"Back in the day", if you were putting adverts into comics, it was considered good manners to at least TRY and disguise your plugs as content. Sometimes, proper comic folk were employed to draw such adverts (Dave Sutherland and Bob Dewar both produced memorable ones - well, memorable to me, anyway).
Most of the other ones, however, could be better defined as insults to the intelligence of the nation's youth. Behold:
Yes, baseball! That's something EVERYONE can relate to, yes? Or maybe the two kids in the USA who took out an overseas subscription to the Dandy.
At least the Honey Monster's got an amusing face here, but it's more pity-amusement than anything else.
Here the perpetrator has sat himself down with a Beano and tried to copy Roger the Dodger's head, and create a depressing monster at the same time.
At least Marmite have gone for a few staples of "naughty child" comics - wet cement, complaints at the garden gate and so on. Shame it's turned out the opposite of Marmite (as in, disgusting).
The art's almost passable on this one, but the structure of the whole thing's a mess. In the sense of "Oh no, plot development! Wait, no it isn't."
I'll let this one off - it's nicely done, the aliens are cute, Ricicles taste better than Rice Krispies and I'd happily seek out some of those stickers on eBay (but wouldn't bid more than £2.87 for them).
Captain Bubble - less of a comic, more of a seizure.
I can't even begin to describe the amount of hatred and bile Captain Dean stirs up in me (and why're they're so many captains in these adverts?). The panel with the roadie's amusing, a bit.
Saved this one for last - it could almost pass for an early Viz strip. Especially those last two panels ("Cor - £50 worth of Wimpy burgers." "Yum, slurp.").
Up next... Something really fun!
And don't forget such pages appeared back in the '50s in the Eagle, of all places. Tommy Walls (in a strip advertising Walls' Ice Cream) - and drawn by Frank Hampson for the first six episodes.
ReplyDeleteThese were awful, no normal kid would believe they were actual strips, still it's better than a full page image (er... is it?). Could you show some of the better ones such as Frank Hampson's Tommy Walls that Kid mentioned above?
ReplyDeleteThink I'd prefer a full-size image - at least then it's an honest advert! Haven't got any of those Tommy Walls ads that Kid mentioned, but if you look back through the archives of this place, you'll find a full comic that Walls put out in the 1990s called "Chill".
DeleteI've got a few good ones from Dave Sutherland and Bob Dewar, so they'll go up here eventually...
The first Tommy Walls strip appears in my post on Eagle #1. I think George has already seen it, but probably forgotten. No doubt it can be found by typing in 'Eagle' in the Blogger search box in the top left-hand corner of my Blog page.
DeleteI've just reread the Tommy Walls strip! At a quick glance I would have definatly thought that was a comic strip made for Eagle, not for Walls!
DeleteNo, George, you'd have 'definitely'...no such word as 'definatly'. Tsk, tsk.
DeleteMarvin's little sister appears to have a beard.
ReplyDeleteAlso, at a glance, it looks like that alien's doing something very unpleasant to Mr Wimpy in the eighth panel of his space adventure.
Those were awful. Captain Bubble cause my eyes to go on strike. I remember a giveaway (four page) comic that was being dished out to Little Chef diners in the late eighties, and it was every bit as insultingly bad as you'd expect. And what the bloody hell have they done to Honey Monster? Henry McGee is turning in his grave!
ReplyDeleteTerrible marketing everywhere.
ReplyDeleteSo glad someone else uploaded Captain Bubble: I always meant to if I could dig it up. It's singularly pathetic attempt to create a narrative out of non-sequentially related bubble gum wrappers has stuck with me for decades.
ReplyDeleteHa ha, the (dis)pleasure's all mine!
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