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Cheeky Weekly ™ REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED was a British children's comic with cover dates spanning 22 October 1977 to 02 February 1980.

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Wednesday 15 July 2020

The Whoopee Years - Cheeky Weekly Characters in the Popularity Polls - part 5

The previous post in this series concluded with the Top Ten results printed in the issue dated 21 August 1982...


As promised on the page above, another Top Ten voting coupon was printed a week later, and also in the 25 September 1982 issue. The next results were published in the 02 October 1982 edition.

To understand what features were appearing in the comic between the previous results and those of 02 October 1982, let's first examine those that had ended between the two dates, which could be seen as the features being culled for failing to garner sufficient votes in the intervening period...

START_DATE END_DATE CE_ELEMENT
14-AUG-82 04-SEP-82 4 Comics Ring-A-Round Challenge
01-MAY-82 25-SEP-82 Frankie's Monster Awards
01-MAY-82 25-SEP-82 Jimmy Fixit

Jimmy evidently couldn't fix it to stay in the comic. The 4 Comics Ring-A-Round Challenge was a promotional feature that ran for four weeks...


...I wonder if there was a hidden agenda behind this promotion and the IPC staff undertaking the calls were instructed to also quiz the readers about their likes and dislikes within the comics.

There was only one feature that started between the poll results...

START_DATE END_DATE CE_ELEMENT
18-SEP-82 09-OCT-82 Toby's Animal Rescue Service booklet

Not very many changes at all - so what were the ongoing features?...
  
START_DATE END_DATE CE_ELEMENT
09-FEB-80 25-JUN-83 Smiler
09-FEB-80 12-JAN-85 Cover Feature
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Bookworm
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Bumpkin Billionaires
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Calculator Kid
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Frankie Stein
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Lolly Pop
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Mustapha Million
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Paddywack
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Stage School
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Sweeny Toddler
09-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Toy Boy
16-FEB-80 30-MAR-85 Chip
01-MAR-80 19-JAN-85 Top Ten voting coupon
10-MAY-80 09-MAR-85 Top Ten Results
01-NOV-80 27-OCT-84 Guy Fawkes Mask
21-MAR-81 27-NOV-82 Whoopee It's Quiz Time
09-MAY-81 25-JUN-83 Robot Granny
12-SEP-81 25-JUN-83 Tom Horror's World
31-OCT-81 05-NOV-83 Guy Fawkes Supermask
02-JAN-82 25-JUN-83 Teacher's Pets
27-MAR-82 25-JUN-83 Little Ed
01-MAY-82 25-JUN-83 Beaky
01-MAY-82 25-JUN-83 Kids of Class Five
01-MAY-82 25-JUN-83 Smile-In
01-MAY-82 25-JUN-83 Whoopee Winners
22-MAY-82 25-JUN-83 Cheeky (second run)

Mustapha Million, Calculator Kid and Stage School, all of which had secured places in all 6 previous Top Ten polls, continued unchanged. Gran was still in her Robot Granny guise, Paddywack's former whole page strips had been cut back to a half page each week as of the comic dated 21 August 1982, and Cheeky was still enjoying the full page outings he was afforded during the initial phase of the second run of his eponymous feature.

So what was the readers' verdict on the comic's contents in the next set of results, published in the 02 October 1982 edition?...


Mustapha Million, who had topped the first three polls, was making a slow, elegant descent through the ranking, although maintaining 4th position for the 3rd time.

Poll Date Feature Position
10/05/80 Mustapha Million 1
15/11/80 Mustapha Million 1
20/06/81 Mustapha Million 1
20/02/82 Mustapha Million 3
07/08/82 Mustapha Million 4
21/08/82 Mustapha Million 4
02/10/82 Mustapha Million 4

Stage School continued to bounce around the lower half of the popularity stakes, this time coming in at number 5, their highest position so far.
  
Poll Date Feature Position
10/05/80 Stage School 8
15/11/80 Stage School 6
20/06/81 Stage School 10
20/02/82 Stage School 7
07/08/82 Stage School 8
21/08/82 Stage School 10
02/10/82 Stage School 5

Calculator Kid was, apart from the heights he hit in the second poll, hovering around the mid-point - a creditably consistent performance.

Poll Date Feature Position
10/05/80 Calculator Kid 4
15/11/80 Calculator Kid 2
20/06/81 Calculator Kid 5
20/02/82 Calculator Kid 4
07/08/82 Calculator Kid 6
21/08/82 Calculator Kid 5
02/10/82 Calculator Kid 6

Gran, who had registered at number 7 in the first post-Cheeky-merge poll results, had since been conspicuously absent from the top ten, despite her May 1981 relaunch as Robot Granny.

Poll Date Feature Position
10/05/80 $6,000,000 Gran 7


Neither Paddywack nor Cheeky had appeared among the top ten in any of the polls, despite the considerable efforts made to devise a format that would propel our toothy pal into the most popular features.

My examination of the fortunes of the ex-Cheeky Weekly funny folk in the Whoopee Top Ten polls continues in part 6.

Back to part 4

2 comments:

  1. Toy Boy and bumpkin Billionaires were there from the beginning of Whoopee and still very popular..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Of the two I prefer the Bumpkins, but yes they both had very long comic careers.

      Delete