"Christmas is coming!"
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| Me, Christmas 1975 - Action Man helicopter, Batman, Six Million Dollar Man, Planet Of The Apes annual and a gun that shot darts with rubber tips! Seriously, how much more excited could a 6-year-old kid look? |
Welcome to the fifth post (you can find the others on these links, for
2017,
2018,
2019 and
2020) showcasing one of the Christmas highlights from when I was a kid (
beyond the catalogues I wrote about in 2016), seeing which annual I got that particular year. If you don't remember them, annuals were (and still are) large size hardback books, designed for children and based on existing properties, generally comics and popular TV shows, as well as the occasional film and sport and pop round-ups.
The ones based on comics featured the same cast as the weekly editions, while the TV and film ones had comic strips, the occasional short story, fact files and interviews and - brilliantly - in the case of
The Fall Guy, behind the scenes information on stunts and how they were filmed.
Generally published towards the end of the year, annuals are cover-dated as the following year to ensure shops don't take them off the shelves immediately after the new year (though, by then, unsold copies are often heavily reduced). Still as popular now, the only difference (apart from the fact kids today don't have the choice of comics we did) seems to be that they're skinnier (and that's not just me being all nostalgically misty about it - my ones from the late 70s and early 80s are substantially chunkier than the ones I bought for Dude when he was younger - he's 16 now and annuals don't feature on his wish list).
Here, then, is another selection of old favourites, ones I received and ones I remember my sister
Tracy having. I hope some of them inspire a warm, nostalgic trip down memory lane for you...
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| 1976 |
It's often said you were either a "Blue Peter kid" or a "Magpie kid" but I used to alternate between the two. Which did you prefer?
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| 1977 |
I started watching this because of Captain Scarlet and didn't remember a great deal about it, to be honest, until I caught up with it on ForcesTV. It hasn't aged well, it must be said, though the model work is superb.
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| 1978 |
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| 1978 |
Rupert The Bear makes his statutory appearance...
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| 1978 |
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| 1979 |
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| 1979 |
I was a big fan of
The Professionals and still am, the shows holding up remarkably well (
as do the novelisations, which I wrote about here).
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| 1979 |
The Six Million Dollar Man led me to the
Bionic Woman, which I watched and enjoyed. I don't think I've ever seen Max The Bionic Dog though (I wonder if he got his own annual...).
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| 1979 |
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| 1980 |
Probably the line-up I remember the most.
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| 1980 |
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| 1980 |
The series had long finished by the time this was published and I didn't realise it existed until I started researching these blog posts. How could I have missed this, from my childhood hero (
who I wrote about here)?
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| 1981 |
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| 1981 |
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| 1981 |
Spun off from the TV show (which I remember finding extremely funny), I wonder how much of the humour went sailing over my head?
Happy Christmas!
scans from my collection, aside from the girls titles (thanks to the Internet for those)
You can read more of my nostalgia posts here
Going from that first photo, you must've been spoiled rotten as a kid, MW. I don't think I had that many presents throughout every Christmas I ever had. And Pony, Tammy and Jinty Annuals? Good heavens man, what were you thinking? Like you, I alternated between Blue Peter and Magpie. Pretty much the same programme I thought.
ReplyDeleteThat was a good year... :) The girls annuals were ones I remember my sister having, they're not ones I read (though I did enjoy reading Misty).
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