It may be chilly in Britain today as I write this, but time travel allows us to travel to the early 1970s and have a lick of Lyons tie-in comic, Whacko.
Anyone who has read old British comics will probably be as familiar with ice cream ads as Americans are with Hostess. Selling sweet treats and comic books seem to go hand-in-hand. This takes the attempt one step further and to produce all strips as product tie-ins.
Whether it was ever actually sold is a question I cannot locate an easy answer to. In the digital copy I have there are a number of curiosities. Whilst it has a 1p price on the front, the prices inside are in old money, some parts are missing or incomplete, and there appears to be some suggestion this was just given away.
But what of the food themed strips?
The Funnies
7 of the 11 stories in here are one page humour strips. The kind you could find in The Beano or Wham!. Even though all of them have some product connection these are only clear from the headers, and the strips could have appeared in any rival book.
Take, for example, Grandad’s Fab Sub advertising the Fab Lolly. The actual story never references the foodstuff or even uses the word “fab”, instead it is a silly tale of two kids who go in their grandad’s Inspector Gadget style submarine:
The only one I could say is Mr Softee, about a kid who finds a ghost in a bottle which, at a stretch, could be said to resemble that of soft ice cream.
I would say, however, the humour in them is very slight. There is nothing particularly laugh-out-loud or clever in them, usually just a minor silly misunderstanding.
It should also be warned that some of the strips have some elements that are problematic now. Including the usual naughty girl strip in Fruitie Blue, which ends with the standard spanking.
If you are a bigger love of this style of comedy than me, you may enjoy it. But don’t expect to be blown away.
Adventures
The remaining strips are short adventures and they get the prime position either getting two pages and\or appearing in colour.
The front cover is given over to Zoom: The Space Dog, a somewhat misleading title given he is neither called Zoom nor actually a dog. Jim and June Stevens find a stranded space alien and convince the shape changer to take the form of a dog. Even though he gets into trouble sometimes, he also uses his power to do a good turn, such as helping pull a delivery van.
Moving away for sweet confectionary, they try to advertise tea with an Australian Tarzan-esque figure called Brew-Up Ben and His Boomerang.
With only a single issue for this strip to run in, it is really just getting started, so it is hard to make a full judgement on it. But I have to question the main plot being about a blonde-haired white youth trying to right injustice of First Nations peoples of central Australia.
The weird trend of characters names not matching the header continues with Jolly Rollo The Swiss Boy and His Magic Flute. In here Kevin Smith (who does not appear to be Swiss or a boy) accidentally discovers Merlin’s Cave and finds a magic flute that can stop time.
This concept has potential but it is hard to tell where it will go here as it is just setup. There is no hint at what a larger story might have been.
The back cover strip is The Lyons Club, which kind of reminds me of Ladybird Adventure Club in the mid 60s TV comic. In here a group of kids help catch crooks who robbed a local grocers and are rewarded with a permeant place to use as their HQ.
It doesn’t have any problems per se, it is just short and not particularly memorable.
Meltdown
In fact, I would say that is the main issue with this comic book. It is just very generic. Apart from the slight attempts to tie-in each strip to a product, there is nothing interesting to talk about. All the stories could easily have been rejects from other publications and I wouldn’t be surprised.
Next time, we go bounce back to the 80s and look at Harrier’s anthology magazine, Avalon #1:
Will this one be more memorable? Find out when we next land.
Corner Shop Time Stop 