Chocolate Who

Here's a few images of wrappers from the Who Nestle chocolate bar promotion from 1971. There's not much info about these online - the images originally came from the Cuttings Archive, which has sadly vanished off the net.






I've also seen images of a purple coloured wrapper. There's a sort of "missing" Who story on the back - 'Doctor Who Fights Masterplan Q' - each wrapper with an image and paragraph of text, with 15 'episodes' to collect (shown are numbers 8, 12 and 15). It even features the Master, as seen on the third wrapper above. I haven't seen the details of this story anywhere.

Here's the display card from the box (can't remember where this came from, sorry). Notice how the artwork is obviously taken from the same promotional photographs as the Sugar Smacks promotion badges, here. The artwork here is good, with Pertwee's likeness being better than the one used on the actual wrappers.


Combom, as always, found the advert below (here)


These are obviously highly collectable, and rarely found for sale. I guess there's a few serious collectors out there who may have a complete set, or near complete. Wouldn't it be great to have all these online, or at least the text and images from the story. I know there's a few collectors on the Richard Who site who have wrappers - come on guys, get it together!

Anyone got any more scans or info??

Space Adventure cards

We've looked at the Troughton Dalek cards, produced by Walls, here and here. Here's a blog where, hopefully, they will post all the cards in this series - they're up to Number 13 already. Check it out here.

Sugar Smacks

Here's a Who promotion from 1971. Kellogg's 'Sugar Smacks' (sound nice and healthy hey) promoting third Doctor, Jon Pertwee, and the UNIT crew and "The timeless energy of Dr. Who" (which presumably comes from all the sugar). Free inside each pack of Sugar Smacks was one of six metal badges: the Third Doctor, The Master, Bessie, Joe Grant, the Brigadier & Unit Symbol.

The badges still pop up on ebay for reasonable prices, and the ceral box itself is highly sought after, although extremely rare. The image above shows the back, side and front of the box. The artwork is, what shall we say, dissapointing.

Pertwee was apparently very self-concious of the size of his nose, and you can imagine he must have been particularly happy with the artists rendition of him in the advert accompanying the promotion...


And the badge artwork is just as poor...


I'm missing a good pic of the Doctor and Unit logo badges.

Top Trumps (1978)

Here's something we haven't looked at before, the Jotastar 1978 Top Trumps set.

You can download the set here. The artwork's a bit rough, and the game itself is a bit dodgy, half made up of historical earth characters that have never appeared in Who. And the scores of the cards is a bit bonkers. In fact, you're probably better off making your own game, but anyway!

Download the Cadet Dalek cards

Back here I did a post introducing the Cadet Dalek cards from the early days of Dalekmania, 1964.

You can download scans of the cards, and a nice little introduction bit, here.

You'll notice I'm posting a lot of links to Mediafire and Rapidshare file sharing downloads. They are not my sites, but ones set up by other dedicated Who fans, often unknown, who we thank for their efforts!

These sites are very popular at the moment, and there's loads of Who stuff out there to download. However, there are concerns that there will be a clampdown on copyright infringement, so grab what you can whilst you can is my advice.

Most of the downloads come in the .cbr format - 'Comic Book Reader'. If you dont use this software, you can easily get the files still just by changing the file name extension from .cbr to .rar and opening and extracting the files using Winrar.

Amazing World of Doctor Who (1976)

Way back here I did a post on the 'Amazing World of Doctor Who' Annual which was produced at part of the Ty-phoo tea promotion.

Well, surprise surprise, you can download some of it here.

Chad Valley 'Give A Show' Projector (1965)

Here's a post I've been meaning to do for ages. The Chad Valley 'Give A Show' projector. Now to kids of the 60's Chad Valley projectors need no introduction. However, to kids of the 90's they probably need to be explained...


Chad Valley were the company who produced little plastic viewing 'projectors' - basically a torch, in front of which you held a slide! The accompanying slide-type stills, which you selected image by image, ran on to create a short story. Ah, life was simple in those days.


Chad Valley was, effectively, the PSP of its day, and covered many different kids shows, including Doctor Who. Have a look here for an extensive look at the Chad Valley history.

The set we're interested in, the Chad Valley Doctor Who set, was produced in 1965. Click through to the 'Give A Show' section on the link above, scroll down until you see the Who set, and click... and you'll see a nice library of ALL the images used in the stories.

