BUSTER PUZZLE ANSWER

The correct answer to the question I asked in my previous post about BUSTER issue dated February 16th, 1980 is that it happens to be the one thousandth edition of the title. This is not mentioned on the cover or anywhere inside, and in all likelihood IPC were unaware that it was their landmark number, or they would have exploited this for promotion purposes. 

EDIT 11th January, 2016: some new information has recently come to my attention and it turns out that BUSTER No. 1000 actually had the cover date of 12th January, 1980. The cover and some comments are provided in this post HERE. This proves once again that researching old comics is an ongoing and live process :)

Differently from DC Thomson, Fleetway and IPC didn’t number their comics and we know they weren’t very good at keeping their count accurate, as illustrated by the example of WHOOPEE! dated November 5th, 1983 that was celebrated as No. 500 although in fact it was the 494th weekly edition published in the 504th week of publication.

BUSTER No. 1,000 came out in the 1,029th week of publication. The whole run of BUSTER consists of 1,902 issues published over a period of 1,984 weeks. The last 45 editions were fortnightlies; from 1994 onwards bumper X-mas editions covered a period of two weeks each; there were two double-dated issues in 1970 and the industrial action/production difficulties of the 70s and the 80s (to a lesser extent) are responsible for the remaining part of the deficit.

BUSTER PUZZLE

I owe an apology to those of you who have dropped by to read about MONSTER FUN COMIC because I will have to postpone the series by just a little bit and write about BUSTER instead...

I was doing some research the other day and found something interesting that I’d like to share with you. I will start with a challenge: can you guess why I’ve decided to show this unremarkable and seemingly random cover of BUSTER that bears today’s date in 1980?  If you need a hint, I can tell you it’s a landmark issue of the title. The clue is in the date (and it has nothing to do with the fact that it's the National Holiday where I live).

Feel free to leave your guesses in the comments section and come back in a day or two for the correct answer.

EDIT 11th  January, 2016: Further to some new information that has recently come to my attention, this post has become misleading because in fact I should have shown the cover of the issue dated 12th January, 1980. You can view it HERE, alongside with the answer to the puzzle question. I should have probably deleted this post, but decided against it. I will leave it as an illustration that researching comics is an ongoing live process :)

MONSTER FUN COMIC: ADVERTISEMENTS IN IPC COMPANION PAPERS

I will start my overview of Monster Fun Comic with a blogpost on adverts in IPC sister publications. The launch of both comics that I have already covered on Kazoop! (COR!! and SHIVER AND SHAKE) was advertised with four-page pull-outs in companion papers. For some reason MONSTER FUN COMIC was not given the privilege – I checked my copies of the issues of four titles that came out at the time and none have promotional pull-outs for MFC.

WHOOPEE! and WHIZZER AND CHIPS ran a full-scale campaign for 6 consecutive weeks from June 7th through to July 19th, 1975. 

Both papers had full-page advertisements in the issues cover-dated 7th June, 1975 (a week before the premiere). The adverts were identical except that WHOOPEE! had the face of Frankie Stein where WHIZZER AND CHIPS had the figure of a robot (Dough Nut from one of the strips in MFC). It made sense to include Frankie Stein in the advert in WHOOPEE! because the character was one of the big stars of the paper and his endorsement was probably regarded by the Editor as an important factor in helping the young reader decide to give the new magazine a try.

A week later (14th June, 1975 – the date that was also on the cover of the first issue of MFC) WHOOPEE! and WHIZZER AND CHIPS both had full page adverts of the new picture weekly and the free gift that came with it. Once again, Frankie Stein in WHOOPEE! occupied the spot that was given to Dough Nut in WHIZZER AND CHIPS:

This is how the second issue of MFC and the free gift were advertised in WHOOPEE! and WHIZZER AND CHIPS in the issues cover-dated June 21st, 1975:

The adverts occupied 1/2 page. Note the small differences: there is a speech balloon coming from Frankie’s mouth in the WHOOPEE! version of the ad. Just like in the two previous weeks, the direct endorsement from Frankie was probably intended to encourage his fans to buy MFC. The same applies to the advertisement from the issues of both comics dated June 28th (the Frankie Stein says... version is from WHOOPEE):

The other three advertisements in WHOOPEE! and WHIZZER AND CHIPS issues cover-dated July 5th, 12th and 19th, 1975 were identical and looked like this:

I also checked BUSTER – the comic that MFC would eventually be merged into a year and a half down the line. Buster (or BUSTER AND COR!!, to be exact) was hit by industrial action and missed two last weeks of May, 1975. As opposed to WHOOPEE! and WHIZZER AND CHIPS, the arrival of the new comic wasn’t mentioned in the issue of BUSTER cover-dated June 7th, 1975. Perhaps they didn’t have enough space for the ad because that issue had an impressive amount of advertisement as it were: The Airfix Modellers Club – full page,  Matchbox Battle Kings – full page, Buster Holiday Special - 1/2 p., Motor bike models - 1/2 p.,  Scalecraft plane models  - 1/2 p., Donald and Mickey - 1/2 p., Tizzer T-shirts - 1/2 p., post stamps - 1/4 p., Stunt Flyer plane model - 1/4 p., Battle Picture Weekly – Big Battle Game - 1/2 p., Louis Marx – The Lone Ranger – full page in colour on back cover. It is also interesting to note that from June 14th, 1975 MONSTER FUN COMIC had to compete for advertising space in sister publications with another new kid on the block that was LINDY (the first issue of the paper came out on June 21st, 1975).

Starting from the issue of June 14th, 1975 BUSTER promoted MFC with exactly the same adverts that can be found in WHIZZER AND CHIPS. Here are some examples:

The only difference was the layout of the last ad in BUSTER dated July 19th, 1975:

I checked VALIANT as well. Production of the title was also affected by industrial action and it missed the dates of May 31st and June 7th. There was nothing about MFC in the issue of VALIANT dated 14th June. VALIANT joined the fun starting from June 21st. The advertisements in VALIANT were the same as in BUSTER, except that the layout of the one in the issue of June 28th, 1975 was different: