Category Archives: OiNK Pre-Release

OiNK Pre-Release

SELLiNG THE STY: NEWSAGENT MARKETiNG

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We’re approaching the beginning of my real time read through of this site’s namesake comic and I’ve got another treat in store for pig pals as we count down the days.

Last month I showed you an interview with John Sanders, IPC Magazines’ Youth Group Managing Director from the pages of industry magazine CTN, published in March 1986. Now we’re coasting through April and this month newsagents across the UK received word of that brand new comic John spoke about. OiNK was about to make its appearance but first of all those selling it had to be convinced to place orders, and hopefully sizeable ones at that.

Thanks to OiNK co-creator/co-editor and cartoonist Tony Husband for sharing these original four-page promotional leaflets. They’re certainly bright, colourful and eye-catching.

I love the written description beside the exhausted Uncle Pigg below, especially the “precocious” part. My first issue of OiNK was #14 and it instantly spoke to me, so I’m guessing that was an accurate description of me too. OiNK never spoke down to us, never treated us like little children. It felt like it was put together by a team who just wanted to make each other laugh and us pig pals were part of the gang. I believe this is the reason its humour stands up so well today and can still be enjoyed by anyone of any age.

Above was Tony’s original leaflet, below I’ve been able to get hold of individual page scans that are a bit better in picture quality. You can click on these to take a closer look.

At the time new comics would normally be marketed on television, such as the one for Marvel UK‘s The Transformers I showed you in that John Sanders post. But of course OiNK would be doing things differently and a big deal was made of the fact IPC were giving away their first ever preview issue. Not only that, it was a full-sized, 32-page free comic and packaged inside some of their best-selling titles, namely Buster, Eagle and Tiger and Whizzer and Chips.

The launch gifts are given prominent space here too, which is understandable when a free record is one of them. Also mentioned are the “Blockbuster Advertisements” which would show up between issues one and two in the pages of the three comics above as well as Roy of the Rovers, 2000AD and Battle. That’s a huge promotional push right there!

In case you’re wondering what “Fully S.O.R.” means, this stands for ‘Sale or Return’ and would refer to newsagents being able to return unsold copies and receive full reimbursement for them. This would encourage them to make bigger orders for those initial issues, safe in the knowledge they could push the comic in their stores with plenty on display without fear of losing any money.

So the comic was on its way and our newsagents were placing their orders. The next step was to make the potential readers aware of that fantastic free preview coming very soon.

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PiGGY PROMOTiONS: iPC’S JOHN SANDERS

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“IPC’s Youth Group is trying to change the face of children’s comics with its launch next month of a new-style, fortnightly comic into the eight-to-12-year-olds market.“

John Sanders

So began a piece in CTN, an industry magazine covering the world of magazines and comics on this day back in 1986, a month before OiNK‘s release from the sty. Comics sales had been in heavy decline for a few years with television seen as the cause, although perhaps so was the ever-growing presence of computer games. While other sources of children’s entertainment were evolving, comics hadn’t and they had to do something new and fresh in order to remain competitive.

You should know where this is going. That something was, of course, OiNK. Edited by the “three liberated pigs” of Mark Rodgers, Tony Husband and Patrick Gallagher, IPC saw in them the chance to reinvigorate the marketplace.

The article in CTN (which you can read in full at the bottom of this post) takes the form of an interview with IPC Magazine’s Youth Group Managing Director John Sanders, who you can see above surrounded by OiNK page layouts prior to launch. A wish to move away from the “custard pie humour” is cited and the publishers were certainly putting their weight behind this anarchic comic, independently put together for them in Manchester. Hundreds of thousands of copies of the preview issue would be bagged with some of their biggest titles and an eye-watering (for the time) £55,000 was being spent on “Blockbuster Adverts“.

“Their [children] humour is a lot more sophisticated than it was 25 years ago. It is a lot more outrageous, the butt of their humour has changed.”

John Sanders

It’s interesting to note having a preview issue wasn’t something generally used at the time, the usual strategy was television advertising such as with Marvel‘s The Transformers in 1984, the (very) brief advert for which you can see below. This was news to me when I found out because I remember several preview issues of my comics but nothing on TV, but then again those previews came after OiNK. However, even OiNK’s would be different from those that followed, it was a full-sized issue.

The article states the new comic is “aimed very directly at youngsters”. The whole point was to grab the attention of the eight to 13-year-old age group. But yet, here we are over three decades later with a website all about this classic comic and how well it holds up for both adults and their children reading it all these years later.

IPC’s target audience weren’t just readers of comics by the competition either, such as The Dandy and Beano, but also those of their own humour comics who they were worried were leaving.

Thanks to Lew Stringer for sharing this scan on his Blimey blog and for the kind permission to show it to you all here. That particular blog is no longer being updated but is chock full of interesting comics tidbits so give it a look. While you’re at it, make sure to bookmark Lew’s ongoing Lew Stringer Comics blog too, detailing all of his own work both past and present.

(John Sanders has now released his own book, King’s Reach: John Sanders’ Twenty-Five Years at the Top of Comics which chronicles the business side of the industry.)

About a month later the April/May 1986 issue of IPC News, the in-house magazine for IPC Magazines staff, also ran a piece on OiNK’s imminent launch where it’s affectionately described as “John Sander’s cherished ambition”. It contains much of the same information as the CTN article, including some direct quotes by John, cementing the company’s support of the comic’s ethos and what it was attempting. This following scan also comes courtesy of Lew via the OiNK Facebook group.

There could be no part of IPC Magazines or the wider UK comics and magazine scene that was unaware of this bold new venture. At least that seemed to be what IPC was attempting to achieve with the size of OiNK’s marketing push and the feeling that the company was completely behind the team of Patrick, Tony and Mark. Of course, any company will want that to be the impression when they’re launching a new product but there can be no doubt they believed in OiNK.

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