21st Century Dodos: A Collection of Endangered Objects (and Other Stuff) (25 page)

The rest of the comic was a mixture of original strips such as ‘Norman Gnome’, ‘The Travels of Gulliver Guinea-Pig’, and ‘Leo the Friendly Lion’, as well as stars of the small screen, including
The Magic Roundabout
and
Pinky & Perky
.

Unlike most other comics,
Playhour
avoided the use of speech bubbles in its stories, using captions above or below the panel instead. It also adapted classic children’s books in cartoon form, one of the most popular being a version of
Wind in the Willows
.

By the late ’80s, the children’s magazine market was beginning to be taken over by the big TV franchises such as
Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers
and
Pokemon
, and the somewhat quaint and old-fashioned
Playhour
was removed from newsagents’ shelves.

It is an inevitable side effect of our modern culture, I suppose, but it is a shame nonetheless. My own children have seen copies of
Playhour
and other similar comics and annuals, and have enjoyed and devoured them as vigorously as a
Dr Who
magazine. Good storytelling never ages, and
Playhour
certainly had that.

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Texan Bars

The Texan is probably the chocolate bar that people get most nostalgic for nowadays; it has become the touchstone retro sweet and memories of it can bring a tear to the eye of grown men and women. Providing that man or woman is over 35 or so, otherwise they won’t have clue what a Texan bar is.

It was actually quite a simple confection, nougat and toffee covered in chocolate, but was, as the slogan suggests, somewhat chewy, taking a long to time to finish. A fact that the advertisers made the most of in the commercials. The most famous of which featured a cowboy tied to a stake while a horde of Indians danced around him.

‘Hold on there, Bald Eagle’, the cowboy says to his captors, ‘you wouldn’t fire a man till he finished his Texan bar, would you?’

The Indian – or Native American, as I think I should refer to him now – gives a gasp of surprise and/or assent and then the cowboy pipes up again.

‘Just bite through the chocolate, and chew. Real slow.’

The Indians keep dancing. The cowboy keeps eating. The Indians wear themselves out and fall asleep. The cowboy prises the stake out of the ground and walks out of the camp, commenting: ‘Someone should have told ’em a Texan takes time a-chewin’.’

So there you go, the perfect chocolate bar if you are captured by a hostile tribe and need to bore them to sleep.

The Texan was manufactured throughout the ’70s and part of the ’80s, but Rowntree’s discontinued them for reasons unknown, presumably lack of sales, but given the huge public excitement when they announced their return in 2005, one would have thought there were sales to be had.

Unfortunately, the comeback was for a limited period only; they are once again confined to the shelves of that newsagent in the sky.

I am reliably informed that if you stick a Double Decker in the fridge, wait for the top bit to go hard and then slice off the nougat layer, it does taste a bit like a Texan. I haven’t tried it, though.

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Bunty

Bunty
was an exception to the overwhelmingly middle-class magazines and comics for girls from the ’60s and ’70s, in that it went out of its way to appeal to a working-class reader. Characters and strips, such as ‘The Comp’, set in a comprehensive school, were targeted at just that audience.

And it must have been deemed a success, as it ran as a weekly publication for over 40 years.

Regular features included ‘The Four Marys’, a cartoon strip set in a boarding school (one of whom was on a scholarship, before you pull me up on the whole working-class thing), two different ballet series, puzzle pages, and a cut-out doll with different outfits.

Bunty
absorbed fellow comics
Judy
and
Mandy
in 1995, but the weekly edition moved to a monthly, and in later years there was just a hardback annual at Christmas.

However, having entertained over four decades of girls, there are more than enough mums passing old copies down to their daughters so the tradition kind of lives on.

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Cheeky Weekly

One comic from the ’70s that has yet to benefit from a nostalgic reprint is
Cheeky Weekly
. It ran from 1977 to 1980.

Our eponymous hero was a kid with massive teeth who punned his way through every page, often accompanied by a pet snail. Readers were fond of scouring each panel to see if they could spot the snail that was often hidden away in hard-to-find places, a forerunner of
Where’s Wally?
perhaps?

Cheeky Weekly
was unique among British comics in one major respect: Cheeky himself featured in many strips in each issue, in a sort of linking narrative. Cheeky would get up to some scrapes, make a few jokes (often really cheesy puns), and there would be some tenuous link to the next story.

And what stories they were – classic comic book fare with a few characters that you wouldn’t see published today. There was Gunga Jim, an Indian kid with a turban, and Ah-Sew, an Oriental tailor, but also less contentious regulars, such as Herman the traffic warden, Flash Harry the newspaper photographer, and the imaginatively named Butcher Boy who was not, sadly, a graphic interpretation of the Patrick McCabe novel, but was, instead, a boy who worked in a butcher’s shop.

Cheeky himself had started out as a character in the strip ‘The Krazy Gang’ from
Krazy Comic
. He proved so popular with readers that he was soon given his own strip, ‘’Ello It’s Cheeky’, but was further promoted to star in his very own comic which ran for three years before merging with
Whoopee!

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Candy Cigarettes

Two types of candy cigarette were common in the UK right up until the mid-1980s, when the powers that be dictated that making cigarettes fun (and tasty to boot) wasn’t the best way to discourage children from smoking.

The most popular version was a small chalky sugar stick, with one end coloured red to resemble a lit cigarette. They came in packs of ten or so, with the box itself looking more like a matchbox.

Less common, and also more expensive, were larger chocolate sticks wrapped in paper. The paper was, rather stupidly, inedible and hard to peel off. Even as a seven-year-old, I knew they were missing a trick there – a bit of rice paper would have saved a lot of hassle and avoided the chocolate under fingernail problem. These came in a box about the same size and shape as a packet of fags, and were branded to look as much like cigarettes as possible.

Although it is sad to see any element of one’s childhood disappear, it is hard to imagine this concept getting past the planning stage nowadays. Can you imagine the uproar?

Both types of candy are still available, but have wisely changed somewhat to avoid the wrath of parents and health authorities everywhere. In the case of candy cigarettes it was as simple as losing the red end and rebranding as candy sticks. Although whether kids today can actually see the point of them is another matter entirely.

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