Fleetway annuals

Buster, Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee, Wham, Smash, you name it!

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Tin Can Tommy
Posts: 623
Joined: 20 Aug 2011, 10:05

Fleetway annuals

Post by Tin Can Tommy »

I just bought a big load of "Fleetway funny" annuals. Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee and Cor!! amongst others. As well as reading one I have had sitting on a shelf for the last ten years. I've done a little bit of research on these annuals and there are quite a few things about them which I just find a bit weird. Pretty much every one of the Fleetwy/IPC humour comics the annuals lasted long after the comic ended even for comics that barely lasted a year. Shiver and Shake didnt last much longer than a year but had annuals all the way up to 1986. I just wonder who was buying annuals for a comic that ended 10 years ago and who fleetway thought the target audience was. I couldnt even find an advert in the annual for the current weekly comics. I just imagine some kid in the 1980s buying a shiver and shake annual then going all round the local newsagents to try and pick up a copy of the weekly comic. I assume these annuals were produced quite cheaply and consisted of a lot of reprints, does anyone know if I'm right? it looks like sales must have gotten worse in the mid 1980s because they started putting adverts on the back covers, I have one with an advert for monster munch and for stamp collecting!? Then they pretty much ended all the annuals in 1985 and 1986 except for currently running comics. I got my hands on an Oink annual too and that seems to me much better quality than the other annuals even if its not a proper hard back. The Monster Fun annuals I have from the late 1970s were also brilliant.

The quality in some of the annuals is also a bit iffy. There was a strip in Cor!! 1981 called the Gasworks gang (a fun little bash street kids clone) but the ink seems to be half faded and it ruins what looks like really good artwork and its only that strip that was effected in the whole annual.

Stevendoig
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Joined: 18 Sep 2022, 15:59

Re: Fleetway annuals

Post by Stevendoig »

I remember buying school fun and wow! Summer specials long after the comics were running (and having never known they existed in the first place)

Didn't bother me, they just looked like fun comics to have! - same applies for the annuals, I suppose.. :)

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