As *spoon* as Arch comes back from vacation Hepcat will still be Hepcat. 8 8

[Hepcat]

Here's my Casper lunch box that King Seeley issued in 1966:

And here's the thermos:

 

[Hepcat]

The first actual comic magazines I ever encountered may have been when I was accompanying my father to the barber shop on Wharncliffe Road just south of Emery Street in 1957 or so. I don't remember the titles or characters specifically though they were probably some mix of "Superman", "Batman", "Donald Duck" and "Tom and Jerry" titles.

The first comic books I can remember reading in the spring of 1959 featured Felix's Nephews Inky & Dinky. They belonged to the older brother of my buddy Phil from across the street and were so beat up that they were without covers so I have no clue as to the actual issues. Phil and I both thought Dinky was a very cool name though!

Here are scans of the ones from my present day collection:

[ttfitz]

On 2/29/2024 at 1:23 AM, Hepcat said:

Card collecting and bubble gum have to me always been closely intertwined. I've had this Bozo machine for nearly twenty years:

But when I saw this unused O-Pee-Chee warehouse stock one on Etsy a few months ago I couldn't resist:

When I was little, I wanted a Mickey Mouse gumball machine for Christmas. When I got it, I was very excited - my folks loved to tell how I would put in a coin, and say "Thanks for the gumball, Mickey!"

Ah, the power of advertisement!

[Hepcat]

On 3/5/2024 at 2:07 AM, ttfitz said:

When I was little, I wanted a Mickey Mouse gumball machine for Christmas. When I got it, I was very excited - my folks loved to tell how I would put in a coin, and say "Thanks for the gumball, Mickey!"

 

This one?

 

[ttfitz]

On 3/5/2024 at 11:28 AM, Hepcat said:

This one?

 

Well, it's been over 50 years, and I was just a wee one, but I think it was more like this one:

[Hepcat]

Since gumball machines were a big part of my life when I was a kid, I bought three vintage ones in 1981 a couple years after I started re-accumulating the treasures of my younger days. One I sold to a girlfriend, but the other two I repainted and still have. Here's one of them:

These machines would typically have been filled with gumballs supplied by my hometown candy, confection and card company - O-Pee-Chee. They could of course be adapted to dispense the large gumballs or the smaller ones interspersed with little charms as in the machine pictured above. There was a penny gumball machine outside of Ken's Variety on Wharncliffe Road in London back in the sixties offering a pair of skeleton hands to whoever got a little chrome ball instead of a gumball out of the machine:

I was never lucky enough to get the skeleton hands. There's been a void in my life ever since.

Edited March 10 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

The penny briquettes of Bazooka and Dubble Bubble were the everyday staples of every red-blooded kid including myself during my primary school years from 1958 through 1965:

 

Sadly I've not seen Bazooka Bubble Gum in the little briquettes for over thirty years in my neck of the woods. Tubs of Dubble Bubble can still be found in some variety stores in Toronto with hot pink wrappers:

While they're now a dime each, to be fair the briquettes are about 50% bigger than the ones I used to buy as a kid. They taste the same as the original Dubble Bubbles I remember. Moreover I've seen these gumballs in vending machines on occasion:

They have the original Dubble Bubble flavour and they're really good but unfortunately they're typically available only at rip-off prices of a quarter or even a dollar. 

More common though is this stuff which is very annoyingly wrongly labelled as "America's Original":

While it has a very pleasant tutti-frutti taste, the flavour doesn't last. And like I say it's not the "original"! 

But Dubble Bubble isn't produced by Fleer any more anyway. The Dubble Bubble name brand was purchased from Fleer by Concord Confections just north of Toronto in 1998.  Concord was then acquired by Tootsie Roll Industries in 2003.

What I really miss is Black Cat Licorice Bubble Gum:

It was somehow chewier than Bazooka or even Dubble Bubble and could be blown into the biggest bubbles. It wasn't widely sold but I remember happily chewing it for hours when I could find it.

