I pulled out my 12 February 1972 Tammy and came across this advertisement for promoting the launch of Sandie. The announcement is unusual for several reasons. First, it is a pull-out. What’s more, you can pull it out without ruining any stories in Tammy.
Furthermore, Sandie is being promoted as a sister comic to Tammy and girls were being urged to get a copy of Sandie when they picked up their Tammys. It sounds like the advertisement was trying to draw not only on the popularity of Tammy but also on the Tammy readership to bolster Sandie sales. Tammy herself was barely a year old when this advertisement was appeared, which makes it all the more surprising to use Tammy as a means to help launch the new title. It does have you wonder what the June version was like. Was it the same ad or a slightly different one in June?
Finally, Sandie is not only promoting her stories, free gift and competitions to pull in readership, but what’s in her letters pages as well. Sandie says she is going to have two special pages: a letters page (doesn’t every girls comic have one?) and a joke page where readers can earn £1 for each letter or joke published. Yes, all girls comics do have that sort of thing, but the ad does prompt girls to think immediately and get replies as soon as possible.
A Resource on Jinty: Artists, Writers, Stories 
I guess that at the time it was quite common to have the announcement of a new comic presented as a pull-out. I’ve seen several like that in June and Sandie.
The announcement of Sandie in June was almost similar to the one in Tammy. The only difference is that in the box where it says in Tammy “Don’t forget… Make sure you get your copy of Sandie when you buy Tammy” it says in June: “Get your copy today and every Monday”. They used the same font for it.
By the way: the page with jokes were actually two pages, in the center of the comic. Mostly written jokes, and a few with a drawing. I stopped reading these pages after the second issue, as the jokes are really quite corny. But I guess that for young girls at the time they must have been new and funny.
I am just looking at my few issues of Sandie (I only have 4 of them) and the jokes page was very reduced by 1973 – half a page in the issue dated 11 August 1973, nothing in the issues dated 29 September 1973 or 28 July 1973. The issue dated 17 March 1973 does have a full page of them though, and mentions paying a pound for each original joke published.
I overlooked one thing: in the add in Tammy it said: “A great new sister paper to Tammy”. In June it said: “It’s the newest, greatest picture-story weekly for girls…”
Interesting! The expectation clearly was that girls would buy more than one regular comic at a time (I only ever got one at a time, myself, though at school I read other people’s comics and magazines of course). Or at least that Sandie was such a sister paper to Tammy that they should be read by the same girls.
Sandie was edited by John Wagner, I seem to recall.
Yes, that’s what it says at the Comics Database Wiki. John Wagner did edit Sandie. Wonder if he wrote anything there too?
Hey, I wonder if Mavis Miller wrote anything for Jinty as well as being her editor?
I think one comic a week would be enough. If girls would buy both Tammy and Sandie, each 40 pages, they would have to read about 70 pages of comics a week. A bit much, I think. Or perhaps girls didn’t read all the stories in a comic?
Besides, it would make more of a dent in their pocket money to buy two comics. However, some girls bought several titles at once. There was a letter in Jinty where a reader bragged about the number of titles she read, including both Jinty and Penny before the merger. I think she listed six titles she read a week, which I thought was a bit staggering.
I guess that’s just what she did: brag. That would mean she read about a comic a day. There would hardly be any time left for something else during the day. But it is possible, of course. I wonder what she did when there were hardly any comics left in the mid 80’s. I can think of several things. 🙂
You think it sounds unlikely, but I could certainly have read a comic a day – I certainly did use to read a book a day, quite often. It was my favourite pastime! I did spend little time doing other stuff, but I also read fast. 🙂 And when there were hardly any British comics in the mid 80s, I read US comics instead 🙂 🙂
I forgot of course children have more time to read than adults. As a child I also had time to read a comic a day, but I didn’t do this every day.
If the girl spoke the truth, I hope for her she still has them, so she can still enjoy her huge collection.
That was a nice thing about comics in the UK (and frustrating if you start collecting today!): there we so many! If you’d want to, had the money and the time, you *could* read a new comic every day.
When I just started to get an interest in British comics, I found it amazing how many titles there were in the past for girls’, boys’ and humor comics.
Girls certainly swopped comics and read each other’s – so I think it isn’t that surprising to think that they might read quite a few pages of comics on a weekly basis.
And the comics were far more affordable than they are now, so many girls would have had the pocket money to buy more than one title. I have always thought that inflation was one reason why girls comics died – they got too expensive for girls.