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.



Monday, May 25, 2020

WHOOPEE! PULL-OUTS AND FREE GIFTS IN 1982



In 1982 the first four issues of WHOOPEE! comic came with pull-out Cheeky Diary 1982, illustrated by Cheeky’s godfather Frank McDiarmid. The front covers of the four issues (Jan. 2nd, 9th, 16th and 23rd, 1982) are shown below, followed by a few sample pages of the fun calendar. The comics had eight pages of the pull-out each, so it was quite a thick one, once assembled. 







No pull-outs were offered for the next three months, but then the first four issues of May, 1982 came with Crazy Graffiti cut-out booklet. 


Notably, the issue of May 1st was the first with a new WHOOPEE! logo (the paper’s fifth since its launch back in 1974). The booklet itself was quite unusual because it was a straight-forward promotion of a 96-page ‘proper’ book with illustrations by David Mostyn, as advertised on the back cover of the WHOOPEE! pull out:





It was probably not a coincidence that at the time when Crazy Graffiti booklet was  printed, David Mostyn was already working for WHOOPEE!, drawing the relatively short-lived weekly strip Little Ed, soon to be followed by Snack-Man which lasted for quite a while. In 1983 David Mostyn drew at least a few episodes of another short-lived WHOOPEE! strip – KBR Kid’s Band Radio.


The issue of June 12th, 1982 had free Weetabix badge sellotaped to the front cover. Different Weetabix badges were given away that week with other IPC titles – BUSTER, WHIZZER AND CHIPS, TIGER and TAMMY. My copy of that week’s BUSTER still has the badge, but my WHOOPEE! does not. Here’s an image of it that I found online: 



The issue of July 10th, 1982 had FRUIT GUMS free poster, shown in the image below that I found online. It wasn’t a pull-out: folded and inserted into the paper, it wasn’t exactly part of the comic. The same poster was advertised on the front page and included in at least two more later issues that year (August 7th and Sept. 11th).



Next week’s issue (July 17th, 1982) carried this advert:



The game appeared over the next three weeks (24th and 31st July, and 7th August, 1982). 


The first two issues had the target printed on the centrespread - check out the result of my attempt to paste the two parts together:



…while the third one came with the rules and a lot of text crammed into four pages:





The four issues of 18th September, 25th September, 2nd October and 9th October, 1982 had a 4-part pull out book Toby's Animal Rescue Service by Toni Goffe. 


It was that year’s second promotion of a ‘proper’ book from an outside publisher. There were four pages in each of the four WHOOPEE!s, and what made this one stand out among all the previous WHOOPEE! pull-out booklets was that each page was given the full size of the paper’s page. 








Toni Goffe did some work in COR!! comic, but to the best of my knowledge he wasn’t involved with WHOOPEE!, or at least I don’t know of any strips that he illustrated for the paper. 


The issue of October 23rd, 1982 had a pack of Anglo Bubbly sellotaped to the front cover (missing from my copy, but not missed :) ).



Brian Walker never failed to come up with an impressive Guy Fawkes’ mask, and 1982 was no exception. It arrived with the issue of 30th October, 1982:




Brian Walker was also responsible for the last WHOOPEE! pull-out of the year. The poster/dot-to-dot puzzle occupied the centre pages of the 1982 X-mas edition (December 25th, 1982):



 Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

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