In 1981, the New Year issue of WHOOPEE! (3rd
January) came with this busy colour pull-out calendar contributed by Robert Nixon:
The next pull-out came after a month’s
break in the issue cover-dated 14th February, 1981. It was the first
time that WHOOPEE! offered a set of Valentine
Cards to its readers:
WHOOPEE! issue of 28th
February, 1981 came with a free gift – a pack of Hubba Bubba Soft Bubble Gum. Moreover, the free gift issue was the
first in the sequence of four with Whoopee!
"Doubles" pull-out card game.
The two issues of 28th February and
7th March had two pages of the cut-out cards, while the next two (14th and 21st March)
each had one page of those; the rules of the game came with the last part:
The issue of 20th June, 1981 had this page
with the list of WHOOPEE!’s top ten strips (results of a popularity poll), and
on that occasion the Editor decided to include colour posters of the top three.
The one for the comic’s No. 3 star was advertised to appear next week, but the
Editor added some suspense by withholding the names of the runner-up and the
top character for now:
Toy
Boy poster by Terry Bave was duly included in the issue
of 27th June, 1981:
… along with this advert for the poster
of the runners-up to look forward to next week:
The Bumpkin
Billionaires’ poster came with the issue of 4th
July, 1981:
… which also revealed who the top
character was:
It appears that the influx of new
stars from CHEEKY WEEKLY (Mustapha
Million was one of the ‘immigrants’) undermined the popularity of some
of WHOOPEE!’s old-timers, as demonstrated by the fact that Sweeny Toddler dropped to the fourth place in the chart.
The achievement of Mustapha Million was
celebrated with a poster in the issue of 11th July, 1981:
WHOOPEE! issues cover-dated 4th July
and 11th July, 1981 (those with the Bumpkin Billionaires and Mustapha Million
posters) and the issue of 18th July, 1981 came with The Young Road Traveller's Handbook. The front cover of the issue with Part
1 of the pull-out suggested that the booklet was in full colour, although
actually it was all printed in black-and-white. Here is a selection of pages:
The next pull-out arrived a fortnight
later. WHOOPEE! celebrated the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana by including the Royal Wedding Game on
the centerspread in the issue of 1st August, 1981:
The next exciting pull-out – How to Draw Comic Strips by Terry Bave,
Book Two – took exactly two months
to appear. The first part of the 16-page mini-book was included with the second
free gift issue of the year that had a pack of ANGLO Bubbly bubble gum sellotaped
to the front cover (missing from my copy shown in the picture below). Terry Bave’s second ‘tutorial’ (the first one was included
a year ago in 1980) was printed in WHOOPEE! issues of 3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th
October, 1981:
Here it is in full for those of you
who would like another set of handy tips from the Master:
A week later WHOOPEE! readers
received yet another Guy Fawkes’ facemask
in the issue of 31st October, 1981. Drawn - as usual - by Brian Walker, it was
the last pull-out offered to the readers of the paper in 1981.
Characters
are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd
