WHOOPEE! PULL-OUTS AND GIFTS in 1976

In 1976 WHOOPEE! celebrated the New Year with a two-part Creepy Calendar in the vein of the comic’s World-Wide Weirdies pin-up series, printed in the first two issues of the year:

World-Wide Weirdies were normally drawn by Ken Reid, but worries over his divorce proceedings made Ken unable to work at the time, so the job was given to Robert Nixon:

Instructions to the readers were provided on the Letters page:

WHOOPEE! issue of 6th March, 1976 celebrated the 2nd birthday of the paper (it was issue No. 102). The occasion was marked with the introduction of a new logo, three new strips (Smiler, Gook the T.V. Spook and Werefilf) and – what’s relevant for this series – a sequence of nine special issues of the comic.

First came TV Quiz pull-out booklet. It started in the first new-logo issue and was published over four weeks:

The title of the pull-out was self-explanatory – it featured questions about popular TV personalities and shows. Below is a selection of pages to give you an idea what the booklet was like:

The issue of 27th March, 1976 (the one with the last part of the TV Quiz booklet and its assembly instructions) announced the free gift that was to come with the next edition:

Horror Gripper was a piece of green plastic imitating a monstrous claw, and was part of Smiths Foods ‘Horror Bags’ snacks promotion:

Below is the cover of the free-gift issue, followed by the image of the gift and Smiths Foods advert included in the comic:

That same issue announced the forthcoming Pop Super Poster:

The giant 4-part poster was printed on the centre pages of the four issues of 10th April – 1st May, 1976:

Assembly instructions were provided in the issue of 1st May, 1976:

When assembled, the ‘super pop wall-frieze’, drawn and signed by Alf Saporito, looked like this:

I believe Part 1 of the poster (the one on the left) showed Bay City Rollers; I am not sure who the other pop bands were…

The next WHOOPEE! pull-out treat came nearly two months later. Here is how it was advertised in the issue of 12th June, 1976:

The poster, drawn beautifully by Sid Burgon, was duly included in the next week’s issue (9th June, 1976), and was the only poster featuring WHOOPEE! characters in 1976:

Finally, the four issues of 14th August – 4th September, 1976 had the Pull-Out Playtime Book:

As usual, the booklet was advertised a week before, but this time it was a full-page announcement: 

As can be seen from the advert above, the issue containing Part 1 of the booklet came with a free gift. It was Free Scarey Sticker – another ‘Horror Bags’ freebie offered by Smiths Foods:

The booklet featured a lot of WHOOPEE! stars, and appears to have been drawn almost single-handedly by Cliff Brown (with a little help from Jim Crocker). It’s nice to see Cliff Brown draw the Innkeeper from Scream Inn which he was a regular scriptwriter of. Here’s a selection of pages and assembly instructions:

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!

WHOOPEE! GIFTS AND PULL OUTS OFFERED IN 1974

WHOOPEE! is my favourite IPC comic, and covering it in the same manner as I did COR!!, SHIVER AND SHAKE and MONSTER FUN is still on my to-do list, but given the long run of the paper (567 weekly issues), I will have to postpone it until I have more time. 

Last year I made a few inroads into WHOOPEE! territory by covering Scared-Stiff Sam, and doing a short series on cut-out Xmas labels and cards. In one of the posts I mentioned I might do a year-by-year overview of the various pull-outs and freebies that came with the paper, so let’s start with 1974 – the first year of WHOOPEE!

No. 1 came out for the week of 1st March, 1974 (there was no date on the cover, as you can see above). It came with the free gift of Super Squirt Ring that looked like this:

I suspect a similar gift also came with JACKPOT No. 2 in 1979:

WHOOPEE! No. 2 came with 4 gifts - when you bought the paper, you could get a Joke Spider, a Joke Soap, a Joke Nail or a Joke Biscuit.   

Here’s what the Joke Bar of Soap looked like:

The copy in my collection comes with the Joke Chocolate Biscuit, still sealed in its original packaging:

Finally, WHOOPEE! No. 3 had a Super Set of 36 SPOOKY Snap Cards.

The cards are still uncut in my copy of the issue, so probably worth a zillion today :) :

No. 10 came with a free Lone Ranger Mask. Lone Ranger was a cowboy strip printed in full colour on the centrespread, and looked somewhat out of place in the paper. 

Here’s how the free gift looked:

Nos. 11, 12, 13 and 14 had the WHOOPEE! QUIZ BOOK – the first of the many pull out booklets to follow:

The idea was to pull out the centre pages from the staples, cut them along dotted line and fold them in half to make an eight-page booklet. Once collected from all 4 issues, the booklet was 32-pages thick! Readers were encouraged to have fun answering the various questions, but as it wasn’t a competition, they were not asked to send their answers to the magazine to enter for a prize. All answers were provided in part 4. Here’s a random selection of pages – some were in coulour, some were not:

Starting from No. 24 (17th August, 1974) WHOOPEE! changed its format to a larger size, keeping its 40 pages for the time being. No pull-outs or freebies were offered to mark the occasion.

The next pull-out booklet (the last one for 1974) – or rather the first part of the booklet – was in No. 32 to celebrate the merger of SHIVER AND SHAKE into WHOOPEE!, and it was appropriately named after the big SHIVER AND SHAKE star who was Frankie Stein. 

The 4-part Frankie Stein’s Mini Monster Comic was printed in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE issue Nos. 32 to 35 (12th October – 2nd November 1974), and – once composed together – formed another 32-page booklet. 

It featured Evil Eye, The Ghost’s Revenge, The Hand, Hire-A-Horror, etc. but most importantly it had a new 5-page story of Frankie Stein by Robert Nixon - here’s a taste: 

…and two Mini-Monsters by Ken Reid – the last ones he drew for the Creepy Creations feature in SHIVER AND SHAKE, but as the paper was cancelled, the editors decided to use them in this minibooklet. Here’s one:

WHOOPEE! editors came up with an idea to see 1974 off with a giant three-part super poster of Frankie Stein:

Part 1 of the poster came with the issue of 14th December, 1974 (No. 41), and part 2 – with the next issue cover dated 21st Dec., 1974 (No. 42). Then things went wrong because IPC printers went on strike and WHOOPEE! missed what would have been its first Xmas number. The paper didn’t come out until 18th January of next year and, as a result, part 3 of the 'Super Poster' wasn’t published as planned. Readers must have been disappointed because all they got was this:

IPC made it up to the fans next year, but let’s leave this for another post in which I will cover WHOOPEE! pull-outs of 1975.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

And while you’re here, I would like to remind you that although 2019 is over, my promotion for the POWER PACK OF KEN REID is not. Get your copies of the books and BONUS FREE PRINTS on eBay or from my online shop HERE!