What can we learn from "Look & Learn"? This tabloid-sized British magazine bored children to tears throughout the British Commonwealth with earnest stories about, oh, I dunno, history and science and stuff. Even its requisite science fiction serial "Trigan Empire" was kinda dull. So you'd think it would be useless for Stupid Comics purposes? Well think again, bunky - "Look & Learn" might not have been goofy, but some of its advertisements certainly were.


So the best way to sell "fruit gums" is by evoking medieval torture. I don't know if we want our product to be associated with the painful screams of the tormented, but you're the boss!


Hey, candy hidden in some medieval guy's socks. TASTY!

0
Do you want to play "Whizz Ball"? Or how about the "Streaker"? It is the 1970s after all! Come on, streak against your friends, man! Don't let prudish Victorian hangups get in the way of streakin' fun! Or if you prefer, get "Slap Happy" as you "pump it" or "jump it".

0
"Sally" is the "new gay weekly for schoolgirls". Just how gay is "Sally"?


Totally gay. They just can't stop telling us how gay "Sally" is!

Yes, that's right, we're twelve.


Meanwhile the Starship Exeter orbits the planet Omega in a View-Master ad clearly aimed at the important Trekkie View-Master purchasing target market. Seriously, I totally thought that this ad copy was written by somebody who had no idea what "Star Trek" was - but suddenly I realized that this exciting scene is from the episode "The Omega Glory" - you know, the one where Kirk recites the Pledge Of Allegiance -and now I know that somebody there was seriously obeying the Prime Directive, if you know what I mean! And I think you do!
And over on another page, we ask the question, who will defend America's space program - sorry, "programme" - from evil spies?


Super Mousse, that's who. Yes, there was a time when "mousse" was a dessert, not a hair product, and it was advertised by super powerful cartoon mooses.


Obviously Buzz Aldrin was not on this flight - THAT spaceman will drop you like a bad transmission. He'll lay you out like wholesale carpet. Don't mess with The Buzz.


Make way for Tilly's Magic Tranny! If you listen to the tranny you will do whatever the tranny says! It's magic! No, not RuPaul in a top hat holding a bunny, and not a mystical Hydra-Matic or flappy-paddle gearbox, but a transistor radio featured in a strip that actually did not run in "Look & Learn" but in a completely different comic. Perhaps "Sally".
Sometimes "Look & Learn" would help us by running ads for upcoming feature films that we'd surely want to look at and learn from.


For instance, here we see Buck Rogers "laying it on" the 25th century. I learned many things from "Buck Rogers", especially from the episode starring Gary Coleman.


Here Don Kirshner, fresh from his successes with The Monkees and The Archies, brings us another prefabricated musical group destined to star in a film that was a massive failure that vanished without a trace. Apparently this film is about naked singing children who are kidnapped by naked bald aliens. Who wouldn't want to see that? BTW this film was Olivia Newton-John's second film role.
So what have we learned from Look & Learn? That advertisements in British children's magazines from the 1970s were kind of funny sometimes. Also, when all else fails, swipe Jack Kirby.


NOTE TO BRITISH CHILDREN: Best results for quenching thirst are achieved by ingesting actual liquids, not artificially flavored "choc-top Woppas."

PREVIOUS STUPID COMICS

NEXT STUPID COMICS

BACK TO STUPID COMICS INDEX

BACK TO MAIN INDEX