The Herbs and The Adventures of Parsley
CLASSIC BBC KID'S ANIMATION DEVISED & WRITTEN BY MICHAEL BOND
PIPPIN and PLAYLAND .Fortunately for Michael Bond & the publishers,The Herbs coincided with the last great hurrah of kid's comics.-at a time when there were still just 3 tv channels,no video and "PC" simply meant "Police Constable."
THE HERBS in PIPPIN
The Herbs first appeared in Pippin in Issue No.107 for the week ending 5th October,1968 - a colour,double page introductory strip.Click HERE to view it .You won't be leaving the site btw.
The first Herbs cover (pictured above) was for Issue No.185 for the week ending 4th April, 1970.
Which perhaps wasn't entirely disconnected with the same day tv launch of the new Adventures of Parsley sequel !
And it also had the honour of being the very first Pippin cover that didn't actually feature any of the Pogles characters.
But,like its' 184 predecessors,it continued the tradition of the cover starting off a story that continued on the back page
And if you click on the cover you'll see that particualr issue's back page.
Just out of interest,the other strips were Larry the Lamb in Toytown,The Woodentops,Mary Mungo & Midge,The Moonbeams,Joe, Chigley,The Pogles,Trumpton,Andy Pandy,Bizzy Lizzy,and Bill and Ben.
The last Herbs strip appeared in issue #459,dated 5th July,1975.Seemingly a victim of the squeeze resulting from the merger of Pippin with Playland the following week.
Can You Help ? First of all I'd like to thank Tony Clark for his help with this page.
And,secondly,can anyone help with these.......
Herbs-specific
When did the last colour strip of The Adventures of Parsley last appear in Playland -assuming that once it was demoted to b & w it stayed that way until its last appearance ?
And when was that last appearance ?
General Pippin,Playland
I'd like to try and broaden out this section to include details of the other strips featured ie.1st and last appearances + scans of sample strips.Anyone interested ?
And are there any of the original artists out there who'd like to get in touch ?
My email address is on the Home Page.Thanks
THE HERBS in PLAYLAND
Whilst The Herbs didn't start appearing in Pippin until October,1968
they'd actually been appearing in Playland since its very 1st issue on Monday 8th January,1968 (Herbs strip HERE)
Which is particularly interesting because it was a full month before the 1st episode hit the screens on February 13th.
And presumably designed to give it a handy bit of pre-publicity.
It ran continuously until issue #38 dated 28th September,1968 before starting it's run
in Pippin the following week.But Playland wasn't to be Herbage-free for too long.
Because when you've got 2 publications to fill,sequels can be handy things.Which is why there were 3 seperate strips for Camberwick Green,Trumpton and Chigley for example.And whilst continuing to appear in Pippin as The Herbs,a new strip called "The Adventures of Parsley the Lion" began in issue #86 of Playland on August 30th,1969.
Whether this was a deliberate ploy to flag up the tv sequel due to air in April 1970 I'm not sure.But the Beeb were getting pre-publicity for nothing and Polystyle were paying Bond for the privilege,so why not ?
What I've yet to determine though is when it's final appearance was.
The Changing Faces of Parsley
Below is just an idea of how different artists
interpreted the characters over the years.
The 3 examples are all taken from Playland.
With a nice spread of 1969,1971 and 1973.
Click on each pic and you can see the whole strip.
The times,they are indeed a-changin' ,as Parsley's mane goes from a groovy tight afro,through to a sort of Jesus Christ Superstar wavey perm.
The strips also serve as a reminder that both publications were a mix of colour and b & w to keep costs down.
Issue No.89 (wk ending 20th Sept.1969) No.195 (wk.ending 2nd Oct.1971) No.294 (wk.ending 25th Aug.1973)
This was the 1st ever issue to feature someone other than The Pogles on the cover.
So,if we presume they reserved the colour for the most popular shows at any one particular time, then clearly Parsley's star was beginning to wane by '73 -repeats or not.
But that's just a presumption and I've also yet to discover if it ever re-appeared in colour again after that .
Oh,and just to say......
That the image of the guitar-wielding Parsley is taken from the cover of a Pippin annual (1972)
(Herbage content in Pippin Annuals: 1971-1976, Herbage content in Playland Annuals: 1969-1975
More on annuals page as and when)
Helter Skelter Comic
PIPPIN COMIC-OVERVIEW
FIRST ISSUE: Monday 19th September,1966 (wk. ending 24th) as "No.1 of the new coloured picture weekly for the very young viewer."
CONTENT: Predominantly a tv tie-in for tots,it made good use of the particular Watch With Mother favourites of the period.
At around 16 pages long,it was a mix of colour and black & white strips.Plus a puzzle page,a reader's postbag-where readers could get a photo of themselves posted- and a bible story
WHO or WHAT WAS PIPPIN: He was the young elfin-like central character from "The Pogles".Which meant that that particular series graced every front & back cover for the first 184 issues (until the one opposite).Most of them featured Pippin & his furry sidekick Tog. But I've chosen one which has the whole Pogles family -here-(xmas '69) -for the curious or forgetful.
PLAYLAND: Pippin was so successful from launch that publishers, Polystyle Publications, launched "Playland" in January 1968. Officially subtitled "companion paper to Pippin" it was a simple 'double your money' cash-in as it had the same basic format, price,number of pages and monday publication date -just different strips.So,it was hard to see how it could fail and indeed it didn't.
PIPPIN IN PLAYLAND: Both titles ran very successfully in tandem until July 1975 when the almost inevitable happened and they finally merged to form "Pippin in Playland".
BUTTONS: This was another clone which started in 1981-a generally inauspicious time for comic launches.But it actually ended up swllowing the comic it was based on in 1986 before disappearing for good in the 90's.(exact date unknown) -A victim,like so many other titles,of the technological age & increasing competition for kid's time and money.
Pity really.Because that buzz every kid got when their favourite comic hit the shelves was hard to beat.A simple pleasure,fondly remembered.
But,at least printed memories are indelible
Helter Skelter Comic page HERE
