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

OiNK’S REAL ADVERTS MENU

‘MORE OiNK’ MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

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

OiNK’S REAL ADVERTS

‘MORE OiNK’ MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

I’ve really been looking forward to diving back into this occasional series of posts in which we take a look at all of the real advertisements published in OiNK between April 1986 and April 1990. Still to come are adverts for comics and toys amongst other things, however in a surprise turn it was seeing the adverts for all of the food and drink of the 80s that really transported me back in time.

There were plenty of them in OiNK too, far too many to include in one post, so I’ve whittled them down to 11 of my favourites, all for things I’d have happily chomped down on or guzzled back when I was a kid. Well, there’s one exception to that and as you scroll I’m sure you’ll be able to guess which one. Some of these are no longer available, but even for those that are their adverts are so quintessentially 80s they just had to be included. So let’s get things started with some breakfast, shall we?

I remember those adverts on TV with kids walking down the street with a superimposed red glow around them after eating their bowls of hot, filling Ready Brek, advertised here in #52 from February 1988. I did like that cereal, although I preferred my mum’s huge pots of porridge she’d rustle up. I don’t know about you, but I think a list of ’50 Brill Things To Do Before Breakfast’ would’ve been wasted on me. Getting out of bed and washed and fed was enough to do before school!

“Get yours before the special multipacks dematerialise!”

Golden Wonder crisps

The Bean St. Kids (#39, October 1987) had animated cartoon adverts on TV I seem to recall, complete with cackling villain, but the tins sold themselves. I know we’re told our tastebuds change as we age, so either mine really have or those tins of mini sausages have changed, because as an adult I think they’re completely vile! I tried one of those ‘All-Day Breakfasts’ in a tin of beans and my word, never again. But as a child I loved them, especially with crispy bacon and eggs for breakfast at the weekend.

As our day in the 80s continues it’s time for a mid-morning snack and our house always had multipacks of crisps for us to rummage through, although more often than not they were Crazy Prices’ Yellow Pack crisps (ask your parents, kids). Sometimes we got treated to others though and apart from Wotsits (I remember devouring all of the barbecue flavours before my siblings could) the other household favourites were all advertised in OiNK.

My dad still eats the Salt-n-Shake crisps to this day, although you can only get the salted ones now. This is just as well really because I remember the other flavours didn’t really work. No matter how much we shook the bag like the fella in this advert from #6 (July 1986) we’d always get a mixture of bland crisps and others with so much flavouring on them they’d burn our tongues. Needless to say that “mixing different sachets” to “invent your own flavours” was an atrocious idea too.

I’ll admit I still have a fondness for Monster Munch (#33, July 1987) to this day; the pickled onion ones are a favourite but I just can’t walk past a shelf of roast beef packets without filling the trolley! I was sure the regular Golden Wonder crisps disappeared for a while many years ago but that doesn’t seem to be the case. While they did go into administration in 2006 they were bought by my local Northern Irish crisp company, Tayto and continue to be made here, which surprised me!

“You can meet Jo-Jo, Bruno and our own super hero, ‘Mar-Might’…””

Marmite spread

I remember the Golden Wonder bags of my youth had a little window on the front through which you could see the crisps. The packets were horrible though, becoming very jagged when crumpled and they felt horribly greasy on the inside, things people seem to forget on those talking heads documentaries on Channel 5 where celebrities go all misty-eyed for such things. Here in #15 (November 1986) the promotion to lure us kiddies in was a range of exclusive Sixth Doctor comics, although the lure was lost on me as I didn’t start watching the show until 1988.

On to lunchtime sandwiches and no prizes if you guessed the first of these two adverts (#22, February 1987) is the thing I mentioned above that I didn’t like. I still don’t. I’ve only ever tasted Marmite once but I didn’t eat it. I’m probably sharing too much information when I say I was in my early 20s, I’d been out for a night for a few drinks and at the end I kissed a lady who had just eaten some. Gagging and recoiling from a kiss isn’t a great impression to make.

In #25 (April 1987) bread was advertised in a children’s comic. How exciting. To be fair, it was promoting a free sports bag emblazoned with the loaf’s logo and Champion was heavily advertised during children’s programming as the bread of choice for fit and athletic kids. I hated it back then with all of the little ‘bits’ in it but these days I do love a good granary loaf. Showing my age probably. Mother’s Pride make a vast amount of different breads these days in their Hovis range. I wonder if one of them is the modern day equivalent of this?

