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| First episode of original run - Buster 03 June 1967 Art: Leo Baxendale |
Many thanks to Stephen Archer who has been researching the original 1967-68 run of The Cave Kids in Buster. This is relevant to the world of Cheeky, as the strip was resurrected to help fill the Cheeky Holiday Special of 1980, and went on to feature in a total of 6 Cheeky Annuals and Specials.
The original Buster run spanned the following issues (thanks once again to Stephen for this data)...
| Title | Cover Date | Feature | Synopsis |
| Buster | 03-Jun-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s homework |
| Buster | 10-Jun-1967 | The Cave Kids | The sabretooth tribe attack |
| Buster | 17-Jun-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky holes the school wall |
| Buster | 24-Jun-1967 | The Cave Kids | The greedy mammoth |
| Buster | 01-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | The cheeky young mammoth |
| Buster | 08-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s tiddlywinks |
| Buster | 15-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | Follow-my-leader |
| Buster | 22-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | The lost football |
| Buster | 29-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s switchback railway |
| Buster | 05-Aug-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky and the croc |
| Buster | 12-Aug-1967 | The Cave Kids | Unfair play by Bill Boulder |
| Buster | 19-Aug-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky takes a dip |
| Buster | 26-Aug-1967 | The Cave Kids | Egg trouble |
| Buster | 02-Sep-1967 | The Cave Kids | The greedy pterodactyl |
| Buster | 09-Sep-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s dad’s car |
| Buster | 16-Sep-1967 | The Cave Kids | Big Bad Boulder raids |
| Buster | 23-Sep-1967 | The Cave Kids | The pole-vaulting contest |
| Buster | 30-Sep-1967 | The Cave Kids | Chiefy vs. the greedy mammoth |
| Buster | 07-Oct-1967 | The Cave Kids | Bob-a-job week |
| Buster | 14-Oct-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s stony letter |
| Buster | 21-Oct-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s weapons |
| Buster | 28-Oct-1967 | The Cave Kids | The sleeping mammoth |
| Buster | 04-Nov-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s conker |
| Buster | 11-Nov-1967 | The Cave Kids | The nesting pterodactyls |
| Buster | 18-Nov-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s roller-skates |
| Buster | 25-Nov-1967 | The Cave Kids | Bill Boulder the delivery boy |
| Buster | 02-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | The stampeding dinosaurs |
| Buster | 09-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | The marauding mammoth |
| Buster | 16-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s old toys have to go |
| Buster | 23-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s sledge |
| Buster | 30-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s New Year resolutions |
| Buster | 06-Jan-1968 | The Cave Kids | Rocky learns to fly |
| Buster | 13-Jan-1968 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s snowball |
It seems the 33-episode original run of the Kids was brought to an end due to the need to accommodate incoming features from Buster's failed stablemate Giggle as of the 20 January 1968 merge issue.
It's not inconceivable that some readers of the 24 Cave Kids episodes that were selected for reprint in the Cheeky titles some 13 years after those adventures originally appeared, were the children of parents who, as youngsters themselves, had enjoyed the strips on their original outing...
| Published | Title | Feature | Episodes |
| Apr-1980 | Cheeky Holiday Special | The Cave Kids | 3 |
| Sep-1980 | Cheeky Annual 1981 | The Cave Kids | 4 |
| Jun-1981 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | 4 |
| Aug-1981 | Cheeky Annual 1982 | The Cave Kids | 5 |
| Jul-1982 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | 3 |
| Aug-1982 | Cheeky Annual 1983 | The Cave Kids | 5 |
| TOTAL | 24 |
The individual reprinted episodes are listed below. Based on evidence uncovered while examining various reprints used in the Cheeky titles, it would seem that publisher IPC had a policy of discarding the first episode when selecting strips for reprint, and of ignoring the original publication order when recycling stand-alone episodes of this type. The original Cave Kids strips were all single-pagers, but in the 1983 Cheeky Annual, the final Cheeky title to include the neolithic nippers, the editor, clearly keen to wring out the maximum budgetary benefit of employing recycled material, specified that 4 episodes were to be expanded to fill 2 pages each.