137 - DOCTOR WHO IN LILLIPUT
138 - THE DALEKS DESTROY THE ZOMITES
139 - DOCTOR WHO ON THE AQUA PLANET
140 - DOCTOR WHO IN THE SPIDER’S WEB
141 - DOCTOR WHO MEETS THE WATERMEN
142 - THE DEFEAT OF THE DALEKS
143 - THE SECRETS OF TARDIS
144 - THE DALEKS ARE FOILED
145 - DOCTOR WHO AND THE NERVE MACHINE
146 - THE ICE-AGE MONSTER
147 - RESCUED FROM THE DALEKS
148 - ESCAPE FROM THE AQUAFIEN
149 - WHERE DIAMONDS ARE WORTHLESS
150 - THE PREHISTORIC MONSTER
151 - ON THE PLANET VORTIS
152 - THE ZARBI ARE DESTROYED


Now there's lots of these Chad Valley sets available, but the one us Who fans want is obviously, the Who one, illustrated above, which came with a special Who branded box. There's one on ebay at the moment with a 'buy-it-now' price of 199 UK Pounds. Other versions have the odd Dalek amongst non-Who images on the cover, so I suppose they are collectable as well, but sell for much lower amounts.

You could also buy the slide strips seperately from the projector, so I guess there are Who sets out there, perhaps even unopened in their original sales packaging... maybe. Who knows.


I can't remember where the images I've used for this post came from, so apologies (and thanks) if they're yours.

Some bright spark has put the slides into little film edits and posted them on YouTube:

PART 1



PART 2



PART 3



PART 4



Well worth a watch if you have the time to spare...

Now the only thing I want to know is how I rip these vids from YouTube so I can save them for my own personal pleasure... just in case they dissapear from YouTube when the solar flares hit.

TARDIS Tuner

Our favourite Who blog (yep, even including this one!), Combom, has found an old advert for the Tardis Tuner, a classic piece of old Who merchandise.


I think this advert was also used in Doctor Who Weekly magazine, but will have to dig them out to check.

The Tardis Tuner was really a chunky black medium wave radio that also had flashing lights (the arrows on the front lit up) and sounds, and was manufactured by Shortman Trading in 1978.


There are some more photos on RichardWho.

There were a couple in good condition which had sold for just over 50 quid each on ebay a few years ago.

Daleks Death Ray

Question: When is a Dalek death ray not a Dalek death ray?
Answer: When it's a Dalek 'blast gun'...

Confused? All will become clear...

Latest in our little series of confectionary/food products to carry the Who label - the 1970s Walls Dalek Death Ray lollypop. I nearly remember these - I recall the wrappers but not the taste... I don't think I ever ate one. Who knows. Apparently the lolly was chocolate and mint... my favourite... damn, I so want to eat one of these now (perhaps it is triggering some latent memory!).

The reverse of the wrappers contained a 'episode' from a story or fact file type information. There were two stories published over the life span of the product, the first 'From the world of the Daleks' and the second called 'The Incredible Daleks'. As far as I can establish, each story had eight parts, and there were at least three 'odd' fact/info type backs - win a Dalek, make a Dalek and the annotated Dalek (image, bottom).


The two stories can be distinguished by the banner on the top of the reverse side. The frist series is predominantly green, the second red, as shown above.

In digging around for bits for this post, I've found out that popular Who artist Frank Bellamy (see earlier posts) illustrated the cover wrapper and first 'story', which I never knew, and seems to be news to many people. There's a bit about it on the Frank Bellamy Checklist Blog, and you can find scans of the illustrations here. Unfortunately the story text is not included.


You'll also find scans of wrappers at Dalek-mania and on the RichardWho collectors site, for example here.

One of the wrappers featured an annotated Dalek, complete with blast gun. Now wouldn't it have been a bit better to call it a death ray?

Still kicking myself

I can't believe I've missed out on another bit of collector's Who stuff, the Radio Times 10th Doctor Collectors Issue which was published earlier this year. I didn't even know it had been published until they started appearing on ebay with asking prices of up to 150 quid! (although more realistically selling for 60). No way I'm paying that much!

It's more the shame as its looks as if it's been put together really well. There's a good review of it here. Bugger. Perhaps they'll do a reprint. Anyone found a scanned pdf version yet online?

Dr Who's Space Adventure

Here's the first TV advertising appearence for a Doctor Who associated commercial product - the 1967 Walls Sky Ray ice lollys... featuring, of course, the Daleks, and the Doctor (sort of!) and a very dodgy looking TARDIS control room.