On the way home we’d visit the sweet shop and long before Jamie Oliver’s sugar tax came in (something I cursed him for at the time but which I now think was for the best) any can of soft drink was so loaded with sugar they were main staples of kids’ diets in the 80s! Cherry Coca-Cola was the latest craze and was advertised with very surreal images on both the telly and in publications. They made little sense but were certainly eye-catching and worked a (sugary) treat, the first two here taken from #28 (May 1987) and #34 (August 1987) respectively.

It doesn’t taste the same anymore. For some reason when the sugar tax came in Coke changed the recipe for Coke Zero (the brand under which the different flavourings now reside) and suddenly it tasted like that horrible Diet Coke stuff (I’ve never been a fan). I moved over to Pepsi Max and actually much prefer it and its range of flavours, so thanks Jamie! I still buy my sugar-full Coke to slow cook my Christmas ham though. (Damn, that’s still too many months away.)

“2p off Milky Way!”

Milky Way chocolate bar

In hindsight ring pulls were so bloody dangerous on a product kids loved, never mind asking us to actually collect the sharp little things, and that advert (#30, June 1987) makes me wince nowadays. Imagine that was your foot! Anyway, collecting them is exactly what we did. I didn’t send any off for this particular product but I’m going to guess many blog readers of a certain vintage will have done so for their Coke or Fanta yo-yos, am I right?

With most of our pocket money spent on crisps and soda what were we going to do about our chocolate cravings? We couldn’t have a can of Coke without a chocolate accompaniment! But we also couldn’t spoil dinner, so we needed something we could eat “without ruining our appetite”. Luckily, Mars gave us a handy coupon for a whopping 2p off our next Milky Way. Hey, don’t knock it, that was a good chunk off back then. The advert was also split in two and spread over the issue (this one appeared in #12, October 1986).

The competition for a Commodore 64 also catches my eye today, it being my first proper home computer, although I didn’t get mine until Christmas 1991. The inside of a Milky Way was chocolate flavoured back then but was changed to vanilla in 1993 and I hated it. Although, Mars’ Flyte came along in 1996 and used the original recipe in a bar aimed at adults. Once I discovered this they were a very frequent purchase. Such a shame they’ve been discontinued since.

This really has been a whirlwind trip down memory lane for both my mind and my taste buds. I feel suitably qualified to appear on Channel 5 now. You can see companies knew how to appeal to us 80s kids. As well as adverts taking the form of comic strips, many offered their own magazines and comics to send off for, and there was always something magical about collecting silly little tokens (or ring pulls) that had the desired affect on us and on their bottom line.

In the next part of this series I’ll be taking a look at the toys advertised during OiNK’s run and you can expect that at Christmas (naturally).

PART ONE < > PART THREE

OiNK’S REAL ADVERTS

‘MORE OiNK’ MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU

Welcome to the first in a new occasional series of posts taking a retrospective look at the contemporary advertisements found within the pages of OiNK between its launch in 1986 and its final special in 1990. The real adverts that is, not the spoof Madvertisements. During the comic’s real time read through I found it wasn’t just the antics of the comic’s gangster-led mail order company GBH that transported me back in time, these real ads often brought back many happy memories too.

I’ve separated the adverts into six categories. Coming up you’ll see marketing for 80s food and drink, toys, electronics, comics and books, then finishing with a miscellaneous collection to round things off, but we begin with movies. This was an easy selection to make because there were only five of them featured throughout the comic’s entire run. I present them here in the order of their release, and first up is one I’d never heard of before.

The 80s saw a resurgence in 3D movies for a few years, my favourite being Jaws 3D, a fun sequel to my favourite film of all time which has proper, American theme park style in-your-face 3D. Star Chaser: The Legend of Orin was a cartoon but used a combination of traditional art and computer generated animation to produce its effects. Advertised as the first 3D animated film (it was actually the second after a small Australian movie) the story revolved around human slaves being ruled by a ‘God’ who turns out to be a human masquerading as one.

It sounds quite Stargate-like and starred Stargate SG-1’s Carmen Argenziano (Jacob Carter). However, it was it’s very close resemblance to Star Wars’ story which saw it panned in reviews at the time and it flopped at the cinema, which wasn’t great when it was more expensive to produce than other cartoon films. The advert appeared in OiNK #3 in May 1986 and that summer a much more successful movie sequel popped up in the pages of #7.

