Look behind you and all that

Six more sleeps till "the big day", and somehow, despite all my efforts, I'm not feeling "Christmassy" in the slightest. I'll be blaming recent real-life events for that, but am still endeavouring to get at least a BIT festive. This might help:

Yeah, a pantomime! The Hoot pantomime no less. I've talked about Hoot before, and I'll be talking about it again - it's far too good a comic to be as neglected as it is. It was completely left out of the otherwise excellent Classics From The Comics (it's not even mentioned on the cover), and last year, when DC Thomson put out a book collecting several pantomime-themed stories from their archives, Hoot was left out once more.

In my ongoing heroic quest to right such wrongs, here's the whole thing, in full...

Terrible comics to make you buy things

"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!

Chill...

No, really - relax. It's getting cold outside, and ice creams and lolly ices are also cold, so there's a link for you. This is what's getting looked at now:

That's right, it's a comic called Chill, brought to you by Wall's ice cream. Normally I wouldn't go near superhero stuff, and the whole thing's really just a slightly-more-interesting-than-usual advert, but hey, free comic! If memory serves accurately, it came from Dickinson's Newsagents, which is now a smoothie bar of some sort. Just so you know.

More scary adverts, why not?

I've got LOADS of these things sitting on the hard drive, so let's be having them! 'Tis the season and all that.

So, one of the "57 Varieties" of Heinz was "Haunted House"? I've got no problem with that. Can't find it anymore so can only assume it was replaced with the smaller sized tins of Heinz Beanz with Curry.

Amazing colours here... is ANYTHING that colourful anymore?

This remains one of the most unsettling adverts I've ever seen. A beady-eyed fish man wants you to spread the word about how his planet is dying by wearing a T-shirt... and the way to help his planet is by drinking concentrated orange juice. Regard! The two who wear the T-shirt stare each other down - kindred spirits, or rivals for precious liquids? The other kids seem terrified, especially the Mohican-topped one.

Not really seasonal, unless you think of the Jelly Invaders as aliens or something. This remains the best yoghurt that ever existed. A big heap of jelly, and you'd tip the yoghurt into it and mix it up for a wobbly, gooey mess of a dessert. Suppose you could always pretend the jelly was a brain? Would that work?

Scream Soda!

Even though it was sort-of "invented" over here, Hallowe'en's never been as popular in the UK as it is across the Atlantic. So whilst that lot get to enjoy all sorts of spider/Frankenstein/pumpkin-themed foodstuffs, what do we get? Themed bags of Haribo, and Milky Bar Ghosts if we're lucky. Oh, a couple of years ago Tango declared themselves to be the "official sponsors of Hallowe'en" and stuck some zombies on their cans, which was mildly exciting.

THIS year, however, the powers-that-be have only gone and re-branded my favourite drink! Observe:

Scream Soda! It's like cream soda, only scary. Yeah! Covered in cobwebs, gravestones, spiders and bats, and it even says "spooky value" on it.

There's also a weird claw-handed man lurking amidst the trees, which is something different. I only saw these cans for the first time yesterday, but the one pictured above is my fifth one. Wonder if Barr will be turning any of their other drinks into "scary" drinks? They could have "Banshdy" as a clumsy way of integrating a banshee into their shandy. Or "Cloudy Lemon-afraid". Perhaps "Dandelion & Murder-dock" or "Igor Bru". It's a nice thought.

While we're at it, let's take a moment to remember another vaguely monstrous soft drink... 

Nemesis! Launched in 1994 to celebrate the new ride at Alton Towers, the most delicious blend of blackcurrant and liquorice you'll ever find in a can. Think I only had perhaps three of these before they disappeared forever, and still I mourn.

There was another one too, Zig and Zag's Zog Juice - named after those puppets. Only ever had it once, from a vending machine. It was more or less a small-sized carton of Ribena, but it had globs of jelly floating about in it. Strange stuff, and I can't even find a picture of it to prove its existence (this makes it "spooky").

And as much as I think about it, that's all of the Hallowe'en-ish drinks I can think of, and even Nemesis is stretching it. See what I mean about the whole thing just not being as big over here? Ah well. Here's the Tango zombies again, at least they tried:

Some SPOOOOKY Adverts

Two of them!

Still got one of those Casper stickers, somewhere...

Also this thing from the Eagle, profiling the launch of some terrifying sweets:

Will that do? No? Okay, here's Keyhole Kate meeting Freddy Krueger:

Go and buy some food, why don'tcha??

Some semi-interesting food-based adverts from various comics of the late-Eighties and early-Nineties...

Start your day with wheat!

Turtle or slime flavoured, it's up to you.

Then have some snacks:

Those Curly Wurly bits are by Martin Chatterton, in case you're wondering.

Here's a drink.

And it's potato shapes for tea... Again.

And for your pudding... Rubble!

Hah, just joking. It's only a yogurt. 

"Just think, you could have a dinosaur for tea!"