WHOOPEE! PULL-OUTS AND FREEBIES IN 1984

Compared to the year before, 1984 was a lot more generous in terms of WHOOPEE! pull-outs and free gifts... 

The four issues of 10th, 17th, 24th and 31st March, 1984 contained Sweeny Toddler's Naughty Booklet and confirmed that Sweeny Toddler had re-established his unshakable status of WHOOPEE!’s number one star. 

The booklet was given both sides of one page in all of the four issues, so it was 16 pages thick when fully assembled. It had colour front and back covers and centre pages, the rest was in black and white. The illustrator was the one and only Tom Paterson:

The issue with the cover date of 5th May, 1984 had a free Heinz Invaders badge:

… and carried this advert on one of its pages:

The next four issues of 12th, 19th, 26th May and 2nd June, 1984 had the Creepy Comix pull-out booklet.

The 16-page booklet was drawn mostly by Nigel Edwards or maybe Ian Knox, with a few pages by other artists:

The first of the four issues with the Creepy Comix booklet (12 May, 1984) also had a little extra and arrived with a pack of Free Fryers Phantom sweets, not present with my copy.

The next cut-out booklet came after a short break of just one week. The four issues of 16th, 23rd, 30th June and 7th July, 1984 carried Whoopee TV pull-out booklet:

It was another 16-pager, drawn exclusively by J Edward Oliver:

The first issue with the Whoopee TV pull-out booklet (16 June, 1984) also had a Free Gift from Weetabix - Shrinkies - Make me into BADGE… KEY FOB… PENDANT. I don’t have the gift but here is an image that I found online:

In August 1984 IPC launched Shoot! Football Magazine, and ran four-page adverts of the new periodical on the centre pages of WHOOPEE! issues cover-dated 25th August:

...and 15th September:

Whoopee Comic Turns Quiz and Jokes Booklet was that year’s fourth cut-out booklet and was presented with the issues of 22th & 29th September and 6th & 13th October, 1984:

Besides the page of the booklet, the issue of 29th September carried an advert of Christmas Annuals on its four centre pages. The layout of the first page looks shockingly familiar, doesn’t it? 

The centre pages of the next issue (20th October, 1984) advertised the arrival of the first issue of Big K computer magazine:

…followed a week later by the indispensable Guy Fawkes mask by Brian Walker in the issue cover-dated 27th October, 1984:

Finally, the four November issues (3rd, 10th, 17th and 24th) came with the second Sweeny Toddler booklet that year. The issue of 13th November also had three Free Stinky Stickers that are not present with my copy.

All four cut-out booklets offered earlier in 1984 followed the same uniform design: they had 16 pages, with colour front and back covers + colour centrespreads. This one, however, was different:  it was named Sweeny’s Baby Comic and purported to be the World’s Smallest Comic. After detaching the cut-out page from the comic, one was supposed to cut it in half again before folding, and after four weeks the result was a 32-page booklet that was four times smaller than the page of the comic:

The mini-comic was the last pull out in 1984, and also the last one in WHOOPEE! The days of the comic were already numbered: after the issue of 30th March, 1985 it was merged into WHIZZER AND CHIPS, and ceased to exist as such…

This blogpost concludes the long series of 13 yearly overviews of the posters, free gifts, pull outs and other goodies that came with WHOOPEE! during its exciting lifetime, spanning the period from 1974 till 1985. You can revisit the series by clicking Whoopee pull-outs at the bottom of the ‘Labels’ column on the right.

Characters are © Rebellion Publishing Ltd

WHOOPEE! FRANKIE STEIN HOLIDAY SPECIAL 1981

The penultimate edition of Frankie Stein Holiday Special came out in the Summer of 1981, it had 64 pages and cost 45 p.

