The Popples toy line got a short-lived comic book series.
In 1986, Those Characters From Cleveland, the toy and licensing design division of American Greetings, teamed with Mattel to launch a new toyline called Popples. Susan Trentel, who had previously created the first prototypes of the Strawberry Shortcake dolls and Care Bears toys, worked with art director Thomas Schneider to craft the first prototypes for these characters, which Trentel was inspired to create while rolling up socks. Popples are brightly colored teddy bear-like creatures with long tails that end in a pom-pom. Like marsupials, they have a pouch – but these things can roll up inside their own pouches. Trentel also worked with Marie Cisterino, Janet Jones, Fran Kariotakis, and Janet Redding to create a promotional animated series, produced by American Greetings, DIC Enterprises, and The Maltese Companies. The show lasted for a total of two seasons and twenty-three episodes, running from April of 1986 to June of 1987.
At the time, Marvel Comics had an imprint called Star Comics, which only existed from 1984 to 1988 and was created for titles that would be aimed at child readers and were often based on kid-friendly TV shows or toy lines. Bullwinkle and Rocky, Care Bears, Fraggle Rock, Muppet Babies, Heathcliff, ThunderCats, the Ewoks and Droids of Star Wars, Masters of the Universe, those were the sort of comics we got from the Star imprint, with the name “Marvel” still on the cover so we’d know which company was truly behind it all. And in December of 1986, Marvel / Star started publishing Popples comic books.
Either the kids that watched the cartoon didn’t tend to read comic books or the decision was made to end the comic book series at the same time the animated series ended, but whatever the case, the Popples comic only lasted for four issues, the last coming in June of ‘87.
My girlfriend and I were both children in the 1980s, and while she remembers the Popples toy line and remembers wanting but never receiving her own Popple, I had no recollection of these characters at all. If I was ever aware of the Popples or watched the cartoon, that information didn’t stay in my mind – but one thing I can say for sure is that I never leafed through a Popples comic book until 2026.
The first two issues of the Star Comics series came from the creative team of writer Stan Kay, penciler John Costanza, inker Jacqueline Roettcher, colorist Isabel Bidwell, and letterer Carmel Brock. Tony Franco took over as writer on the second two issues, with Roberta Edelman taking over as inker on issue 3. Roettcher returned for issue 4, which saw George Roussos stepping in for Bidwell as colorist. Rick Parker was the letterer on the third and fourth issues.
These four issues tell us about “the funniest, squooziest zanies to pop on the scene,” the Popples, who are said to sometimes share a home with kids named Billy and Bonnie and their mom – although they like to stay out of sight when the mom is around. We never learn exactly where the Popples came from or how they came into being, their existence is just taken as a given. There are Popples in the world, but people hardly ever see them.
They’re a fun-loving bunch who like to play and party their days away. The characters are Puzzle, Puffball, Pretty Bit, Potato Chip, Pancake, Party, Putter, Prize, and Pretty Cool, who is called P.C. for short. Some of them have specific characteristics – for example, Puffball throws her voice, Prize tells stories, P.C. has a magic touch, and everybody laughs when Party laughs. But for the most part they’re difficult to tell apart, aside from looking at their different colors, because they all like the same things and behave in the same playful way. They also all have the ability to pull any sort of item they want out of their pouches, from cannons and unicycles to stilts, hot air balloons, airplanes, rocket ships, etc. If it’s an inanimate object that will help them have fun, they can conjure it up.
I may be decades older than the target audience, but I actually had fun reading through these Popples comic books, as I liked the old-fashioned cartoon-style stories and found the Popples to be an entertaining group of characters. I preferred the stories written by Kay over those written by Franco, but they all worked well enough for the concept.
The first issue (Pop Goes the Spy) finds the Popples following Billy and Bonnie on a trip into the city and, while they’re there, deciding to solve the mystery of an orange-stealing dog. That dog leads them to a girl named Alice, an ambassador’s daughter who is considering running away from home. She opts not to, but she’s not exactly safe at home: a woman called Madame Spy, aided by a guy called Comrade, has gone undercover as Alice’s babysitter in an effort to discover the truth of an “exciting secret” the ambassador has mentioned. The Popples thwart the spies and the ambassador reveals a heartwarming secret to his daughter.
In the second issue, The Perfect Person, Billy and Bonnie come home from school heartbroken because they’ve lost their positions as quarterback and head cheerleader, respectively, and they’ve lost them to the same person: Tina Terrific, an unhappy girl who lives to beat everyone at everything and thinks laughing is stupid. The Popples, with the help of Billy and Bonnie, are able to help her lighten up and stop being so grumpy and mean.
The third issue is a wild one. Called Space Popples, this one finds the Popples crossing paths with country boy Seth Bushwaller, who likes to spend his time watching and reading “space stuff.” Coincidentally, the wilderness outside Seth’s home is ground zero for an alien invasion, as the Kelvin people, the Masters of the Vicious Blopnite of Klydor and the Conquerors of the Mighty Schlepmore of Ferden, have decided to take over Earth. The first Kelvins to land on the planet are the trio of Yuckle, Buckle, and Clive, who look like human children. Since Seth is first Earthling they see, they think he’s a fellow Kevlin and mistake the Popples for Earthlings. The Popples accidentally scare the aliens away while trying to play with them, but at least they’re able to make friends with Seth.
In the fourth and final issue, The Pet Show Off, Billy and Bonnie are bummed that they don’t have enough money to buy their mom a birthday gift. When they find out that a local pet show is offering a $50 prize, the Popples set out to find them a pet. Across town, there’s a mansion-dwelling couple called Mr. and Mrs. Van Ritz, who are so rich they burn money in their fireplace. Their white French poodle Prince sees himself as a dog of action and is tired of being treated like a pup, so he escapes through fireplace, coming out black with soot. The Popples save this black poodle from the dog catcher and take it home to Billy and Bonnie, who name him Champ and train him to be a champion.
Don’t worry, Prince / Champ is reunited with his owners after he scratches off the soot at the pet show, and they promise they will take care of all his needs from now on. Billy and Bonnie use the reward money the Van Ritzes give them to buy their mom a puppy, a French poodle they name Champ.
And that’s pretty much the end of the Popples adventures we got to see from Marvel. It’s a shame, because this was a good book for kids. Marvel did have some more Popples releases, but only in the UK. A Popples Annual was released there in 1987, with another following in 1988, along with a “The Best of Popples: A Marvel Treasury Edition” book. Rather than regular comic books, the annuals were magazine-style hardcover books that featured games and activities, along with prose stories and comics.
No comments:
Post a Comment