Tough Nutt was a tough kid who liked fried tree roots and nail sauce for breakfast; he was so tough he flew his kite on barbed wire and used a boat mast for a fishing rod. Softy Centre was a cissy who could throw a fit in front of his parents if his milk was half-a-degree too warm; he was so weak that his weight registered as 'nothing' on the scales and he preferred using a ping-pong ball when playing golf because he didn't have the strength to hit his golf ball off the tee.
Illustrated by Norman Mansbridge, Tough Nutt and Softy Centre must have been popular with the readers of SHIVER AND SHAKE. This is confirmed by the fact that the feature didn’t miss a single week and continued as a two-pager after the pagecount reduction of 1974 and during the weeks when extra pages were allocated to Frankie Stein pull-out booklet and Whoopee! ads. Was it because readers liked to see a frail kid outsmarting a bully or standing up to him every week? Probably so.
Tough Nutt and Softy Centre was not considered good enough to make it to the combined WHOOPEE!
AND SHIVER AND SHAKE. The pair met for the last time in the final issue of
SHIVER AND SHAKE in which Tough Nutt suffered a concussion and lost his memory.
Softy was quick to take advantage of the situation:
