CASH PRIZES IN WHOOPEE! COMIC

Check out the caption at the top of the front page of WHOOPEE! above. Indeed, in 1975 (and later on) readers of the comic were rewarded with more than just a bundle of laughs – they could also win themselves quite a bit of cash!

I randomly picked the issue cover-dated 17th May, 1975 and checked how much prize money was up for grabs in a week.

£1 was offered for each letter published in the ‘Letters’ column:

£1 was paid for each joke used (readers were asked to send jokes in a variety of subjects (School, Animal, Spooky, All at Sea, Police, Historical, etc.):

A prize of £1 was paid to the sender of that week’s Knock Knock joke:

There was a prize of £1 for every good suggestion for a script of Scream Inn:

That’s in addition to the joy of seeing your name included in the strip, usually in the first panel:

Last but not least, a kingly reward of £2 was offered for each World Wide-Weirdies idea used (not to mention the extra bonus of seeing your name in print at the top of the page):

Theoretically, if a resourceful reader was successful on all 5 counts, he or she could collect £6 in a single week!

Moreover, the adventure strips included in WHOOPEE! at that time encouraged readers to take note of the various clues in the weekly episodes, and enter for a cash prize at the end of the story. They were asked to write the clues on a coupon provided, stick it on the back of a postcard and send it to IPC Magazines. Fifty senders of the first all-correct cards were rewarded with £1 each, and saw their names printed in the magazine! Here’s an example from Island of Suspicion, followed by the coupon included in the next week’s issue of WHOOPEE!:

Besides, WHOOPEE! had all kinds of goodness offered by its advertisers. Here’s what was advertised in the issue of 17th May, 1975:

IPC children’s comics of the 70s competed for the young readers’ pocket money with well-established DCT titles. The Beano and The Dandy were 20 pages thick and cost 3 p., they had a stellar lineup of strips such as The Bash Street Kids, Biffo the Bear, Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, Little Plum, Desperate Dan, Black Bob,  Corporal Clot, Roger the Dodger, etc. – all fondly remembered by parents and grandparents who now bought comics for their kids and grandchildren. In this context, IPC had to make an extra effort.

In the case of WHOOPEE!, the price of 5 p. (2 p. more than The Beano or The Dandy) was a drawback, but the page count of 32 (12 pages more than The Beano or The Dandy), the excellent lineup of dynamic fresh-looking characters and strips (particularly those exploiting the hot new theme of horror humour – which DCT tended to completely avoid at the time), the quality of the art, the abundance of colour pull-out posters and fun booklets (hardly ever found in the rival comics) made WHOOPEE! a very appealing package. Involving the young readers into the process of creating the comic (by asking to send strip ideas, etc. and printing contributors’ names in the paper) was a particularly clever move of the editorial team, as was the generous cash-reward policy.

To put my findings into context, I checked my copies of that week’s issues of The Beano and The Dandy to see what their cash prize offering was. Somehow, I was not surprised to discover it was just £2 per week in The Beano (£1 for each letter printed, and £1 for each printed drawing of a reader’s pet): 

…and an unspecified cash prize for each ‘little funny story’ printed in The Dandy (the top story of the week received a Practical Joker’s Fool Outfit):

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