My grandmother would bring up to a dozen of these magazines when she visited during Christmas in the 1960s. She worked for my great uncle, a doctor, in California. I believe these were pulled from the waiting room.
Anyway, I had not seen them before or since -- until I ran into a copy at a thrift shop a few weeks ago. There were a couple of different magazines: Humpty Dumpty's and Children's Digest. The Digest had Tintin reprints. That I remember.
Everyone knows about Tintin.
But Twinkle -- Twinkle has been forgotten. A six page Twinkle story was in most issues of HD, back in the day. Here's my earliest copy, from 1957, that I got from eBay this week. The feature alternately intrigued me and terrified me when I was a tot. I mean, look at those trees: leafless, bare of most branches. The woodcut approach was none too cuddly in my little kid eyes.
And the star of the strip was literally an anthropomorphic fallen star. So weird.
There is little on the web about this feature, which ran from the 1950s to the 1960s I believe. The table of contents would sometimes (sometimes not) credit Twinkle as by Jay Williams, a prolific children's book illustrator. I don't know if Mazin and Mr. Williams were one and the same.
Now that I'm older, I like the style ... but I still think it's weird that a star is friends with forest animals.
The very best trivia is the stuff you've genuinely forgotten but immediately remember and embrace. I had a subscription to Humpty Dumpty and Twinkle was part of my earliest reading material!
ReplyDeleteWhat a flash!
Same here, as Mike.
ReplyDeleteI probably had that issue, but I remember Twinkle!
As a child, I loved that little star and always looked forward to Twinkle's latest adventures in every new issue.
Oddly enough, Humpty Dumpty magazine and the Twinkle stories therein always remind me of times when I was sick with the mumps or measles, or a bad cold.
Those books were always there to entertain me as I was nursed back to health.
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