As we move into the final years of Whizzer and Chips, the free gifts became a little more frequent. I left off in 1984 (there's a link to parts 1 and 2 at the bottom of this post), and the next free gift came with issue dated June 11th 1985. It was another badge from Heinz, this time of a Haunted House! Although I'll be honest in saying that I quite like the artwork of this badge (halloween is probably my favourite comic theme, when done well), the fact that it's promoting spaghetti is a little less exciting. Here's a picture of the badge, along with an image of the cans found elsewhere on the internet (although to be fair, those cans do have a cool spooky design too).
The next gift was another Weetabix badge with issue dated 8th June 1985. In similar vein to the previous Weetabix badge giveaway in 1982, four badges were created for four comics - Whizzer and Chips, Buster, Eagle and Tiger. Here's a photo of the badges, as well as a promotional advert taken from Eagle.
Now here's a gift that I like a bit more - a free zoom balloon! I'm sure you're familiar with the concept, but if not it's basically a super noisy balloon that when released flies quickly and directionless around the room. Great fun, it came with issue dated 28th September 1985. This issue also came with a J.R (Junior Rotter) cut-out story book - it was definitely the comic to have that week.
Issue dated 25th October 1986 came with a "Sssuper free gift" - the Whizzer and Chips quiz wallet. This was essentially a piece of card that could be folded up with various questions and answers printed on it - thus creating a quiz. This issue contained the wallet and the first "quiz strip", and three more were given away in issues dated November 1, 8 and 15.
Tom Paterson drew a wonderful front cover to promote the free stickers that came with issue dated 7th November 1987. As you can see, one set of stickers was for the Whizz-Kids, and the other for the Chip-ites. Good fun.
I think there might be something poetic in the final gift ever given away with Whizzer and Chips being a set of stickers, given such a gift was also used to promote the first issue back in 1969. The free "snappy stickers" came with issue dated 18th March 1988, with an issue that also included a Chip-ite mini mag drawn on a computer. Oh, how times (and technology) have changed. This was actually the second set of snappy stickers, the first set of seven were given away the previous week.
That wraps up this three-part series on every gift given away in Whizzer and Chips over its 21 year run. The comic certainly gave away quite the variety of stuff, no doubt all of which were very quickly lost and few survive - I'd say we are lucky to even have these photos of them!
Whereas I'm fairly certain I've mentioned all the gifts that were given away, if you're an eagle-eyed reader and know of any that I've missed please comment below and let me know. Even better if you can provide a picture, and I will of course update the post.
Part 1: http://whackycomics.blogspot.com/2023/05/every-whizzer-and-chips-free-gift-part.html
Part 2: http://whackycomics.blogspot.com/2023/07/every-whizzer-and-chips-free-gift-part.html
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