| Published | Title | Feature | Artist | Episode Start Page | Reprint Elements | Reprint Origin | Origin Date |
| Apr-1980 | Cheeky Holiday Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 24 | 1 | Buster | 05-Aug-1967 |
| Apr-1980 | Cheeky Holiday Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 38 | 1 | Buster | 15-Jul-1967 |
| Apr-1980 | Cheeky Holiday Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 52 | 1 | Buster | 24-Jun-1967 |
| Sep-1980 | Cheeky Annual 1981 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 9 | 1 | Buster | 29-Jul-1967 |
| Sep-1980 | Cheeky Annual 1981 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 45 | 1 | Buster | 02-Sep-1967 |
| Sep-1980 | Cheeky Annual 1981 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 64 | 1 | Buster | 23-Sep-1967 |
| Sep-1980 | Cheeky Annual 1981 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 121 | 1 | Buster | 16-Sep-1967 |
| Jun-1981 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 16 | 1 | Buster | 28-Oct-1967 |
| Jun-1981 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 25 | 1 | Buster | 06-Jan-1968 |
| Jun-1981 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 53 | 1 | Buster | 16-Dec-1967 |
| Jun-1981 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 64 | 1 | Buster | 30-Sep-1967 |
| Aug-1981 | Cheeky Annual 1982 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 8 | 1 | Buster | 26-Aug-1967 |
| Aug-1981 | Cheeky Annual 1982 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 17 | 1 | Buster | 23-Dec-1967 |
| Aug-1981 | Cheeky Annual 1982 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 43 | 1 | Buster | 21-Oct-1967 |
| Aug-1981 | Cheeky Annual 1982 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 88 | 1 | Buster | 19-Aug-1967 |
| Aug-1981 | Cheeky Annual 1982 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 110 | 1 | Buster | 12-Aug-1967 |
| Jul-1982 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | 20 | 1 | Buster | 14-Oct-1967 | |
| Jul-1982 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | Stan McMurtry | 43 | 1 | Buster | 02-Dec-1967 |
| Jul-1982 | Cheeky Summer Special | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 49 | 1 | Buster | 17-Jun-1967 |
| Aug-1982 | Cheeky Annual 1983 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 10 | 2 | Buster | 10-Jun-1967 |
| Aug-1982 | Cheeky Annual 1983 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 34 | 2 | Buster | 18-Nov-1967 |
| Aug-1982 | Cheeky Annual 1983 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 58 | 2 | Buster | 04-Nov-1967 |
| Aug-1982 | Cheeky Annual 1983 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 85 | 1 | Buster | 09-Sep-1967 |
| Aug-1982 | Cheeky Annual 1983 | The Cave Kids | Leo Baxendale | 98 | 2 | Buster | 08-Jul-1967 |
I must admit that the alterations to the original Cave Kids artwork were much more sensitively achieved than a lot of the resizing evident across IPC's Annuals and Specials...
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| Original |
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| Cheeky Annual 1983 |
Further evidence of a respect for the original material on the part of the compilers of this Annual is the fact that the reprint which was not expanded to 2 pages is the strip presented as being drawn by Rocky himself, which can be seen here, and would probably have lost the border had the artwork been resized.
Below are the episodes from the original run that were not reprinted in the Cheeky titles. The editor's reason for not using these strips is hard to guess. It's clearly not the case that it was felt Cheeky fans were becoming bored with Paleolithic pranks, since another stone-age-set strip retrieved from IPC's repository of former fun folk would feature in the next Cheeky Annual, dated 1984, as would a feature depicting an ancestor of the toothy funster himself in a prehistoric predicament. A similarly baffling reluctance to reprint the entire original run of strips emerged from Stephen Archer's research into Ringer Dinger.
| Buster | 03-Jun-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s homework |
| Buster | 01-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | The cheeky young mammoth |
| Buster | 22-Jul-1967 | The Cave Kids | The lost football |
| Buster | 07-Oct-1967 | The Cave Kids | Bob-a-job week |
| Buster | 11-Nov-1967 | The Cave Kids | The nesting pterodactyls |
| Buster | 25-Nov-1967 | The Cave Kids | Bill Boulder the delivery boy |
| Buster | 09-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | The marauding mammoth |
| Buster | 30-Dec-1967 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s New Year resolutions |
| Buster | 13-Jan-1968 | The Cave Kids | Rocky’s snowball |
Reprints were an inevitable hazard of IPC Annuals, but I'm sure there are few comic fans who would complain about the recycling of material by the great Leo Baxendale .
Which brings me to one piece of unfinished business regarding The Cave Kids' Cheeky outings - only one of the 3 episodes reprinted in the 1982 Cheeky Summer Special was by Leo. I was unable to identify the illustrators of the other 2 strips, but Andy Boal kindly identified one of them (the stampeding dinosaurs episode originating from 02 December 1967), from which I posted a sample here, as Stan McMurtry (thanks, Andy!). Because I didn't post the whole of the other non-Baxendale strip ('Rocky’s stony letter' from 14 October 1967), Andy was unsure about who the artist might be. I'll post the whole thing now in the hope that someone may be able to identify the illustrator.
