Product placement

[Kashgar]

One of the incidental joys of the two Sunday Post Fun Section strips, Oor Wullie and the Broons was the regular appearance within the strips of references to other Thomson publications and characters. For instance in the Wullie strip a remark like 'Desperate Dan's guid this week' or 'That Laughin' Pirate's a grand lad!' would not only see Wullie poring over a copy of the Dandy or Beano in the first panel but then be followed by a strip based around what he was reading.
And, in a similar vein, individual members of the Broons family were often seen engrossed in one Thomson publication or another, the type dependent on their age and sex, from the Bairn with her Bimbo to Paw with his Sporting Post. ( In only the second ever Broons strip published in Mar 1936 the precedent had been set with Horace sat at the kitchen table reading a copy of the 'Wizard').
Obviously the 'real-life' exploits of these ordinary scottish folk made it very easy for Thomsons to promote their other wares in this way but I always thought that they did it so deftly just the same. And it always tickled me that Wullie was 'real' enough to be able to read about other comic characters that were 'less real' than himself.
Can anyone think of any other comic publisher who promoted their publications in the same way?

[tolworthy]

I don't know if it's quite the same thing, but it's a bit like what Marvel did in the 1960s. Characters crossed over into other books and had a big consistent back-story, so if you bought one you had to by them all. It was revolutionary. And in the early days you'd even see them reading comics based on the other guys (the story being that Marvel ran comics loosely based on their real adventures).

I used to love that. It was so down to earth. I remmeber the one where The Thing was reading a Hulk comic and commenting on how ugly the green guy was. And the early story where they met their fans. And later when the Fantastic Four visited the Marvel offices a couple of times.

Sadly this strategy was too successful. The titles became valuable brands, all further realism was banned, and they've been in a thirty year creative decline. Long gone are the days when they even pretended to live in the real world. And gone are the days when the average fan could afford to buy every comic every month (unless your name is Bill Gates).

[Toonpooch]

Folks in the Fleetway fun comics were regularly seen reading the same comic they were appearing in. Plus you often had billboards and fly posters in the background advertizing the comics...

Then there was more subtle promotion, like the way that the Krazy Gang from Krazy lived in - drum-roll, please - Krazy Town... Or characters would support the likes of Cortown United...

Of course, those same strips were then reprinted in the likes of Big Comic and Funny Fortnightly which meant you could get three or four former Fleetway titles flagged up as you progressed through each edition...

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The best - and most devious - cross-promotion I've found thus far involved Lolly Pop's appearance in Shiver & Shake #64, as drawn by Sid Burgon. You remember Lolly Pop? - He was the tight-fisted chap with loads o'brass and an endless string of businnesses bearing his name... Well, one of the panels features a Cor!! van trundling along a motorway, in the background, just before a runaway crop spraying plane wreaks havoc on the traffic... At the end of the strip, that same van is seen smack in the middle of a heap of twisted cars and wreckage, and Pop's wayward son Archie is seen exclaiming:

"Once again Pop's reaped the harvest of his stinginess!"

Now the twist is, this particular issue was published on 25th May 1974, just two weeks before the merging of Cor!! with Buster comic - Clever, eh?

- Frazer

[philcom55]

I suppose the obvious cross-title promotion at Odhams was the 'Danny Dare' series in Wham! where the lead character had daydreams about his hero Dan Dare, inspired by Keith Watson's then-current Eagle strip. The odd thing about this was that it involved the 'real' world being portrayed as a humorous cartoon whereas the 'imaginary' world was drawn in a comparatively realistic fashion by artists such as Bruce Cornwell.

- Phil R.

[Raven]

For a while in the '70s, the IPC humour comics ran a weekly Guest Star page featuring a strip of a character from another title - a very good way of cross-promoting their line of comics. Though they'd often be drawn by a different - and not as good - artist.

[colcool007]

Other DCT product placements that can be considered are:

Maw Broon reading The Peoples Friend (a romantic female version of Wizard)

The Blitz Kid (Arnold Tabbs) from the Hornet reading Adventure and Wizard as a child during WW2.

The occasional SF Commando where you had a soldier addicted to SF comics, intimating reading of Hotspur, Wizard but without overt mentions. A sort of subliminal conditioning to read other DCT comics.

Plus the cross-overs indicating that all 'hip' kids would already be aware of what was happening with other characters in the DCT universe, like Alf Tupper featuring in the Bernard Briggs Hornet story 'King Of Scrapland'.

While Fleetway were good at this cross-pollination, they were always so obvious about it whereas you look at DCT and they were so subtle that sometimes you missed the placement until years after when it would finally twig. And I think that was DCT's strength. It was a subtle yet pervasive power that drew you into their publications, but rarely did they ever overtly exert their power.

[Kashgar]

There's a particularly memorable Broons strip from the early 1960's in which Ma uses the family's various periodicals without their knowledge, or approval, to cover her damp kitchen floor. When they find out they insist on drying out the complete newsagent's countersworth on the washing line. The resultant final panel being a fine ad for DCT publications.

[Raven]

While Fleetway were good at this cross-pollination, they were always so obvious about it whereas you look at DCT and they were so subtle that sometimes you missed the placement until years after when it would finally twig.

Oh, I dunno! Those front cover stories that were basically just plugs for the latest annual were so blatant ...

"So that's what everyone in Beanotown was guffawing at - the new Beano Book!"

[colcool007]

While Fleetway were good at this cross-pollination, they were always so obvious about it whereas you look at DCT and they were so subtle that sometimes you missed the placement until years after when it would finally twig.

Oh, I dunno! Those front cover stories that were basically just plugs for the latest annual were so blatant ...

"So that's what everyone in Beanotown was guffawing at - the new Beano Book!"

Raven, I'll give you that one. When advertising the annuals, DCT were as subtle as a brick! But, I was thinking more along the lines of the incidental advertsing such as Paw Broon urgently wanting to get hold of the Evening Telegraph a paper that is almost unique to the county of Angus and Dundee and printed by DCT. The Tully was such an ingrained part of growing up in my home area that the thought of some adult desperate to get hold of that evening's copy almost went un-noticed.