Magic number 1 eight page advertising booklet

[stevezodiac]

Looking through some of my ACE stuff (Denis Gifford's comic fan club) I found this cut out and fold in half booklet. Its on two A4 sheets but originally would have been 2 A3 sheets and would have came inside another publication - no idea which though.

[swirlythingy]

Is it just me, or does "The Giant Sausage Squeaker" sound... demographically mistargeted?

[Digifiend]

Page 1 doesn't look very well produced. They forgot to blacken Koko the Pup's name, meaning that it's missing. Half the logo is missing for the same reason.

If Sausage Squeaker sounds odd, bear in mind it was more than 70 years ago. And Sugar Bullets wouldn't be considered PC today.

As for which publication it came with, it wouldn't necessarily be A3. Could be any of the boys papers, or even the Beano and Dandy.

[stevezodiac]

If you unfold an old Beano or Dandy you would have an A3 sheet. They couldn't be A4 comics without having an A3 sheet folded in half. It could be Denis's reproduction that is responsible for any missing text or image. Remember its a 1970s photocopy and Denis's ACE magazines weren't professionally printed..

[Phoenix]

There is an actual booklet in the British Library, with its coloured cover, and cut to the size Thomsons suggested to their readers, (the next size down from A5, by the way, to get eight sides out of an A4 sheet), bound into the middle of that week's issue of Adventure, which is itself bound into the second of the two bound volumes for 1939's issues of that paper. There isn't one in the relevant volumes for The Wizard, The Rover, The Skipper or The Hotspur, as far as I can recall. This will not mean that Thomsons didn't send them. They will have gone into the storage area in the stacks when the library was situated at the back of the British Museum in Bloomsbury, and were probably not made available to the binders when they started their task in 1947. I was shown boxes of such items, including free gifts, during a personal guided tour by a head librarian sometime in the nineties. I had asked why I had to consult all the issues of The Rover on microfilm, when all Thomsons' other papers were in bound volumes. I never found out exactly why they had been withdrawn but I did see them all wrapped in stiff paper and tied with ribbon, never again to see the light of day. It did explain why there is no microfilm for the issues of The Rover for 1945, though. That bound volume was missing!!

[Phoenix]

Page 1 doesn't look very well produced. They forgot to blacken Koko the Pup's name, meaning that it's missing. Half the logo is missing for the same reason.

I did photocopy the complete booklet in the British Library, Digi, but until I remember where I've put it, and look again at the front cover, I can't be sure of my ground on this. However, it is possible that the missing bits are missing because the magician caused them to disappear by waving his wand. It is after all a flyer for a Magic Comic.

[Digifiend]

Nice joke about magic there. Of course, I didn't realise the original had a colour cover (after all, the Beano's didn't), so that probably explains it.

[philcom55]

Denis also reproduced a similar booklet made to advertise the first issue of Dandy. Looking at it must have been particularly tantalizing for him as it was thought for years that no copies of the actual comic had survived.



- Phil Rushton

[Tin Can Tommy]

Is that our gang on the front cover of the dandy?

If it is I wonder why they changed it from being them on the cover to Korky the Cat.

[Digifiend]

They didn't. The cover was always meant to be Korky. That Our Gang story is incomplete. It's funny really, they have two licensed strips now, which would've seemed odd a few years ago, but they actually had a licensed strip right at the beginning - Our Gang was a series of MGM films.

[stevezodiac]

I have them on dvd and they are superb. Also known as Little Rascals.

[Phoenix]

Page 1 doesn't look very well produced. They forgot to blacken Koko the Pup's name, meaning that it's missing. Half the logo is missing for the same reason.

There is an actual booklet in the British Library, with its coloured cover, and cut to the size Thomsons suggested to their readers, (the next size down from A5, by the way, to get eight sides out of an A4 sheet), bound into the middle of that week's issue of Adventure, which is itself bound into the second of the two bound volumes for 1939's issues of that paper.

I did photocopy the complete booklet in the British Library, Digi, but until I remember where I've put it, and look again at the front cover, I can't be sure of my ground on this.

Found it, so here is the front cover. Even though the photocopy I took in the British Library isn't very good, you certainly get a better impression of the bottom half of the logo than you do from Denis Gifford's slightly defective ACE version posted above by Steve. The top number on the front cover of Adventure is the shelf mark for the complete run, the 924 below it indicates the issue number of Adventure, that I wrote in pencil on my photocopy at the time. As you can see, the flyer has been cut roughly to size and then bound in between issues 923 and 924, rather than in the middle of the issue it was presented in, as I mistakenly stated above. The reason the quality of the photocopy leaves a great deal to be desired is that during the binding process, sheets of what looks like thickish rice paper have been stuck to both sides of every page to protect them from damage by careless readers. This is true for every page of every volume of every Thomson text comic from 1921 to 1945, the period I researched over several years. I assume that they did something similar to all post-war volumes, although I didn't need to request those as I have them all. I would not dream of complaining because I was just so delighted to find them all there. My only gripe was the cost of the copying. I used to buy a card for the copier, which deducted money after each photocopy. The best deal was to buy a £40 card, rather than a cheaper one, because the cost per copy was reduced at a stroke to 18p. Heaven knows how much it is now. This I might add was at a time when 10p was the norm, and my local post office was charging 5p. Every time I handed over my £40, I knew exactly what was meant by got you by the short and curlies!!

[Digifiend]

Thanks for posting that. Yeah, it does show up how bad the ACE copy is. I see the price and date are there too... everything is clear as day on that scan, unlike the ACE one.

I must admit though, the BL were definitely taking advantage of a monopoly (can't take them off the premises to get a cheaper photocopy elsewhere) to fleece the public, charging almost double what you could get elsewhere. I hope that's changed in the years since.

[Gilly]

They didn't. The cover was always meant to be Korky. That Our Gang story is incomplete. It's funny really, they have two licensed strips now, which would've seemed odd a few years ago, but they actually had a licensed strip right at the beginning - Our Gang was a series of MGM films.

I think they had one for a while back I'm the 90s when I started reading The Dandy. It was based on a kids cartoon at the time called Potsworth & Co I think.

Please tell me if I'm wrong.

[Tin Can Tommy]

On the subject of licensed strips in DCT comics.
Tootuff was in the dandy a few years ago was that a licensed strip I know there was a TV show and it was french.
Also Hotfoot was I think a licensed strip that appeared in The Beano back in 2002.