Nonetheless I remain a bubble gum chewing cat to this very day. Bubble gum is in fact one of the few things on which Balticfox (that mangy mutt living out back by the tracks) and I see eye-to-eye.

[Hepcat]

As a kid in the early 1960's I always coveted the Swell Bubble Gum Cigars that were temptingly placed on the counter of Steve's Variety and Gift Shop in Wortley Road Village:

But they were fifteen cents each so I never bought any until I was in high school later in the decade. They're available these days in three additional colours/flavours at dedicated high-end candy shops:

That flea-bitten mutt Balticfox continues to claim that he blows the biggest bubbles which can clearly be seen to be an outrageous lie:

 

Things can admittedly go wrong, very wrong:

Edited March 11 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

The first comics I can recall buying were Cicero's Cat 1 and 2 in the summer of 1959. I bought them at Ken's Variety on Wharncliffe Road in London, Ontario and I still very clearly remember my father initially telling me to take #2 back because he thought I already had a copy!

Since Dell comics were still ten cents up until the issues that went on sale in December 1960, they were very popular and common on newsstands and places such as barber shops in those days. Both Tom and Jerry and the Donald Duck titles including Uncle Scrooge seemed to be particularly popular and common at the time. Here are a few scans of the latter from my present day collection:

Edited March 13 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

Though I was already familiar with Superman and Batman comics from the barber shop or wherever, the first superhero comics I distinctly remember reading were the Adventures of the Fly in early 1961. I remember reading them at Lamont & Perkins drugstore a block away on Wortley Road before they chased me out, at which point I'd head for Tyler & Zettel's pharmacy six or so blocks to the south on Wortley Road. I think the first issue of  the Adventures of the Fly that caught my eye was #12:

Bethlehem copy

'

I believe these drug stores only stocked Archie, Dell, Harvey and Classics Illustrated comics which is why the Fly was the first superhero to catch my attention.  The closest two variety stores/grocery stores from which I bought bubble gum cards and various penny candies didn't stock comics. The best selection of comics in the immediate neighbourhood was at Ken's Variety four blocks away but I usually didn't have to travel that far to spend what little money I had. Moreover what was the point of making the four block trek to Ken's to be tempted by comics I didn't have the money to buy?  Therefore I just don't remember seeing any of the DC superhero titles such as these that would have been on many newsstands/magazine racks at the time:

But then Adventures of the Fly 13 turned out to be even more of an eye opener for me:

Because inside were these ads heralding the introduction of Fly Girl and the Jaguar!

I also read through the Adventures of the Jaguar 1 when it first hit the newsstand at Lamont & Perkins or somewhere:

Northland copy

I was spellbound by this dashing new hero! The issue also included this tantalizing ad for the mysterious Fly Girl:

Who would shortly make her debut appearance in Adventures of the Fly 14:

Bethlehem copy

These comics left such a profound impact on my impressionable young mind that Fly, Fly Girl and Jaguar have remained among my very favourite comic book characters and superheroes to this very day! I now have nearly complete runs of both Adventures of the Fly and Adventures of the Jaguar in generally very nice condition including the first two issues of the Fly from 1959 which feature Joe Simon & Jack Kirby artwork:

Nonetheless these issues of the Adventures of the Fly and the Adventures of the Jaguar didn't yet prompt me to start up a collection of superhero comics. Quite simply at the age of nine I didn't have the money. A dime was a serious piece of currency in those days. A Canadian dime contained exactly 0.06 ounces of silver meaning that at the present moment's silver price of U.S.$24.91 per troy ounce it was worth U.S.$1.49 or Cdn.$2.03 in today's terms. Two packs of cards containing a total of eight cards and two sheets of bubble gum, a ten ounce bottle of pop including the two cent deposit, a full size chocolate bar, a good sized bag of chips or a two scoop ice cream cone could be had for a Canadian dime in those days. That's right, two scoops! Even a penny was a not insignificant bit of currency. A penny could get you a proper sized briquette of Dubble Bubble or Bazooka gum.

