What was inside Playhour pictures...? Playhour chat

[Peter Gray]

I'm going to get some too..next time I go to 30th Century comic shop..

50's and 60's look very interesting..also love the Magic roundabout covers of the early 70's..

[Peter Gray]

So Hugh got help with the colouring which here looks brilliant..

I'm loving the look and learn website...

Hugh does very funny drawings...whata great character the Hare is...no wonder kids loved him...no dullness of humour here..

Very complicated to draw...very impressive..

Harold Hare started in Sun comic...never heard of that comic before..was it a nursery comic?

[suebutcher]

The last picture is so terribly English. I remember plenty of picnics like that!

[philcom55]

Gosh yes! I'll never forget the endless noise of rain drumming on our caravan roof the year we went on holiday to Tenby (though I guess that's technically in Wales). I've often wondered how my life would have turned out if my parents had gone ahead with their plan to emigrate to Australia instead! Do you even have rain there...?

Amongst Hugh McNeill's nursery creations I must admit that I always preferred Flopsy Flufftail to her cousin Harold. As far as I could see Harold's addiction to carrots was just plain weird, whereas Flopsy's pathological untidiness was both endearing and entirely understandable for a normal, 5-year-old kid.

Here's the first page of a typical Flopsy strip I discovered just last week in a copy of Harold Hare's Own Annual 1961 that turned up on a local market stall:



The nice thing is I immediately recognized it as a piece of original artwork I'd acquired some time ago, trimmed and reformatted for the 1979 Teddy Bear Annual.



...I don't think I'll ever get used to the cavalier way in which they casually chopped up artwork in those pre-digital days!

- Phil Rushton

[Phoenix]

we went on holiday to Tenby (though I guess that's technically in Wales).

Tenby is actually, not technically, in Wales.

[NP]

Harold Hare started in Sun comic...never heard of that comic before..was it a nursery comic?

No, Sun wasn't a nursery comic. I remember 'Nostalgia and Comics' in Birmingham had a near full set in triplicate of Sun, Comet, etc, in the 1980s, all untouched file copies. The sign said "When they've gone, they've gone".

[philcom55]

Surprisingly, the first person to draw Harold in Sun was Harry Hargreaves - an artist who was recently covered on another thread. His even-more-unlikely successor was Roy Davis; Hugh McNeill didn't begin his long association with the character until he turned up in Jack & Jill sometime later.

- Phil R.

[Peter Gray]

I love the Sun logo on the cover...

Wow what bad cropping!!!
the colouring is so delightful...love the path stones colours..
I bet she gets covered in icecream rushing back on roller skates..;0)

So must get some early Harold Hare, Playhour and Jack and Jill of the 50's..early 60's..


What was Tiny Tots like? the other nursery comic?

[Lew Stringer]

Some excellent artwork here. With the exception of a handful of issues of Bimbo I never read nursery comics. It was straight to Dandy and Beano for me. So this stuff is a revelation.

[Peter Gray]

the last one..

Tiny Tots has been running a long time just looked at the comicsuk annual galley!

[Peter Gray]

hope the birds didn't do what I think they did in the first panel...will it is lucky..from Swift comic another nursery comic I know next to nothing about!

http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... ery_papers

I love these animal human characters...it is tricky for an artist to get the right balance between human and animal...rupert always looked like a boy with a bear head...not the right balance..Biffo the bear had this problem or quirk...Korky the cat got it right..

Another famous rabbit..

[suebutcher]

Bunny Cuddles was the most obsessive of the bunch, and my favourite McNeill character at the time. His world was completely centred on jam, with Tiny providing the ineffectual voice of sanity. Harold liked his carrots, but he usually had other more adult problems to occupy him, like malfunctioning washing machines or bolshy binmen.

Who was the usual "Nutty Noddle" artist? He sometimes ghosted on McNeill's strips.

[DavidKW]

Apparently according to Denis Gifford's book (though inaccuracies in it have been revealed on this site), Pinky Puff did run a long time until 1986.

I recently flicked through a Playhour annual of 1984 in a charity shop - PP has a big presence in the annual (gets 2 strips to everyone else's 2 plus feature pages).

Have to say - artwork is tremendous in it -esp on the character Dozy, plus Toad Hall & Dolly Girls. Pussycat family brought nostalgia.

Too little of Tommy Trouble in it though.

[philcom55]

No doubt Bunny Cuddles' obsession with jam would be considered a thoroughly bad example for children in today's climate - yet in his day he was popular enough to be awarded his very own annual.



Another great character!

- Phil Rushton

[Peter Gray]

A bunny after my own heart...love jam so much...I even have ham and jam sandwiches..Cheese and jam sandwiches..liver sausage and jam sandwiches..



http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-ima ... ny+cuddles

Wow what an addict!!!

Love the annual above whats inside?

Its still raining!! Or snowing for others..