Icky Sticky Creepies

Those of you that were viewers of CITV or are currently jigsaw enthusiasts may be familiar with the name of Mike Jupp - the creator of The Dreamstone! All those strange and interesting characters that inhabited the Sleeping World might POSSIBLY have their roots in an earlier project by Mr. Jupp, one called Icky Sticky Creepies.

Four paperback books launched in 1988, consisting of a few pages of comics - detailing the adventures of a young space girl, her intergalactic rabbit friend and a big daft bird who grew monsters in his greenhouse - and a bunch of stickers at the end, all showing a different nutty-looking monster. A couple of years ago I asked Mr. Jupp (via his forum) about Icky Sticky Creepies, and he seemed pleased to find someone who remembered them! He saw them as the beginning of a BIGGER thing (toys, cartoons and so on) but it never really took off. Less than ten years later, the whole Pokémon thing happened, which WAS a success, so maybe it was a case of a good idea at the wrong time? Who knows? 

I'd put up a transcript of our "conversation" here but for some reason all evidence of it has disappeared from the forums - my account isn't even recognised anymore. Maybe it was me - we spoke of the Creepies for a while, he told me about his new book, I said I'd buy it, he said he'd sign it and then I never got around to buying it. Might've hurt his feelings a bit there. Well, to make up for it, I'm preserving the Icky Sticky Creepies in the way that everything else from the past is preserved nowadays - through a blog post!

I no longer have the books (and neither does ANY online retailer), but I do still have the stickers. They're not in the best condition, having spent around thirteen years stuck to my bedroom door and then, upon moving house, the past nine years Pritt-Sticked into a notebook... But here they are anyway, all thirty-six of them!

First up's this big-mouthed fella. Besides having three legs, he looks like he'd make for a nice dog-style pet - got just the right mix of stupidity and loyalty that can be seen in every dog's eyes.

A tooth-filled rolling slimeball with multi-pigmented eyes is the next one along, or did it just pick up those eyeballs off the floor whilst rolling on its merry way? The bubbles are nice too.

Bit of a hard cade, this one. Would you point out the snot hanging from his nose? Thinking about the nose, compare it to the nose seen on several characters in The Dreamstone, which made its television debut two years after Icky Sticky Creepies was published.

One of my favourites here, some sort of cabbage monster (or is it a monster hiding amongst cabbage leaves?). Like a more sinister version of Eat Your Greens from Stoppit & Tidyup. [Also, wow! There's an entire Wikia for Stoppit & Tidyup!]

As well as the monster stickers, the books also included sheets full of word-stickers, so you could take odd words and give names to the monsters. None of these have survived over the years, but I can remember a few of them - this simian-looking chap was called "Hairy Freak", for example.

Big daft bubble-bellied thing, he seems very pleased with his inflated self!

Never really liked this one much - it's just a mouth with eyes. On the other hand, it's a sentient mouth with eyes, and it even has a throat! Dimensional anomalies or something?

A cute little fat devil, with a Hitler 'tache. And there's that Jupp nose again!

The monopedal hairy-armed arse plasterer strikes again!

I like this one a lot as well - it can looked at in so many different ways! Picture it without those eye-stalks, and it's a cute little bundle-puppy who sniffs his way around town. Ignore the mouth and it's a strange slug beast popping its head out of a spiky hairball. Put it all together and it could even be two seperate beings who operate on a mutually beneficial level (one of them sees, the other walks).

An old dame of a lizard in an ancient fur coat, or an overweight ditzey type who's a disaster on the dance floor? Either way, it's a funny little thing.

I remember this one's name too! It's the "Floppy Fool"! A glob of pink slime that's so sticky, it can't even touch itself without making a mess of things.

What name did I give to this part-alligator, part-cow, part-ape, part-puddle creature? "Blue Tongue", that's what.

And THIS delightful thing is called "Crazy Brain"! A swirling mass of eyeballs, tentacles, teeth and slime, I think I remember trying to draw this on numerous occasions.

Bit of a creepy one here - a veiny, fish-like body, covered in spikes and sitting atop a pair of chicken's legs, with one human-looking eyeball observing something in the distance. Food? Or someone he thinks he might've gone to school with? Or something else???

My absolute favourite of the lot! Three faces, two mouths, six eyes, three noses, spikes, snot, webbed feet, a Jupp nose... Whether it's one being or three seperate minds, it looks like it couldn't be happier with how things have turned out. The middle eyes, that are inside the top head's mouth - are they there to make sure that top-head is chewing its food properly? Who does the talking? Is the bottom-head even part of this creature, or is he just along for the ride?

