Jack and Jill (Teddy Bear)

[Peter Gray]

Thanks matrix for the centre pages info..

Also nice to see the other artists take on this series..

[matrix]

The popular 'hidden object' puzzles were later incorporated into the Jack & Jill cover feature in the early 1970s:
- Phil Rushton

The first hidden object cover dated 11/4/70 had two panels, followed the following week by the start of the hidden object one panel cover dated 18/4/70, notice this has their faces on the front as well.

[matrix]

Before the large panel hidden object covers became a regular feature in 'Jack and Jill' in 1970, most cover pages were four panels, sometimes three. There were however some large panel covers introduced in the mid sixties, the two examples below are from 1966 although no hidden objects they did ask the reader if they could find Jack and Jill, once they had done that they could then count the birds etc.

Has anyone seen earlier examples?

[philcom55]

I'm afraid I don't have any earlier examples of those single-panel Jack & Jill covers Matrix, but I can't help feeling that Fleetway had used that dramatic Santa Claus motif on earlier Christmas issues.

As it's getting on for that time of year anyway (though I doubt if you can expect much snow in Australia) here's a slightly later Playhour cover featuring a Hutchings-style take on the same theme:



- Phil Rushton

[matrix]

[ I can't help feeling that Fleetway had used that dramatic Santa Claus motif on earlier Christmas issues.
- Phil Rushton

Probably Phil, but not too much earlier, they were conservative with them in the fifties. Here are two more examples, from 1967,1968.

[philcom55]

A nice advert for Jack & Jill no.1 from the back cover of a 1954 issue of Everybody's Magazine that I picked up today:



- Phil Rushton

[Peter Gray]

Its been nice rereading these posts again and the playhour...
loved seeing the Children in the shoe posters again..

on the picture above I like the lettering using toys..like the soldiers..

[matrix]

A nice advert for Jack & Jill no.1 from the back cover of a 1954 issue of Everybody's Magazine that I picked up today:
- Phil Rushton

That is a great find Phil. I do not know 'Everybody's magazine' but having a guess was it aimed at female readers with articles on things like gardening, fashion, royals etc ?

Very good marketing by AP. A full colour page even mentioning the quality of the drawings, nice!

[philcom55]

Good to hear from you again Matrix.

Everybody's was more of an all-purpose News and Entertainment magazine - something of a cross between Time, Life and Reader's Digest. The 1950s were a golden age for such publications with wartime paper restrictions finally becoming relaxed and competition from TV still in its infancy.

Here's the cover of that particular issue featuring Earl Mountbatten - the Queen's cousin and last Imperial Viceroy of India who had just been appointed Commander in Chief of British Forces in the Mediterranean. The accompanying article makes for interesting reading when one remembers that the whole appalling debacle of the Suez Crisis was just two years in the future!



- Phil Rushton

[dandy mad]

Good to hear from you again Matrix.

Everybody's was more of an all-purpose News and Entertainment magazine - something of a cross between Time, Life and Reader's Digest. The 1950s were a golden age for such publications with wartime paper restrictions finally becoming relaxed and competition from TV still in its infancy.

Here's the cover of that particular issue featuring Earl Mountbatten - the Queen's cousin and last Imperial Viceroy of India who had just been appointed Commander in Chief of British Forces in the Mediterranean. The accompanying article makes for interesting reading when one remembers that the whole appalling debacle of the Suez Crisis was just two years in the future!



- Phil Rushton

The IRA blew him up in an elaborate attack I recently watched a documentary by Peter Taylor about it

[Phoenix]

Mountbatten also made the cover of the 2 April 1955 issue. The second scan below comes from the 21 May 1955 issue. As I have an A4 scanner I couldn't quite capture the whole of such a long advert.

[Phoenix]

I've just finished rummaging through my issues of Everybody's for 1955, and I thought these scans might be of interest. The first relates to the newspaper strike that started early in April, I believe. The photograph was in the 30 April issue. The other scan is taken from the usual full page of jokes, this one from the 26 March issue. It may just be my strange sense of humour, but I find it really funny.

[matrix]

It may just be my strange sense of humour, but I find it really funny.

Is there something your not telling us Phoenix. Were you 'Hot Fingers'?

What a nice Playhour ad, they really did have a strong sales push in that mag.
Coincidently I have the free gift for that issue, and I guess it would be hard for some especially the younger generation to understand how a cut out zoo with stand up figures could "provide many hours of amusement and instruction" . I must admit it does look nice even today with all its colours!

[Phoenix]

I guess it would be hard for some especially the younger generation to understand how a cut out zoo with stand up figures could "provide many hours of amusement and instruction".

In these days of box sets, TV on demand, and iPhone apps opening up an unprecedented world of leisuretime activities and entertainment, it must be well nigh impossible for anybody who didn't experience even the early post-war period to understand how natural it was for children to create their own entertainment, and we did it with an absolute minimum of props. My cut-out toy was a farmyard, and it gave me hours of fun, but mainly I had to make do with paper, pencils and crayons, and tracing paper if I was lucky. I even had to make my own glue using flour and water. By the time I was nine or ten I had created a complete First Division of imaginary teams, with lots of imaginary players for each one. I worked out the season's fixtures for them all by matching each of the 22 teams with one of the real ones, in alphabetical order, and then used my father's Sunday Chronicle Football Annual to write them all down. I worked out the results each week, including the mid-week fixtures, by rolling the two ends of a counter with two tiny windows in it that my mother used to put on one of her knitting needles to keep track of the rows as she finished them. If it turned up a ridiculous score such as 7-9, I would keep the differential so, for example, Eastquay Town lost 0-2 or 1-3 to Ransfield City. I would then spend time working out how they could possibly have lost at home to a relegation-threatened side. Sometimes I would create a programme for a match, and quite often I even went further, and wrote a Saturday night Football Special, listing all the results with scorers, writing some match reports and drawing the photographs, and publishing the up-to-date league table. My father did tell me from time to time to get all that imaginary football rubbish out of my head, and concentrate on schoolwork but that would have been as impossible as instructing the Nile to drown all its crocodiles. I'm sure children are just as inventive these days, but they just don't have the incentive. You can give a child nowadays a pencil, some paper and a pair of scissors, and ask him or her to invent a game with them, but if there are no instructions on their iPhone they simply won't know where to start.

[philcom55]

I love the picture of that bowler-hatted chap reading Chick's Own - not least because April 30th 1955 was the day I was born!

- Phil R.