Wednesday, January 09, 2008

Playbox Annual

I've been out and about with my camera in recent weeks and snapped quite a few annual covers. Here are a few for young kiddies, the Playbox Annual, featuring the hugely popular Tiger Tim, one of the biggest stars of British comics before the Second World War.

(* Illustrations © IPC Media)

4 comments:

  1. Lovely items! Tiger Tim, a huge star in his day is all but forgotten now. A salutary lesson to us all, methinks.

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  2. were these annuals any reflection on the monthly issues of Playbox? I mean did they re-print any of the stories from the monthly issues for the Annuals, or was the content fully novel for the Annuals? I ask particularly as I own an original pic from Playbox issue of July 23rd 1937, and wondering if by chance it would show up in the 1938 Annual....

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  3. The Playbox Annual would be all-original material, following in the tradition of the Greyfriars Holiday Annual, which was also all-new. Older story papers - Boys' Own Paper, for instance - printed weekly issues which were then re-released as monthly papers (I suspect originally they were unsold weekly parts in a new wrapper), and then gathered together in bound volumes each six months or annually. That had changed by the 1920s, when the majority of annuals published original material.

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  4. Oh Crikey (as they would say at Greyfriars). Not the answer I wanted. If anyone comes across a Playbox (I would assume monthly) issue of July 23rd 1937, could they please get in touch with me here? The pic I have shows two children (a girl and a boy with caps on) running down some steps on a hill or mountainside, with the sea in the background (on the right side of the pic).

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