Once again starring Ralph Macchio and Pat Morita, The Karate Kid: Part II’s box office not only eclipsed Star Chaser’s, it equalled the original movie’s and spawned a couple more sequels in the original series. While researching for this post I discovered it never actually filmed in Okinawa, the location that was a major selling point for the film. In reality, the heavy military presence there led the filmmakers to choose Hawaii instead.

The first scene in Part II was originally written to be included at the end of the original so, like James Bond’s Quantum of Solace did many years later, this literally picked up straight after the previous film. I recall my brother renting these from our local video store and I can remember the action, the famous training scenes from the first film and some bits and pieces here and there, but mainly it’s the memory of enjoying them with the family that remains.

The next film (advertised in #15) completely passed me by as a kid, although as the youngest of five siblings I’m sure they rented it at some stage for themselves or at least watched it on TV during more than one Christmas. It was only during this last festive period (2023) that I finally succumbed to the years of friends talking about how great David Bowie was as the King of the Goblins and sat down to watch it on the BBC one afternoon.

Not only did I love David Bowie (his interactions with the goblin puppets producing some wonderfully funny moments), Jennifer Connelly was also superb. I’ve become a fan of hers through the Snowpiercer TV series in recent years and it’s just incredible to see such a great performance at only 14-years-of-age, especially considering the characters she was interacting with. As for the film, directed of course by Jim Henson (and written by Terry Jones, although rewritten by uncredited others) it still flopped but that hasn’t stopped it from gaining in popularity ever since.

For me personally, it was a fun movie although I do think I’d have loved it more as a kid; the imagination on show is brilliant and very 80s. I really loved the fantastic M.C. Escher-inspired staircase scene too. There’s one movie out of these five I adored from the moment I saw it on VHS at a friend’s 11th birthday party in October 1988, almost a year after this advert for its cinema release in OiNK #16. I’m really not sure why we didn’t go to the cinema as a group when it was out!

I didn’t really get into The Transformers until the following year, but once I did this movie was rented a lot! It was basically a way for Hasbro to refresh the toy line, hence killing off most of the TV series’ original cast, Optimus Prime’s death famously upsetting children in American and resulting in an added narration at the end when it reached these shores, promising his return. It also flopped (there’s a theme here) at the time and has been derided by critics ever since as a glorified toy advert.

If you’re already a fan of Transformers you’ll love this, if not then it’s not really going to win you over. As an adult I can appreciate its retro goodness, especially its 80s soundtrack, although I find it does work much better as part of the animated series than a standalone film. I just wish they’d stop cutting the top and bottom off it every time they remaster it. It was created in a 4:3 ratio but every time it gets rereleased they seem to think people will only want to watch it in widescreen, the full-screen version usually left to languish, non-remastered, in the extra features. Such a shame.

It’s also notable for being Orson Welles’ final film, believe it or not. Over the years it’s been said he hated it but in reality he really liked the script; he accepted the role after reading it and was happy to be working on a children’s movie. He may not have fully understood all the characters and their relationships with each other but which adult of a young Transformers fan ever did? As a fan of the modern films (Transformers, Dark of the Moon and Bumblebee being my favourites) this can feel quaint today but during my recent read through of the original Marvel UK comic the 1987 film was an epic, dramatic and really fun part of the experience.

To any readers living outside of this part of the world this poster might be a bit confusing, but this is indeed Harry and the Hendersons, advertised in #42. It was renamed for the UK market, perhaps to better describe what Harry actually was to potential cinema goers not familiar with the legend in the States. John Lithgow seemed to pop up in every American film when I was a child but I never complained, he was always funny in every role he took on. The film was essentially E.T. with a big hairy fella instead of a short, wrinkly alien but I do remember finding it very funny as a child, although I’ve never seen it again since.

There we go. There may only have been five movie adverts throughout OiNK’s run but they’re a nice snapshot of the films that would’ve appealed to young readers at the time and their retro artwork is a joy to look at. There are a ton of adverts for the next category of food and drink though, including everything from crisps and fizzy drinks to Marmite and bread! Look out for that during the summer later on this year.

GO TO PART TWO

OiNK’S REAL ADVERTS

‘MORE OiNK’ MENU

MAiN OiNK MENU