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.

ONE-OFF FEATURES IN MONSTER FUN COMIC

One-off features probably served the same purpose as reprints and were used to fill the space which was originally reserved for something else.

Brain Benders in issue No. 21 was a weak prelude to Ticklish Allsorts:

Film Funny in issues 23 and 32 were collages consisting of classic horror movie screenshots with added speech balloons. One or two can also be found in the early Shiver and Shake Holiday specials. Here’s an example from MFC No. 32:

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