The
score of the 26 ‘special’ issues of WHOOPEE! during 1978 (covered in my previous post) was dwarfed by the number of those offered in 1979 when the comic really
went to town: as many as 35 issues came with a booklet, a poster or some other
fun pull-out! I won’t attempt to cover them all in one post and will only look
at the first 7 months of 1979, leaving the rest for Part Two.
The
first issue of the year (6th January) had The Curious Case of the One-Eyed
Gnome - an 8-page pull-out minibook starring Sheerluck and Son, drawn by Trevor
Metcalfe:
The
issue of 6th January, 1979 also ran this advert informing the readers about more exciting things to
look forward to next week - and not just in WHOOPEE! comic:
The
1979 WHOOPEE! pull-out calendar was a 4-part piece, featuring the big stars of
the paper, drawn by Sid Burgon. One would have thought it appropriate for the
calendar to start in the first issue of the year, but the editor had other plans
and chose to run it for the 4 consecutive weeks of 13th January – 3rd February:
The
next issue after the one with part 4 of the calendar came with Supermum pull-out
booklet, drawn by Dicky Howett. On a personal note I can add that this issue,
cover dated 10th February, 1979, proved to be particularly evasive in my quest
to collect a full set of WHOOPEE!, and it took me quite a while to get hold of
a copy with the booklet intact!
The
next week’s issue (17th February, 1979) had another pull-out minibook - A Touch
of Evil, drawn by Brian Walker. Although his Spooktacular 7 strip featuring the
Scream Inn gang had ended in July 1978, the mischievous faces peeking around
the corner on the front cover of the booklet look a lot like the Innkeeper, Boneypart
and Dennis the Devil, don’t you think? The booklet being referred to as ‘SPOOKTACULAR’
on the front cover of the comic was another nod to the discontinued strip.
In fact, it featured the
Ghostly-Go-Round squad. WHOOPEE! fans will know that the squad consisted of Evil
Eye, Creepy Car, 'Orrible Hole and Fun Fear. The four strips used to appear on a
weekly basis since the early days of the paper, but with young readers
gradually losing interest in the once-popular horror comedy genre, the Editor
needed to clear space for new material. The solution was to rotate the strips,
so each was only printed once every four weeks. The practice started back in
1978, but from the first issue of 1979 the strips were brought under one
umbrella of the Ghostly-Go-Round.
The
four issues of April (7th, 14th, 21st and 28th) had a pop-quiz poster featuring
John Travolta.
As
usual, the poster was advertised a week in advance, and the advert tells us that
WHOOPEE! wasn’t the only IPC comic with lots of pull-outs in 1979:
The
first three parts of the poster had quiz questions in red squares, with
answers provided in the last part. Here’s how the four parts of the poster
looked on the centrespreads:
Besides part 4 of the pop quiz poster and the instructions how to assemble it, the
issue cover-dated 28th April, 1979 had a run-down of the Top Ten
of the paper’s most popular strips as selected by readers:
The
issue cover-dated 28th April, 1979 also advertised another 4-part minibook in
the pipeline, and announced that next week was WHOOPEE!’s turn for the free
gift of Kellogg’s Two Shakes raspberry flavour milk shake mix – also offered on
different weeks at around the same time with Buster, Whizzer and Chips, Cheeky
and Mickey Mouse comics:
As
promised, the four WHOOPEE! issues of May (5th, 12th, 19th and 26th) came with four parts of the Spotter Book of Sports and Games, which featured various sports,
etc., and was quite bland in terms of artwork:
WHOOPEE!
took a break with its pull-outs in June before going on a poster spree starting
from the issue of 21st July, 1979:
This
was followed by Supermum poster a week later in the issue of 29th July, 1979:
The
rest of the 1979 WHOOPEE! pull-out goodness will be covered in Part Two soon.