Edited April 4 by Hepcat

[Robot Man]

Probably the first comics I bought were those “still 10 cents” logo DCs. Then, came that fateful day when they became 12 cents! I don’t think I ever saw or bought the Fly. One day, I saw a new 12 center, The Amazing Spiderman #3 from some company called Marvel. I was hooked hard for life…

[Hepcat]

Do you remember the first or any of the DC comics you bought with the "Still only 10 cents" logo?

[Hepcat]

Bruce has long been among my favourite movie stars:

Here he is with his sidekick Honey West:

    

Some twenty years ago I was outbid for this Ideal Honey West board game in a Hake's auction and I regret it to this very day:

Ralph Pereida did the artwork. Ideal had the best box art for board games because of Ralph Pereida.

[Hepcat]

The first DC superhero comic I can specifically remember reading was Green Lantern 11 in April of 1962 which George a buddy of mine on a farm near Mount Brydges outside of London had:

I still remember the sense of awe and wonder with which it left me at the time. This Green Lantern character was leagues more interesting than staid old Superman and Batman were! 

Now I know for a fact that it prompted me to check out comics at the newsstand of Les' Variety since I clearly remember looking at these ads in the DC comics of the time:

I remember being captivated by the exotic Atom and Hawkman characters I was seeing for the first time. And I know for a fact that it was in the spring of 1962 that I first encountered that house ad for Atom 1 because when I saw basically the same ad reprinted for Atom 2 a couple of months later, I remember thinking that it was a pity I'd missed out on getting a copy of the Atom 1 with the cool Venus flytrap cover that I'd seen advertised earlier.

But if anything the house ads on the inside front and back covers impressed me even more strongly:

  

Wow, so cool and mysterious that Hawkman, and who were these Metal Men anyway? Since I very clearly remember knowing nothing about the Atom, Hawkman and Metal Men at the time, I must have viewed those ads for the first time in the spring of 1962.

The "Tomorrow's Stars Appear Today" ad is still one of my very favourite DC ads of all time despite, or perhaps precisely because, I first saw it in B&W. But because these ads were so compelling, over the years I've periodically wondered why I didn't start looking for and buying some of the comics that must have been on other comic racks only a few blocks away. I mean how could I have resisted covers such as these?

Northland copy

Well quite simply I didn't search through other newsstands for more superhero comics in the early spring of 1962. The explanation lies in another ad from DC comics that I very clearly remember seeing at the time:

Wow! Baseball Coins! Just like the Shirriff/Salada Hockey Coins that had been so popular with young boys in Canada over the previous two winters.

Here are scans of a few of these coins from my present day set:

I wondered immediately though whether they'd just be offered in the States, but within a week or so I found out that they'd not only showed up in bags of Shirriff Potato Chips on local store shelves, but that Mike M. from just down the street already had some! Mike being over a year older than me was always into the cool stuff first it seemed. Well I had to start collecting the Shirriff Baseball Coins and I did, but I didn't get beyond four or five before Hostess Potato Chips and Jell-O launched their own competing promotion (well they weren't just going to stand idly by while Shirriff carved into their market share), an absolutely fabulous set of 200 Aircraft Wheels! Here are scans from my present day set:

But, but, but, I couldn't collect both! It cost a whole dime to get a bag of potato chips with one of these little treasures and my ability to accumulate these Coins/Wheels was severely limited by cash flow considerations. Since I was already collecting the 1962 Topps Baseball cards (mercifully limited that year to the first three series totalling 264 cards since O-Pee-Chee didn't seem very good at convincing retailers to order the higher numbered series once the end of spring approached):

And eating Sugar Crisp cereal to collect the Canadian issue of the 1962 Post Baseball cards. Here are scans of a couple of the complete panels from my present day collection:

I had enough baseball related collectibles on my plate and therefore chose to collect the Aircraft Wheels thus contributing to the profits of the Hostess Potato Chip Company even though Shirriff made slightly better chips. (Mmmmmm, so delicious as well as nutritious whatever the brand!) Going with the Hostess turned out to be a wise decision since the Hostess/Jell-O Aircraft Wheels I accumulated that spring and summer are among the very few items that  somehow survived in my possession from my childhood to the present day.

