I began this series two years ago, believe it or not. It doesn’t feel like it, yet it’s almost to the day, on 23rd February 2024 I posted the movie advertisements from throughout OiNK’s run and I’ve really enjoyed writing each entry since (for food and drink, toys and games, comics and books, and 80s electronics). I’m always surprised how much the adverts in all the comics covered on this blog take me right back, sometimes more so than the comics themselves.

But now it’s time to wrap it all up and we’ll do so with a little random selection of the miscellaneous adverts that didn’t fit into the previous five categories. There are some here everyone who ever picked up any IPC or Fleetway comic in the 80s will instantly recognise, especially these first two mini adverts. These seemed to be squeezed into every letters pages or any tight space that needed filled up.

The practical jokes one even popped up in the Classifieds ads that Marvel UK ran for a while. They were so ubiquitous in the pages of our comics that I quickly began to ignore them, thinking “oh, those things again” and not paying them any heed. Did anyone actually send off for a catalogue of practical jokes? Personally, any gag gifts from joke shops were always a huge letdown and never worked properly. But they must’ve sold enough because they were always there on the high streets and in our comics!

In #9 of OiNK we received a little folded leaflet that tried its very best to hype up stamp collecting. For any younger readers of the blog this was a hobby that even I was confused with as a child. I was watching new and exciting types of high-tech TV shows like Knight Rider and Airwolf, home computing and computer games were exploding in popularity, and I was also reading a truly anarchic comic. Stamp collecting felt like something from the past even then.

That little girl is really trying to sell it though, I’ll give her that! I had one or two friends who shared a stamp collecting hobby with their dads and none of them had half the excitement for it as this girl has clearly been told to have. I did reply to an advert on the back of one of my mum’s magazines that offered a giant starter kit with a load of stamps and things to do, much like the one in this next advert from #50.

I can remember when it arrived my dad and I sat down to see if it was something we’d like to do together. I think it took us less than half an hour to lose interest. Instead, I went back to collecting Panini stickers for my Real Ghostbusters album. Another advertising leaflet came just three issues after the stamps one, in #12, although it’s an even worse fit for the piggy pink publication.

Don’t get me wrong, the Humpty Dumpty Club was well regarded at the time and a quick read of this leaflet shows why. It looks like it would’ve been great for the pre-schoolers it was aimed at, although that’s why it’s a strange fit. It’s not like pre-schoolers were reading OiNK. Of course, there’s every chance it was found inside all of IPC Magazine’s comics and the readers could easily have had younger brothers or sisters. I have to say though, some of those kids in the photos are definitely not pre-schoolers!

Betting isn’t something you’d expect to see advertised in a children’s comic and it’d certainly be outlawed today, and rightly so. Same with those competition telephone lines in the pages of Jurassic Park that could easily have led to extortionate phone bills. It’s unbelievable such things were ever allowed in comics, but back in the 80s both of OiNK’s first two Holiday Specials had tiny little adverts like this below, right next to those practical jokes and stamps.

If memory serves me right my dad would play the football pools every week and I think I used to play the spot-the-ball competition on the piece of paper he filled out. He’d fill out the form and take it down to the local sweet shop where he could place his bets. It really was a different time, wasn’t it? These adverts were easily ignored by us kids of course but it’s still insane to think they were included in the first place.

Do you remember joining a bank when you were young? Where I lived we had one bank in the town, and mum and dad thought it was important that I had an account early in life. Not that I ever used it, I spent my pocket money far too easily and that attitude carried over into my teens and any money earned from part-time jobs, unfortunately. I did get a large blue plastic elephant however, to keep all of my parents’ 1p and 2p coins in. (When using their coins I seemed to be able to save up, no bother. Funny that.)

This Supersavers Club advert from #13 may sound familiar if you’ve seen any ad breaks on TV the past few years, but this particular club was formed long before money saving websites existed and you wouldn’t have been getting a visit from Dame Judi Dench. This was a basic incentive the likes of which many banks used in order to get kids through the doors. Although, living in Northern Ireland I doubt the in-person activities would’ve included us. Back then we were used to being reduced to small print at the bottom of adverts as an exception to any special offers.

Well, that’s yer lot, pig pals. I’ve really enjoyed putting together this series. It’s been an unexpected window back to the 80s and the world in which some of us lived throughout our formative years. For some of us it’s been a trip down memory lane and for others I’m sure it’s been a look into a strange past. It’s really hit home to me just how much the world has changed and just how long ago OiNK actually was!

So yes, it’s been fun but now I have to go and lie down.

BACK TO PART FiVE

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Welcome to part four of our look back at the real advertisements in OiNK (rather than the spoof Madvertisements), a series of posts taking us all back to life in the 1980s. After reminiscing about the toys we received for Christmas it’s now time to check out some new reading material, namely the other comics and books we’d while away the days with between issues.