There were 26 pages of Frankie Stein in it, mostly new material. It was the second year in a row that John Geering drew the main story for the magazine. Frankie Stein in ‘No Holds Barred’ consisted of 3 parts and occupied 18 pages. Crackpot inventor Professor Cube has an idea that putting his lab-manufactured son behind bars might be a great way to get rid of him so he writes a letter to the local Zoo telling them about a new and very rare animal Frankius Stupidius. A team of Zoo keepers set off after Frankie who senses foul play and runs as if his life depended on it. The mindless pursuit causes lots of damage in destroyed buildings and smashed vehicles. Owners have little doubt as to who should pick the bills and the poor inventor ends up as a Zoo exhibit:

After enough people have paid to look at Prof. Cube to pay for all the damage, he is released from the Zoo and realizes that Zoo was the wrong kind of bars that he wanted Frankie put behind, and that prison was the answer. He tries a series of ploys to get Frankie in trouble with the law but ends up on the wrong side of the bars himself, again.

Upon his release, Professor Cube has an idea that if he can’t put Frankie behind bars in Britain, he should try somewhere else. He tells Frankie he has found him a job as a secret agent and that his first mission as Double-O-Nothing is to throw a stink bomb at the chief of a secret rocket base at Bugrolia. Frankie does well, is decorated by the real British Secret Service and gets more assignments in exotic countries which he carries out brilliantly, albeit always by accident rather than design. Oh, and his plotting Dad gets himself locked up once again.

The Holiday Special also contains a two-page set of Frankie Stein by Robert Nixon which is a reprint from WHOOPEE!  Besides, Frankie’s name can be found on two reprint pages of Ticklish Allsorts by Les Barton from MONSTER FUN COMIC.

Frankie Stein's portrait by Nigel Edwards

Nigel Edwards contributed one page of Frankie Postcards and two pages of Freakie Frankie Jokes! The editor of this Holiday Special kept Nigel Edwards busy: in addition to the three Frankie Stein pages, he also drew two pages of Creepy Cartoons and Monster Hits! gags, as well as Escape – a puzzles game on the centrespread, all in full colour (this is the first Frankie Stein Holiday Special without a poster of Frankie Stein). I really like his style, here are some examples:

Mr. Hill illustrated two episodes of Monster Movie Makers. In the first one Carlo Monte realises that their titles are too way out and they need to do something more down to Earth. The idea of a film ‘It Came from the Cabbage Patch’ about a mutant caterpillar comes to his mind. It has to be the biggest, best and most expensive monster movie ever made so they hire all Britain’s top names to play the giant caterpillar:

Things don’t go quite as planned but the film turns out a massive success and they win more Oscars than they can carry:

In the second story Carlo Monte and his crew are about to film their new blockbuster ‘The Abominable Snowman Strikes’ but it is the middle of summer and they need snow for the setting. They try salt, shaving foam and finally soap flakes. The result is not a horror movie but a Monster Comedy…

Let’s see what Computer Cop had on his hands in this Holiday Special. Well, he is in the bank vaults getting ready to transport the World’s biggest diamond to the museum. The crafty crooks come well-prepared once again but stand no chance against the super robo-cop. Too bad his chief is a clumsy old geezer:

There is also a rushed episode of Gook the TV Spook by Artie Jackson, and that’s it as far as new material goes. The rest of the pages are reprints: there are 3 pages of Reg Parlett’s Freddie Fang from COR!! and the whole run of Grizzly Bearhug… Giant by Andy Christine from MONSTER FUN COMIC. Both have been covered in their dedicated posts on KAZOOP!, you can revisit the posts HERE and HERE.

Front cover artwork for this FS Holiday Special was offered by Compal in their Autumn 2010 auctions. Here is how it was described: Frankie Stein Special original front cover colour artwork (1981) drawn and signed by Robert Nixon with Whoopee Frankie Stein page 1 original artwork (1981) also drawn and signed by Robert Nixon Special: Poster colour on board. 13 x 9 ins; Page 1: Indian ink on cartridge paper. 18 x 14 ins. They got the date of the front cover art right this time, but the b/w page was actually first used for the front cover of SHIVER AND SHAKE dated 21st September, 1974). The winner paid £181.

Images 2014 © Egmont UK Ltd.  All rights reserved. Used with permission.