And now we have this living embodiment of pain. A squirming, screaming mass of flesh, eyeballs, teeth and arms, like a homunculus gone wrong and thrown from the table, wherein it landed on a pile of rusty nails. This thing bleeds too, but there's at least a hint of a smile towards the bottom of the mouth there. Life's life, it may be thinking. And only now am I noticing the slight resemblance between this and the eyeball mummy I drew a few days ago. Well, it just goes to show, doesn't it.

In case it isn't obvious, those big black marks aren't supposed to be there. Like Adrian Mole, I had portions of my room painted black as the teenage years arrived, and there was bound to be a bit of splashback. Regardless, this remains one of the cutest of all the Creepies - with his big gummy smile, his four little arms and this fly friends. It ALMOST looks like he could be something else entirely that's just had some slime tipped over it. He used to be called "Smelly Belly".

Another "face-in-the-mouth" design, this one's just nuts. Like a big furry scorpion, whose manic exterior hides its sinister interior. It's a TRAP!

This is just a bucket full of slime. It's also spitting slime, and has snot pouring out of its nose. Simple, but fun with it.

A proper Frankenstein of a design here - an ape's body, a rat's tail, a frog's feet, nasty boils all over the place, a Jupp nose and a single eyeball dangling off the end of said nose. The poor thing doesn't look too happy with his lot in life!

Some kind of scaly, nose-picking thing, otherwise unremarkable until you notice he has four feet. Reckon this'd be interesting to see from the side.

You've already seen this one at the top of the page, but here he is again. In the accompanying comics that were included in the book (and from what I can remember), this bird-man-beast was the "friendly" creepy. He believed that he was growing plants for his boss, when actually he was growing Creepies! Needless to say, he was soon set right, but not after unwittingly unleashing hundreds of the things upon an unsuspecting universe (that's a lot of "u"-words).

A bit of a departure in style from the rest of the Creepies on this chap, whom I dubbed the "Horror King". Bears a slight resemblance to The Dreamstone's Zordrak, Creator of Terror and Lord of Nightmares.

And by way of a complete contrast, here's this hug-beast I once called the "Slobber Monster"!

Another favourite, this one just looks demented. The head of (perhaps) an axolotl, a big bulky egg-shaped body, MASSIVE front legs and no apparant back legs - and the eyes which are all over the place. Similar to the dog-beast from earlier on, to look at him you wouldn't know if he was going to be your best mate or your worst nightmare.

My SECOND most favourite out of the whole lot of them - eight pairs of eyes (all of which seem to be able to look in directions of their choosing), a massive horse/hippo-shaped mouth (with no visible space for any internal organs, it's all mouth!), a beard of tendrils, six cute little suction-cup feet... and to top it all off, its colours could lead to it being mistaken for a cow from the front or a sandworm from the back.

Another bum-shot, this one's fatter with spots and come-to-bed eyes. Lovely.

Great one this, looks like a "bit of a geezah" or something. Could be just another toad, until someone dropped a load of mucus on its head which gave it almost human-looking teeth. If I could have any of this lot as a comedy sidekick, it'd probably be this one.

Here's an odd one, I get dizzy the more I look at it! Look closely and you can see that the faces go all the way around the body, meaning there may well be another mouth at the back end of this beast. Also, two pupils to an eyeball! Weirdly-placed chicken legs, and at least six Jupp noses!

A scab reimagined as a monster, nice! Why's he looking so angry? Because he's always getting picked on. That's a joke, by the way. I THINK I called this one "Slimey Plaster". Say what you see and all that.

Nice colours on this one's skin, and he's bringing his "tail" round to the front for some reason. See those smaller appendages on the head? I'm guessing, perhaps, that they COULD be the same size as the one between the legs, only they're stretching off into the distance in search of something-or-other.

A merry-go-round of tentacles, teeth and eyeballs! Ideal for parties/weddings/jumble sales/funerals etc.

This one, back in the day, was called "Nasty Nut" - it's an angry banana with massive eyebrows, but could pass for a shark in the right light, perhaps.

Another favourite here - think of it as being maybe an inch long, then think of finding it in your bed. Not a pleasant thought, but possibly a painful thought.

And finally, a big evil snake with two tiny arms, spiky plates and some spotty dreads. As far as I can remember, I've always drawn snakes with mouths that look like this one, and stripes the same as those ones too - the most influental snake I've ever encountered?

And... That's the lot! It'd be great to find the books again, because whilst it'd be nice to read the comics again (and have these monsters in a non-weathered condition), they had some AMAZING covers.

All in all, the Icky Sticky Creepies have remained as one of the constants of my life - evidenced by the amount of time I spent peeling them off the door before we moved house. And that was when I was seventeen! If Mr. Mike Jupp should ever happen across this page, this is both my apology for messing about, and also a tribute/thank you of sorts for creating such wonderful monsters - no matter how many people ever encountered them.