The Chumpions. Two boys and a girl meet a Tibetan Lama and give him
a fruit and a nut. He rewards them with great powers: the girl (Dot) can now
stretch like a piece of string and access objects that otherwise can’t be
reached, the tall lean boy (Lofty) has magnetic powers – handy for removing metal
objects (e.g. guns) from other people’s possession, and the fat boy (Tubby) can
turn into a rubber ball and become a means of travelling long and short distances
or crossing obstacles. They are now the Chupmions whose mission is to help
other people in trouble. They take all sorts of missions – from saving an
absent-minded Einstein look-alike professor from evil machinegun-wielding
crooks to mowing a football pitch when the mower is broken. They would defeat a
gang of evil spies speaking with a German accent in one episode and go looking
for a little girl’s missing kitten in the next.
The Chumpions meet the loopy
Lama in every single episode (or he sometimes contacts them via telepathic
television) and he is always lost looking for his way to Tibet. He is lost in
more ways than one: he sometimes wonders if he did right in making them the
Chumpions. The monk's favourite treat are yak-butter sandwiches and doesn’t fail to mention
this in each episode.
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| From COR!! issue dated 20th February, 1971 (No. 38) |
Apparently, the strip wasn’t faring well with the
readers because it got quite a lot of negative feedback in the Postbag section.
Nonetheless, the black and white strip occupied two full pages and enjoyed
quite a long run from 9th January to 25th December, 1971 (issue Nos. 32 - 82).
In
the last episode members of a mountain climbing expedition invite the Lama to travel
to Tibet as their guide. Before leaving, the Lama takes away the children’s
powers because they are fed up with chumpioning and yearn to be ordinary kids
again. Illustrated by an artist whom I can’t identify. Any ideas please?
 |
| From COR!! issue dated 5th June, 1971 (No. 53) |
The title and premise of this strip would appear to be inspired by TV's The Champions (1968-69). The heroic 2 male, 1 female team of the show's title gained supernatural powers after encountering an advanced civilisation hidden in the Himalayas.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Champions
Thanks, Niblet! That's another piece of info that I didn't know.
ReplyDeleteThe artist was Peter Davidson. It was reprinted in early 1980s Whoopee annuals.
ReplyDeleteI remember "yak butter sandwiches" from my youth but wasn't sure where from. Now I remember.
ReplyDeleteI remember the Yak butter sandwiches. My older sister and I used the name as inspiration to take the mickey out of our younger sister. We used to call her "Jam Butter Seas" !
ReplyDeleteHey, it was 1971 !