Teddy Scare was the
second new strip (alongside Save Our Stan) to be introduced in
MFC issue No. 20 (25th October, 1975). This is how the arrival of both new
features was advertised in MFC No. 19 the week before:
In the
opening episode little Eddie Bailey visited an old curiosity shop run by a
strange old man and bought himself a second-hand Teddy Bear:
Eddie soon found
out that his Teddy was a toy with a BIG
difference because it could transform itself into a live giant-size scary bear.
From then on the boy always carried Teddy around and unleashed it on
evil-doers, meanies, crooks and bullies by telling the toy to ‘do its stuff’. Teddy could also activate itself on its own
initiative, if it saw a need to do so. With very few exceptions, weekly tales
always followed the same pattern: some bully or meanie tried to take advantage
of Eddie (or someone else), Teddy came to his aid by ‘doing its stuff’ and scaring
the pest into a gibbering snotty wreck. Teddy then transformed back into its old
toy-self and the bully often ended up looking foolish in the eyes of others.
Using this
simple formula, the feature continued till the last issue of MFC and only
missed one week (No. 47). The popularity of Teddy
Scare secured it a regular slot on page 2 or 3 starting from issue No. 35. All sets
were in b/w except for the episode in issue No. 26 which was in full colour. Teddy
Scare got its own pull-out poster in issue No. 40. The first 35
episodes were illustrated by an artist whose name I don’t know (see two
examples above). Starting from issue No. 56, Barrie Appleby took over and
continued drawing it to the very end. Here are two examples:
The strip survived incorporation of MFC
into BUSTER and continued in the combined paper until 10th
December 1977.
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| Teddy Scare pull-out poster from MFC No. 40 |