Thanks again to Combom who picked this up in his blog last year. Now to you lucky yongsters who have grown up in this technological revolution called the internet, this might seam a bit tame. But to a Who fan growning up in the 1970s/80s, you honestly never imagined you would ever get to see this sort of stuff ever again.

No matter that the 'second Doctor' isn't in fact the Doctor at all (now there's a quiz question... name the actor?). It's presumably linked to the Daleks appearance in Troughton's first story, Power of the Daleks, broadcast in December 1966, as 'the Doctor' wears a similar hat in this story, and they even look like offical Beeb Daleks. Did you spot the recorder in is hands? Troughton wasn't really one for all this promotional stuff, and this is a rare example of merchandising during his reign.

The promotion was based around a set of 36 cards given away with Walls 'Sky Ray' ice lollys. The cards featured a somewhat long-haired doctor based on Patrick Troughton joining forces with the 'Sky Ray Space Raiders' to battle the Daleks. The cards were collected in an album, Dr Who's Space Adventure Book, which also included games and other features.


I got these images from the Cutting Archive, which has sadly dissapeared off the net - a great shame as it had so much Who info that I didn't get a chance to get to grips with. Anyway, as it's now gone, here are a few more images for those who are not lucky enough to own one of these. The artwork's not great, but that hardly matters - this is a classic bit of collectors Who!


And the cards themselves:




You can find odd cards for sale on ebay for a couple of pounds each, and I've seen mint sets go for £60. The album goes for between £50 and £100, depending on condition - usually with some, but not all the cards glued in - most prized would be without the the cards!

Now one thing I haven't found is an image of the wrapper for these lollys, other than that which appears in the ad, or the sales packaging/boxes. I guess the wrappers are rare and quite collectable.

Not to be confused with the 1970's Walls Dalek Death Ray lolly, which will no doubt pop up in a post soon...

Dalek Invasion of Lincoln, 1965

One of my favourite Who bloggers, Combom, has posted the following image which he discovered going through a local history book.


He asks if these are the costumes that were commerically available for kids at the time. The red Dalek 'playsuits' which are shown in the photograph were manufactured by Berwick in 1965 and sold for £3 6s 6d (£3.32). I guess they were popular Christas presents back in 1965, as part of the wave of 'Dalek-mania' mechandising which invaded the country. Surprisingly, considering their flimsy PVC looking nature, they still occasionally pop up on ebay and in collections, some complete with box and packaging. Below is a pic I captured off ebay some time ago - one sold for two hundred pounds in 2003. There is a link to another one here, currently for sale from Metropolis Vintage Toys, at a nice £675.

There's an odd little piece by a proud (?) owner of one of these playsuits back in the day here. Apparently, Marc Aldmond (lead singer of 1980's group Soft Cell), used to walk around wearing one!


I've also found reference to an earlier blue Dalek playsuit, manufactured by Scorpion in 1964 (I think - need to check this!).


Photo from The Skaro Toy Musuem. Apparently this Dalek playsuit from Scorpion Automotives, complete with flashing eye, survives only in limited numbers as the factory that made them suffered a fire which destroyed nearly all their stock and many of the parts required to make the suits. Only a couple are still in existence. Should one come up for sale, expect a price tag of thousands rather than hundreds. An article here refers to one sold for £3,000 several years ago, and estimates a value of £5,000 (2008 price).

I dont know any more than this at the moment, but will add details to this post as I get them!

Smokin´ Who

Hot on the heals of ´The Dalek Book´, Dr. Who and the Daleks sweet cigarettes were produced by Cadet in mid 1964, with artwork heavily inspired by the Dalek Book, and each packet containing a free collectors picture card.


Produced back in the days when smoking was cool, confectionery known as ´sweet cigarettes´ were popular for kids who wanted to emulate their parents' addiction. In this politically correct era they are now marketed as ´candy sticks´...

The series of 50 cards were split in half into two stories, illustrated by different artists. The likeness (and character) of the Doctor is hard to match to the TV version, in the first story having white hair, and in the second dark, but neither looking much like Hartnell.


The first story features the Doctor and the Daleks visiting Marinus and the Voord, created by Terry Nation in the TV story ´The Keys of Marinus´. Notably the Daleks are in search of magic mushrooms to make them invincable... The second story features the Doctor on an equally bizarre rescue mission with the Daleks.

Apparently there are two imprints of the cards, first by Cadet and then Goodies, which are much rarer. There are also two versions of the box, with different back panel illustrations - the common one being a space rocket (above), and the rarer version a ringed planet.

Unfortunately there was no special album produced to accompany the cards. although you could send off for a generic album.

