1975 WHOOPEE! POSTERS

1975 was the year of WHOOPEE! posters – as many as 9 were offered. Let’s take a look at them. 

Fleetway's printers were still on strike at the start of 1975, so WHOOPEE! wasn’t published until 18th January of that year. As you may recall from the previous post, the fans of Frankie Stein received only the first two parts of his Super Poster in December 1974. The Editor wrote this message in ‘Letters’ column of the first post-strike number:

It took the Editor a few weeks to re-issue the Frankie Stein Poster, and instead of printing just Part 3, it was decided to print all three, including the first two that were already presented in December 1974. Here is how Frankie Stein Super Poster was announced in the issue cover-dated 15th March, 1975:

The giant-size 3-part poster was duly included in the next 3 issues of WHOOPEE! (22nd March – 5th April, 1975): 

Each issue had instructions to the readers. These came with Part 1 of the poster:

This message accompanied Part 2:

And finally, here’s the one that came with Part 3:

When the 3 sections were put and taped together, the poster looked something like this:

The good news that the Editor hinted at in his message accompanying Part 3 of Frankie Stein poster was announced the following week (12th April, 1975):

All 4 members of the filthy-rich Bumpkin family got their own colour pull-out posters in the next 4 issues (19th April - 10th May, 1975):

Here’s what the posters looked like:

All 4 were accompanied by instructions how to remove them from the paper:

Having won the Pick-A-Strip competition earlier in the year, Sweeny Toddler became a resident strip in WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE starting from 29th March, 1975. If editorial decisions to give characters the special privilege of their own pull-out posters were an indicator that a particular strip was doing well in the popularity charts, then it can be assumed that Sweeny quickly became a readers’ favourite. His personal poster was announced in the issue cover-dated 23rd August, 1975:

… and came with the next week’s issue (30th August, 1975):

Three more pull-out posters were offered by the end of 1975.  New posters were usually advertised a week in advance. The honour to announce the arrival of Scream Inn poster was given to Suffering Sam whose message was included in the issue cover-dated 6th September, 1975:

… and the poster was duly presented a week later (13th September, 1975). Here’s the front cover of the issue, followed by the poster itself:

Toy Boy was next in line. Here’s Toy Boy’s message in WHOOPEE! cover-dated 11th October, 1975:

The poster arrived next week (18th October, 1975). It was the last issue of WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE. The Editor finally decided to drop the clumsy title and revert back to just WHOOPEE! from next week onwards:

WHOOPEE! closed the year with a poster of Scared-Stiff Sam, introduced by Sam’s Mum in the issue of 20th December, 1975 (Sam was too scared to appear himself to break the good news…):

The poster itself can be found in the 1975 Xmas number (27th December, 1975):

P.S. By coincidence, Peter Hansen recently posted a picture of the surviving original artwork for the Xmas cover on Facebook. It is interesting to note that the balloon highlighting Sam’s poster in the printed version was originally the frame for the second part of the name of the comic. I believe the dark circle is from the glue applied to attach the new caption, which later came off and exposed Robert Nixon’s original lettering. This suggests it was drawn before the Editor decided to drop ‘AND SHIVER & SHAKE’ from the title.

An overview of 1976 is next in line.

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!

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!