Revamp 1

Something of a minor revamp occurred in June/July 1978, but it took place around the disruption to the normal contents of Cheeky Weekly resulting from the mini comics promotion in July, so let's have a closer look at the changes which occurred in this period.

The features that came to an end were;

Home Movie, which reached its final showing in the 10 June 1978 issue.

Space Family Robinson, who had returned to Earth in the comic dated 24 June 1978, the issue before the 4-week mini comics promotion began.

Suddenly, which also came to an end on 24 June 1978.  This feature was of course related to the James Bold strip, but as the framing device for Bold's final adventure commencing on 01 July 1978 was a film serial rather than a novel, there was no further requirement for the newsagent-based Suddenly feature.

New features commencing were;

Calculator Kid, which started on 01 July 1978.

Paddywack, which started on 08 July 1978.

You might have noticed that the losses amount to 4 pages worth of features (since Space Family Robinson was a 2-page-a-week feature), yet the replacements amount to 2 pages only (at least at this stage - Paddywack did extend to 2 pages in 6 later issues).  The reason for the apparent shortfall is explained by the number of one-off features that were vying for space among the 32 pages in the comic;

17 June 1978 - Father's Day Messages and Skateboard competition, each occupying a full page.

24 June 1978 - Tennis competition (full page again).

...followed by 4 weeks of mini comics, during which an ad for the upcoming 5 Papers competition took up a whole page in the 15 July issue, followed by a whole page for the competition itself in the following issue.  Also, the number of full-page paid-for ads (i.e. not IPC ads) reached its all-time Cheeky Weekly peak in the issues dated 08 and 15 July 1978, with 4 such ads appearing in each issue.