There´s not much about these on the net, although I know I have found stuff before, I can´t find anything worth linking here at the moment. I do have a downloaded collection of the complete set, but again I can´t remember where I found it! It contains a banner page listing it as a "Receptacle Presentation", and a notes page from which much of the info presented here has been edited. If you search around you´ll certainly find the odd card scan (eg. ebay and other collectors sites), and card number 50 is show above.

The Beginnings of Dalekmania!

As most of us know, the Daleks featured in the second ever Who story, ´The Mutants´ (or ´The Dead Planet´, or even ´The Daleks´!), in late 1963 and early 1964, and were an instant audience hit. Terry Nation knew he had something big on his hands, and controlled the branding, marketing and promotion of the Daleks in a manner to which even Davros would be proud.

´Dalekmania´, as it became known, was driven by the huge commercial promotion of Dalek merchandise that took place from the mid 1960s and which followed the huge commercial influence of ´Beatlemania´. There were other manias to follow (Batmania in 1966, Monkeemania in 1967) but Dalekmania was probably the first TV grown merchandise boom. It was not until late 1964, when ¨The Dalek Invasion of Earth¨ arrived, that the tills really started ringing. From clockwork Daleks to Dalek soap, the shops were full of wierd collectables, many of which remain the most highly sought after items for Who fans with more money than sense (purely a mathematical equation, no disrespect to Who collectors, of course!).


One of the very first items of Dalek merchandise, and indeed Who merchandise, was ´The Dalek Book´. Published by Souvenir Press (Panther Books) on the 30 June 1964 this 96 page hardback annual was the first time The Daleks appeared in comic strip form. The Dalek Book contained both colour and black & white comic strips and illustrated text stories and told the story of the Dalek invasion of our solar system and their ultimate, and apparent, defeat. It also featured a new photostory with Susan and the Daleks using images from the first Who Dalek story. There´s no Doctor in any of these these stories.

The book was said to be "Based on the Dalek Chronicles discovered and translated by Terry Nation" and was co-written by TV Who script editor David Whittaker and Dalek creator and writer Terry Nation. The illustrations were by Richard Jennings (including the cover artwork), John Woods and A.B. Cornwell. [Jennings was also the first artist chosen to illustrate the regular weekly Dalek strip on the back cover of the new comic TV Century 21 which started in January 1965.]

The book showed the Daleks in flight over 40 years before they would gain the ability on TV - a major improvement in Dalek technology which BBC special effects (and budgets) couldn´t match at the time. Although in the comics they flew by means of ´transolar discs´, flying platforms which allowed the Daleks to fly through space, the imagery of a flying Dalek armada clearly inspired similar scenes in the New Who story ´Doomsday´.


The story was recently used as the vague basis for the backstory of the Dalek Empire audio series produced by Big Finish.

If you are lucky enough to find The Dalek Book you can expect to pay over 50 quid for it in good condition. If, like me, you´re still waiting to win the lottery, then settle for the downloadable scans which you can find here (along with most of the Dalek annuals from the 60s and 70s).

Stories


Invasion of the Daleks - comic strip
Red for Danger - text story with illustrations
The Oil Well - comic strip
The Message of Mystery - photo story
The Secret of the Mountain - text story with illustrations
City of the Daleks - comic strip
The Humanoids - comic strip
The Small Defender - text story with illustrations
Monsters of Gurnian - comic strip
Break-through! - text story with illustrations
Battle for the Moon - comic strip


Features

The Dalek Planetarium
The Dalekode
Anatomy of a Dalek
Dodge the Dalek
Dalek War Machines
Dalography of Skaro
The Dalek Dictionary

Time for tea?

In 1976 TyPhoo Tea ran one of the best Who promotional offers ever, featuring the work of the great Chris Achilleos on the boxes, 12 photographic collectors cards, and a supporting hardback annual style album called ´The Amazing World of Doctor Who´, with an outstanding cover, again produced by Achilleos. Apparently there´s a wallchart to go with this, although I have yet to find a photo of this. Just a shame the cards are photographs rather than original artwork, but hey, you can´t have everything (not that us power crazed megalomanics listen to such sweeping statements).


You can still pick up the cards for a reasonable price on ebay and the like, and the album is also occasionally found. However the promotional boxes themselves are probably the most sought after and few and far between, after all, who keeps old tea boxes?!


I used a picture of the album on my post about Chris´s work (here), and should again plug Chris´s website where you can order limited edition prints of the cover artwork, and a great Tom Baker portrait, again used in the promotion. You can visit his website here.