Disney was a target for OiNK’s writers and cartoonists on several occasions, but right back near the beginning (#9) while the comic was still in the capable publishing hands of IPC Magazines, a division of its future publisher Fleetway advertised a set of Disney books to apparently help beat the boredom of school holidays! Did the person who came up with that tagline even remember their own childhood summers?

Around that time I wasn’t a huge fan of Disney. I much preferred Warner Bros cartoons and my shelves were filled with Railway Series/Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends books, so this advert wouldn’t have had any impact on me. It’s just as well they advertised this early though, once OiNK began its ‘Ron Dibney’ madverts and strips we may have been looking for the gag here.

In only my third issue of OiNK in December 1986 (the third comic I’d ever bought myself) another of IPC’s titles was celebrating a mammoth 500 issues! True be told I’d never even heard of it at this stage of my life but I’d become acquainted with it a few years later in high school when I’d meet friends who were obsessed. 2000AD’s fictional editor Tharg the Mighty is apparently surrounded (or rather, superimposed into) a group of beautiful 1960s or 70s women in a funny advert that poked fun at celebrity culture.

Is it any wonder I was so confused as a kid when OiNK ended after only 68 issues? Of course, little did we know celebrating 500 issues would end up feeling somewhat quaint, what with 2000AD still being published on a weekly basis all these years later and clocking up 2,427 regular issues at the time of writing! Much later in OiNK’s run 2000AD’s newsagent reservation coupon would replace OiNK’s own in the penultimate issue, a change we didn’t think anything of until a month later.

Two comics of friend-of-the-blog Barrie Tomlinson’s (Ring Raiders, Wildcat, Super Naturals) were also advertised at various points in OiNK’s lifetime, namely Battle and Eagle. After losing the Action Force licence to Marvel UK, Barrie created Storm Force, which was basically a toy line strip without the toy line. He’d later speak about it in depth in his Comic Book Hero book, a review of which you can also read on the blog.

Coincidentally enough, Battle’s announcement of the new Storm Force was advertised in OiNK’s war-themed issue (#20) and during the following year both it and Eagle were advertised together when they gave away a pair of those flimsy green and red 3D glasses. This was part of a promotion for the short-lived toy line and cartoon series StarCom about astronauts battling alien invasions. Just a few short months later, Battle would actually merge into Eagle.

Towards the end of OiNK’s time a new comic from Fleetway Publications hit shelves and I think I picked up an issue or two, although I can’t be completely sure. I have vague memories of a fortnightly comic full of detailed artwork and the occasional swear word, the latter of which was of great fascination to find in a comic for my friends and I at our tender young age. The character in the full-page advert below also feels familiar but I can’t tell if that’s because I read about her at the time or if I’m just recalling these adverts.

Overtly political (one issue was also produced in partnership with Amnesty International) and adult in tone, Crisis was initially fortnightly and later monthly, which will sound familiar to readers of this blog, I’m sure. In fact, Crisis almost lasted as many issues as OiNK, eventually being cancelled at #63 in 1991. It eschewed traditions in the UK comics industry such as free gifts and annuals, which is about as tenuous a link to our next adverts as I can muster.

Below are promos for Fleetway’s annuals in 1987 (for the 1988 volumes) and 1988 (for the 1989 volumes) and you can’t deny OiNK’s really stand out! Especially that first annual, The OiNK! Book 1988. The advert understates it somewhat by simply saying, “There’s never been an annual like it”. The cover image compared to the other more traditional titles already got that across the second readers glanced at this page.

The next year’s advert, pulled from the final regular issue of OiNK, used the original colours for the OiNK logo before the yellow and pink were reversed to stand out more on the shelves before publication of The OiNK! Book 1989. There’s quite the variety here, with everything from action and sport to comedy and nursery comics. We even see the return of Mickey Mouse from our first advert, who was still a sprightly 60-years-old that year.

I was surprised at how few comics adverts there were in total over OiNK’s run, especially when you compare them to Marvel UK which had promos for their other comics as a regular staple, alongside their fondly remembered checklists. In fact, the final such advert seems to have been literally squeezed into the OiNK Holiday Special ’89; a favourite childhood comic of mine is seemingly used to fill a gap on a page of both real and spoof ads.

We may not have seen much in the way of other comics inside the pages of OiNK, but over the course of its lifetime it was the subject of a blockbuster pull-out ad, crossover strips, free editions in comics and magazines, on top of regular adverts. Maybe Uncle Pigg just didn’t want to share the limelight.

We’ve still got two parts of this series to come that should jolt the old grey cells of original readers and the curiosity of you younger ones out there. Next up are the hip and chunky electronics of the 80s. It was a decade of technological revolution as the microchip introduced itself to every aspect of our lives. Watch out for those samples of another time when this occasional series returns this winter.

PART THREE < > PART FiVE

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