The Cut-Out Features – Friends of Cheeky Snap Game

In Cheeky Weekly dated 06 January 1979 IPC announced the imminent commencement of yet another of their cut-out-and-keep promotions in, as was often the case, more than one of their comic titles...

I’m not quite sure why IPC adopted a synchronised approach to this kind of promotion. Surely if these marketing campaigns were applied to one comic at a time there would be more chance of that title picking up a few new readers, whereas I would have thought it unlikely that kids (or their parents) would shell out for 3 comics in addition to the one they already followed. Or maybe IPC’s research showed a significant proportion of their target market already subscribed to more than one title. Or possibly they felt that disgruntled readers, annoyed at losing some of their favourite features in order to accommodate the snip-and-save pages, would be less likely to jump ship to another title for the duration of the promotion since they would be aware that the companion comics were similarly afflicted. However, there was the threat that readers would move across the great divide to DC Thomson's titles which, as far as I'm aware, did not include cut-out schemes.

As was often the case, Buster exempted itself from this promotion due to its lack of internal colour pages at the time.

Friends of Cheeky is a phrase that harks back to issue 2 of the toothy funster’s comic, but rather than referring to readers of Cheeky Weekly as it originally did, the friends alluded to in the name of this game were Cheeky’s pals, 15 of whom appeared, along with the toothy funster himself, on the ‘cards’ which were presented in the centre pages over a four week period.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

10 of the images shown on the cards were taken from the Pin-Up Pal poster series which had been running since the comic’s first issue. Although Ursula, Jogging Jeremy and Louise had previously featured on Pin-Up Pal posters, their likenesses on the cards were sourced from elsewhere in the comic. The cards featuring Baker’s Boy, Dan-Dan the Lavender Man and Square-Eyes also re-used images that had originally appeared on the Cheeky’s Week pages, and were later used as Pin-Up Pal posters (see table below for details).

More Frank

 

Cover Date	Character Cards	Source	Source Issue Date	Notes
13/01/79	Cheeky	Pin-Up Pal	22/10/77
13/01/79	Ursula	Cover	04/03/78
13/01/79	Posh Claude	Pin-Up Pal	27/05/78
13/01/79	Constable Chuckle	Pin-Up Pal	22/04/78
20/01/79	Baker’s Boy	Tuesday	11/11/78	Later used as Pin-Up Pal 10/2/79
20/01/79	Square-Eyes	Friday	25/11/78	Later used as Pin-Up Pal 17/2/79
20/01/79	Six-Gun Sam	Pin-Up Pal	13/05/78
20/01/79	Vicar	Pin-Up Pal	11/03/78
27/01/79	Dan-Dan the Lavender Man	Thursday	25/11/78	Later used as Pin-Up Pal 3/3/79
27/01/79	Jogging Jeremy	Cover	24/12/77
27/01/79	Buster the Busker	Pin-Up Pal	25/03/78
27/01/79	Auntie Daisy	Pin-Up Pal	01/04/78
03/02/79	Lily Pop	Pin-Up Pal	18/02/78
03/02/79	Granny Gumdrop	Pin-Up Pal	20/05/78
03/02/79	Do-Good Dora	Pin-Up Pal	10/06/78
03/02/79	Louise	Thursday	25/11/78

Frank again

The 16 characters appeared on four cards each, with each group of four cards being printed together in a row on a single page, but with two characters to a page. The cards were printed in colour on the centre spread, which at that time was located within the pages of the Mystery Comic. Since readers of Cheeky Weekly were invited to believe that the Mystery Comic was, in Cheeky’s universe, a stand-alone comic, we can only ponder on how Cheeky rationalised finding himself featured on the centre pages of his reading matter of choice

Cheeky Weekly 13 January 1979 - Cheeky makes no mention of the cards within that week's issue of the Mystery Comic, nor did he in any of the subsequent three issues.
Frank yet again

...however the Mystery Comic cover
did mention the cards, as it did
in week two of the snap game.
Usual Mystery Comic cover star Tub was
ousted in favour of Disaster Des
for the first 2 weeks of the promotion.
Art: Mike Lacey

The instructions for playing the game (for the benefit of those who had presumably never enjoyed a round of the at times rumbustious Snap and/or weren't buying Cheeky Weekly a year earlier) were printed on page 24 well away from the centre pages, in the issue dated 03 February 1979, which contained the final set of cards.

Also lost to posterity – readers who chose to remove the Friends of Cheeky Snap elements from their comic would be depriving future generations of...

Cover Date	Page 15	Page 18
13/01/79	Mustapha Million 2/2	Elephant on the Run 1/2
20/01/79	Mustapha Million 2/2	Elephant on the Run 1/2
27/01/79	Mystery Boy episode 15 of 37	Elephant on the Run 1/2
03/02/79	Mystery Boy episode 16 of 37	Mustapha Million 1/2

...and Not to be confused with Silly Snaps, which appeared in the latter 3 editions listed above.