated primarily to British humour comics of the 60s and 70s. The reason they are not from my childhood is simply because I didn’t live in the UK back then (nor do I live there now). I knew next to nothing about them until fairly recently but since then I’ve developed a strong liking for the medium and amassed a large collection, including a number of complete or near complete sets. My intention is to use this blog as a channel for sharing my humble knowledge about different titles, favourite characters and creators as I slowly research my collection.

QUICK TIP: this blog is a sequence of posts covering one particular comic at a time. The sequence follows a certain logic, so for maximum results it is recommended that the blog is read from the oldest post up.

Copyright of all images and quotations used here is with their respective owners. Any such copyrighted material is used exclusively for educational purposes and will be removed at first notice. All other text copyright Irmantas P.



Wednesday, November 26, 2014

ADVERTISEMENTS IN MONSTER FUN COMIC



Before I close the chapter of MONSTER FUN COMIC weeklies and call this mission completed, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the adverts which appeared in the paper.

IPC in-house advertisements can be found in nearly every issue of the paper. They promoted free gifts and special features in sister publications such as Whoopee!, Whizzer and Chips, Jinty, Tammy, Battle, Tiger and Scorcher, Shoot!, BUSTER, LOOK AND LEARN and others. They also advertised Annuals and Holiday Specials of various IPC comics; here are some of the countless examples:


During its short lifetime MFC celebrated the arrival of quite a few new sister publications in a variety of genres:

From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 15
From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 19
From MFC No. 36; MFC Issue No. 35 had 4 pages of ACTION adverts
From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 68
From MONSTER FUN COMIC No. 71


It is impossible to imagine an IPC comic without those small post stamp offers and ads aimed at stamp collectors. They can be found in nearly every issue of MFC:


Very often post stamp ads appeared in the same block with Whimsies from Wade or Whoppas from Wade:


Toys companies formed another group of commercial advertisers. One can’t help noticing that the vast majority of products were boys’ toys. There were quite a few ads of North Pacific line of flying craft models from Hales. The black and white adverts promoted Delta Dart Glider, Sky Flyer, Sleek Streek, Drifter, Skeeter, etc:



Atlantic UK Distributors Shard (Sports & Toys) Limited with their ATLANTIC big new range of scale models in full detail was another big advertiser of boys’ toys. Their adverts with red spot colour made several appearances on the back page of MFC towards the end of the run:


The full-colour full-page advertisements of Minic Ships range of scale models by Hornby also fell within battle and warfare category:


These adverts of Timpo adventure club from Timpo Toys, Kung Fuey Dragon Kite from Golden Wonder, Prehistoric monsters scale models and Kellogg’s Rice Crispies were also targeted at boys:




..not to mention these Norvic Man ads:


Here's an untypical Norvic advert promoting something specifically for girls:


These were not gender-specific:







Unhealthy foods and sweets formed another major category of the adverts. Cadbury’s was a regular advertiser. Their Curlywurly Bar ads came in a variety of designs and free gift promotions but always featured this poorly drawn bloke:



Cadbury’s also advertised their Freddo competition:


TreborLand and Trebor Blobs candies appear to have been big in the mid-70s; they were a frequent guest in MFC: 



...and sometimes even paid for two pages to promote their competitions:


Bessett’s Sweets were after kids’ pocket money as well:


Kellogg’s, Nestle, Nesquik and Weetabix were also there:



There were four adverts of cinema films: one for the musical Mister Quilp of the Old Curiosity Shop:


 two for At the Earth’s Core:


… and one for Future World:


Adverts in comics were often presented in the form of comic strips, and there were several examples in MFC; all can be viewed in the gallery below.







This concludes the series of blogposts about MONSTER FUN COMIC weeklies and I will now proceed to Holiday Specials and Annuals.


All Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.

4 comments:

  1. Some real beauties there - especially the Treborland ones.

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  2. Great feature, which nicely illustrates just how many period delights of many different kinds can be found in a typical 1970s IPC comic. 'New comic' ads were always especially exciting.

    That "poorly drawn bloke" in the Curlywurly ads was TV comedy star Terry Scott who, dressed as a schoolboy, appeared in the TV commercials for the chocolate product.

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    Replies
    1. I have to admit I am not familiar with Terry Scott. I will look him up on YouTube.

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    2. Look up 'Cadburys Curly Wurly Commercial - Only 3p - Museum - Terry Scott - 1970s' on YouTube.

      He was starring in a popular BBC1 sitcom 'Happy Ever After' during Monster Fun's run (and later 'Terry and June'), and was in quite a few of the Carry On films.

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