WHOOPEE! PULL-OUTS IN 1979 – PART ONE

The score of the 26 ‘special’ issues of WHOOPEE! during 1978 (covered in my previous post) was dwarfed by the number of those offered in 1979 when the comic really went to town: as many as 35 issues came with a booklet, a poster or some other fun pull-out! I won’t attempt to cover them all in one post and will only look at the first 7 months of 1979, leaving the rest for Part Two.

The first issue of the year (6th January) had The Curious Case of the One-Eyed Gnome - an 8-page pull-out minibook starring Sheerluck and Son, drawn by Trevor Metcalfe:

The issue of 6th January, 1979 also ran this advert informing the readers about more exciting things to look forward to next week - and not just in WHOOPEE! comic:

The 1979 WHOOPEE! pull-out calendar was a 4-part piece, featuring the big stars of the paper, drawn by Sid Burgon. One would have thought it appropriate for the calendar to start in the first issue of the year, but the editor had other plans and chose to run it for the 4 consecutive weeks of 13th January – 3rd February:

The next issue after the one with part 4 of the calendar came with Supermum pull-out booklet, drawn by Dicky Howett. On a personal note I can add that this issue, cover dated 10th February, 1979, proved to be particularly evasive in my quest to collect a full set of WHOOPEE!, and it took me quite a while to get hold of a copy with the booklet intact!

The next week’s issue (17th February, 1979) had another pull-out minibook - A Touch of Evil, drawn by Brian Walker. Although his Spooktacular 7 strip featuring the Scream Inn gang had ended in July 1978, the mischievous faces peeking around the corner on the front cover of the booklet look a lot like the Innkeeper, Boneypart and Dennis the Devil, don’t you think? The booklet being referred to as ‘SPOOKTACULAR’ on the front cover of the comic was another nod to the discontinued strip. 

In fact, it featured the Ghostly-Go-Round squad. WHOOPEE! fans will know that the squad consisted of Evil Eye, Creepy Car, 'Orrible Hole and Fun Fear. The four strips used to appear on a weekly basis since the early days of the paper, but with young readers gradually losing interest in the once-popular horror comedy genre, the Editor needed to clear space for new material. The solution was to rotate the strips, so each was only printed once every four weeks. The practice started back in 1978, but from the first issue of 1979 the strips were brought under one umbrella of the Ghostly-Go-Round.

The four issues of April (7th, 14th, 21st and 28th) had a pop-quiz poster featuring John Travolta.

As usual, the poster was advertised a week in advance, and the advert tells us that WHOOPEE! wasn’t the only IPC comic with lots of pull-outs in 1979:

The first three parts of the poster had quiz questions in red squares, with answers provided in the last part. Here’s how the four parts of the poster looked on the centrespreads: 

Besides part 4 of the pop quiz poster and the instructions how to assemble it, the issue cover-dated 28th April, 1979 had a run-down of the Top Ten of the paper’s most popular strips as selected by readers:

The issue cover-dated 28th April, 1979 also advertised another 4-part minibook in the pipeline, and announced that next week was WHOOPEE!’s turn for the free gift of Kellogg’s Two Shakes raspberry flavour milk shake mix – also offered on different weeks at around the same time with Buster, Whizzer and Chips, Cheeky and Mickey Mouse comics:

As promised, the four WHOOPEE! issues of May (5th, 12th, 19th and 26th) came with four parts of the Spotter Book of Sports and Games, which featured various sports, etc., and was quite bland in terms of artwork:

WHOOPEE! took a break with its pull-outs in June before going on a poster spree starting from the issue of 21st July, 1979:

This was followed by Supermum poster a week later in the issue of 29th July, 1979:

The rest of the 1979 WHOOPEE! pull-out goodness will be covered in Part Two soon.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd 

And while you’re here, I would like to remind you that my promotion for the POWER PACK OF KEN REID is still on. Get your copies of the books and BONUS FREE PRINTS on eBay or from my online shop HERE!