Unfortuantely we were a PG Tips family (probably my fault as I was also an addicted collector of the free collectors cards which appeared in these, so my poor mum probably had no choice but to buy PG!) and I have never had the disposable income to buy the stuff second hand since. But as soon as I win that lottery...

When I originally posted this I had lost the source of these images, which I have now rediscovered. Who collector Mike Hall has an excellent site called Dalek-mania which contains a wealth of information on all things Dalek and beyond, including original props. He has marked these images as his own copyright, which we respect, but wonder if the artist and manufacturer (and designer!) also have copyright claims. As the images are in the public domain, and refer to a once publicially available item, we think it´s OK to reproduce them here in this context. However, please respect this copyright if you copy these images for your own use by at least crediting Mike and his site.

The Art of Who (Part 1) : Chris Achilleos

Growing up with the Target novelisations of the original ´classic´ Who meant that one artist was synonymous with early Doctor Who stories - the one and only Chris Achilleos. Highly styilized, and yet increadibly accurate, often with a pointilist style black and white portrait of the Doctor, Chris´s covers jumped off book shelves and were almost as exciting as reading the books themselves.

Between 1973 and 1977 Chris illustrated the covers of 28 of the first Target books, some of which included back cover illustrations, and a few also included black and white illustrations inside the books as well. Some of these covers were replaced on later reprints and editions (criminally in my view - no disrespect to the subsequent artists).

He also illustrated covers for some special non-fiction books, most noteably the ´Doctor Who Book of Monsters´ and ´The Amazing World of Doctor Who´, both of which feature great colour portraits of Tom Baker with an assortment of monster enemies. The latter title was an annual-style title produced as part of a 1976 TyPhoo Tea promotion, and special boxes also featured his art - now highly sought after by crazed collectors of all things Who. I certainly wish I had an example (I´ll stick up some pics when I get the chance).


You can see all of Chris´s covers, including some special limited editions (for example a 20th Anniversary Five Doctors commorative print and other one-off paintings), on his website. Chris is now a well established fantasy artist, having published several solo books and becoming rather well known for his fantasy female figures. And very nice they are too.

Sadly, some of Chris´s original works where apparently stolen some years back, including Day of the Daleks, the Tenth Planet and The Cybermen. As a result Chris can´t offer prints of these images for sale, which is a great shame not only for him, but also us.

I´ve copied the main illustration on this post from his site, and I sincerely hope he doesn´t mind (I´m writing to him to request his permission for its use in this context, but acknowledge his copyright in the meantime). What I didn´t realize until I first browsed his site is that Chris sells high quality prints of his work. He has even done new commissions, including a special ´Tomb of the Cybermen´ cover and a couple of New Series prints.

Sometime back in the 1980´s (I think - I´ll update this when I get more time!) a portfolio of six of his covers was released, of which I am a proud owner, and I did manage to pick up a signed print of his tribute to the New Series with a 9th Doctor and Rose illustration, complete with Autons and Dalek.

If you can´t afford to get yourself a print from Chris yourself (but it must surely be worth saving up the pennies), or if you´re not loaded enough to commission your own personal painting, then it´s well worth hunting down early editions of these books just for the covers. They can still be found secondhand at reasonable prices, and must surely be a good investment. Check out ebay or greenmetropolis.com (a secondhand book site which donates to The Woodland Trust).


Doctor Who and the Daleks (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Crusaders (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Zarbi (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Auton Invasion (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Cave-Monsters (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Doomsday Weapon (Cover and interior illustrations)
Doctor Who and the Dæmons (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Sea Devils (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Abominable Snowmen (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Curse of Peladon (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Cybermen (Cover)
Doctor Who - The Three Doctors (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Loch Ness Monster (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Dinosaur Invasion (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Tenth Planet (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Ice Warriors (Cover)
Doctor Who - Revenge of the Cybermen (Cover)
Doctor Who - Genesis of the Daleks (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Web of Fear (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Space War (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Planet of the Daleks (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Pyramids of mars (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Carnival of Monsters (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Seeds of Doom (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos (Cover)
Doctor Who and the Ark in Space (Cover)

Non-fiction

The Making of Doctor Who (Cover, Target Books edition)
The Doctor Who Monster Book (Cover)
The Second Doctor Who Monster Book (Cover)
The Amazing World of Doctor Who (Cover)
The Target Book (Cover)


Thanks Chris, your work is a great addition to the world of Who, and an inspiration to aspiring artists.