But of course I didn't have enough disposable income to collect comics as well - until July anyway.

Edited April 4 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

July 1962 was the month when I actually bought my first superhero comics. I'd been greatly impressed to put it mildly by the copy of Justice League 8 which I'd read at a Lithuanian kids' summer camp near Mount Brydges just a few miles west of London. 

For Sale---the Justice League!

Editor:  Julius Schwartz
Writer:  Gardner Fox
Art:  Mike Sekowsky (pencils); Bernard Sachs (inks)

After getting back home, the Justice League issue that greeted me on the comic stand at Les' Variety on the corner was #14:

What a great cover! I was feverish with anxious anticipation as I bought it.  Over the next two weeks or so I bought these additional comics:

 (Not mine.)

8

I may have bought a Superboy as well. Since I limited myself to perusing only the offerings at Les' and Lamont & Perkins Pharmacy right beside Les', I failed to come across any of these other really neat comics which would have been on the stands at about the same time:

21

1

Fantastic Four 7 would also have been on the stands at the time but I have no recollection of seeing any Marvel comics that month.

It was just as well that I didn't come across any more comics to buy since within three weeks my older sister convinced my mother to pitch my small collection out before I was hopelessly corrupted. Nonetheless I must have continued to peruse the superhero comics on the stands for another few weeks because I very clearly remember being captivated by this house ad for Superman 156:

Temporarily though I'd learned my lesson and resisted the urge to buy that or any other comic for the time being. Besides, the fabulous Topps Civil War News cards would hit variety store counters at about the same time as that Superman comic and they'd act to squeeze most every nickel and dime from my grubby fingers for weeks:

'

And of course my sister's efforts to save me from being corrupted by my comics failed. I was already addicted and my life has been one of comic mag degeneracy ever since.

[Robot Man]

Enjoying your remberances and collecting history. We are about the same age. I really started seeking them out with the large 10 cent boxes. And to my horror the large 12 cent boxes popped up one day. Had to cut one out of my weekly allowance take. But I would pick up a pack of Civil War or Mars Attack cards instead.

My first Marvel was ASM 3. Blew my mind and I was a Marvel fan which cut back on my DCs a bit.

Then I discovered MAD… about that time I had to scrounge pop bottles, start cutting lawns and eventually get a paper route to supplement my growing addiction.

A great time to be a kid. 

[Hepcat]

On 4/4/2024 at 10:48 AM, Robot Man said:

But I would pick up a pack of Civil War or Mars Attack cards instead.

Sadly I believe O-Pee-Chee decided not to distribute the Mars Attacks cards in Canada. They still hardly ever crop up in Canada.

On 4/4/2024 at 10:48 AM, Robot Man said:

 

My first Marvel was ASM 3. Blew my mind and I was a Marvel fan which cut back on my DCs a bit.

 

I keep wondering why titles such as Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League of America, Aquaman, Hawkman, Atom and Fantastic Four didn't grab my attention in 1961 or earlier in 1962. I would have been instantly captivated by those titles yet I have no memory of that happening. Quite simply I think I just never saw those titles on a magazine stand until later in 1962. The Lamont & Perkins Pharmacy down the block carried only Dell, Harvey, Archie and Classics Illustrated(yuck!) titles while Steve's Variety and Gift Shop (where my father sent me to buy his Players Medium cigarettes) didn't carry comics. Neither did my two main sources for cards, Hartry's Grocery and a small mom-and-pop candy store, both of which were two blocks away but in different directions. But I don't even remember even Les' Variety, which opened up beside Lamont & Perkins later in 1961, regularly stocking DC titles other than the Superman and Batman ones or Marvels until later in 1962. I would have been enthralled by those new "exotic" heroes right from the get-go!

On 4/4/2024 at 10:48 AM, Robot Man said:

Then I discovered MAD… about that time I had to scrounge pop bottles, start cutting lawns and eventually get a paper route to supplement my growing addiction.

 

My own collecting and model building activities absolutely exploded in the spring of 1964 when I got a paper route delivering the London Free Press early each morning.

On 4/4/2024 at 10:48 AM, Robot Man said:

 

A great time to be a kid. 

That it was! But you never know what you've got till it's gone....

Edited April 4 by Hepcat

[Hepcat]

A copy of Space Adventures belonging to the older brother of a buddy of mine featuring the powerful Captain Atom helped to keep my appetite for the pajama brigade alive despite the loss of my comics in August 1962. I clearly recall that we were engaged in an informal football game across several back yards that day so it must have been sometime in the fall of 1962. The memory of these pages featuring a character based upon Nikita Khrushchev never left me:

Given the fact that the copy may have been completely coverless, I didn't know which issue it was and only determined that it was issue #40 about twelve years ago:

 (Not mine.)

Charlton had introduced Captain Atom in Space Adventures 33 cover dated March 1960. He went on to appear in Space Adventures #33-40 plus #42 cover dated October 1961. These early appearances of Captain Atom are brutally difficult to find in nice condition these days. I have only these two in my present day collection:

38

39

Charlton then brought Captain Atom back in Strange Suspense Stories 75 cover dated June 1965. The title was renamed Captain Atom with issue #78 and his appearances continued until issue #89 cover dated December 1967. I have all these later appearances. Here are scans of the first three:

75

76

77

[Hepcat]

A certain day in late July 1963 proved pivotal in instilling a lifelong interest in comics within me. There was a convenience store called Ken's Variety at Wharncliffe Road and Elmwood Street in London four blocks from where we lived. It was right beside the Hyland Theatre which featured wonderful double bill kids' matinees on Saturdays for twenty cents! Ken's was a great store for kids stocking everything from penny candy to bubble gum cards, ice cream cones, bottles of pop from an ice water cooler, Krun-Chee Potato Chips, AMT car model kits and others, PEZ dispensers, CFL bobbing head dolls and Halloween masks. It was very much a destination place for me and I have fond memories of shopping for various treasures at Ken's to this very day. On one of my frequent visits to Ken's, I happened to check out the spinner rack and saw these comics in all their shiny glory:

Now at the time I had set aside any comic buying for nearly a year because my heart had been broken late the previous summer when my older sister convinced my mother to throw out my small stack of comics because they were surely going to corrupt me for life. (She was right of course. They did.)  But there was no way I could resist the selection that was staring me in the face on the spinner rack that day. I had a pocket full of change and took the plunge back into four colour wonder. I bought the Aquaman, Flash and Justice League comics on the spot and returned a day or two later to buy the Atom and Wonder Woman ones. Within just over a week I'd bought them all.

In addition to the above comics, I picked up these among other DC superhero comics at Les' Variety (I think) just a block away from my house within a couple more weeks: 

 (Not mine.)

So that was it, game, set and match right there. I was well and truly hooked again. In fact I was so specifically taken by the Aquaman issue with Queen Mera's introduction that I took advantage of DC's kind offer and sent in the money for a two year subscription to Aquaman. And no, I wasn't daft enough to clip the coupon.

[Hepcat]

Not surprisingly the cartoons I watched in the early 1960's also played a part in shaping my present day comic collecting interests. Among those were the Beany and Cecil cartoons. The two characters got their start as puppets in 1949 on the Time for Beany show that Bob Clampett produced for Paramount Pictures. From 1952 to 1955 Dell published seven Four Color Comics based on this Beany and Cecil puppet show:

 (Not mine.)

Bob Clampett then converted Beany and Cecil into cartoon characters in 1959. CFPL-TV in London carried the Beany and Cecil cartoons for a year or two including during the 1962-63 TV season. I watched them with delight. 

Dell published five Beany and Cecil comics between 1962 and 1963. Sadly I have only two of these in my present day collection:

That's still two better than none of course, and I have the rest of my life to add more!