Books and magazines BOOKS AND MAGAZINES

Bunty

Many magazines for girls have come and gone over the years, but one of the most endearing had to have been Bunty. Created by prolific publishers D.C. Thomson (famous for many other comics including The Beano and The Dandy and who produce more than 200 million comics each year) it ran from 1958 to 2001, allowing many generations to grow up with its sometimes funny, sometimes serious and sometimes downright peculiar comic strips.

The tales were primarily concerned with issues that were familiar to young girls: i.e. friends, family, school and boyfriends, although as we’ll see in a while, the writers did go on some extreme flights of fancy with others.  They were mainly comic strips, three to five pages long and were interspersed with regular magazine features: letters pages, promotions and adverts and previews for the following week. There was also the opportunity to join ‘The Bunty Club’, which gave you the chance to enter exclusive competitions.

The covers were, at the start, drawn depictions of blonde-haired Bunty herself, often engaged in some sort of rosy-cheeked, snowy outdoor pursuit but in the mid-nineties they were brought up-to-date with a photo of what was presumably the publisher’s idea of their typical reader.  As an avid Bunty devourer in the early 1980s, however, my favourite part was always the back page: a doll you could cut out and dress in her own paper clothes. Later on this was changed to a poster instead.

As well as the weekly comic, summer and Christmas annuals were also produced, along with the collectible ‘Bunty Libraries’ – small books featuring one complete story. These always had great names: ‘The Strange Changes in Jenny Jones’; ‘Fearless Flo – Stunt Girl’; ‘Galloping Gran’ etc., which invited you to dive in and read more.

The most well-known and the longest-running story in Bunty was ‘The Four Marys’, a comic strip drawn by the artist Barrie Mitchell (who later took on that comic footballing icon, Roy Race – you know, of the Rovers?) that started when the magazine began and ran in it until Bunty packed up her skies/skateboard/ice skates.  You’ve probably already had a stab at what ‘The Four Marys’ may have been about, haven’t you? It featured four (you’d figured that one out, I’m sure) teenage female best friends, who were all coincidentally called (yep, you’re one step ahead of me, aren’t you?) Mary.

They attended the girls-only St. Elmo’s boarding school in fictional Elmbury and while the Mary’s first names were the same, the girls’ backgrounds and personalities were supposedly very different. Personally though, I found that because they did absolutely everything together at all times they ended up blending into four clones of the same girl, which meant that I was only ever able to tell them apart by their hairstyles.

Lady Mary Radleigh (known as ‘Raddy’) was obviously from an aristocratic family; her father was an earl. She was well-mannered but never afraid to speak her mind.

From the other end of the status scale was Mary Simpson (or ‘Simpy’ – they didn’t have to reach too far in their imagination for nicknames, did they?); a fantastic maths student, she rose above her working class upbringing by winning a scholarship to St. Elmo’s.

Mary Field (yes, she was obviously called ‘Fieldy’) and Mary Cotter (go on, try this one by yourself….Did you go with Cotty? You’d be right) were both supposedly middle class. Fieldy was a tom-boy, which was 1950’s speak for a girl who was good at sport and Cotty was a shy, gentle and sweet girl, i.e. she had no backbone whatsoever.

The storylines were commonly centred on the day-to-day lives of the four girls at the school; these could be to do with their studies, their teachers or the other girls they shared the space with, although occasionally they strayed into stranger territory and the four Ms (which, if they weren’t, definitely sounds like something they would have called themselves) would be confronted by ghostly figures or other implausible plots.

This was one of the beautiful things about Bunty – the way it could make a complete switch between grittily realistic narratives based on historical facts and absolutely bonkers scenarios based on, well – who knows what the author was thinking? As an example – here are a few stories that featured over the years:

‘The Children’s Champion’ – this was about a Victorian girl called Hester Langley who decided to give up her wealthy London lifestyle to help youngsters in need. (There were a lot of stories set in the Victorian era, mainly emphasising differences between the rich and the poor.)

‘Boyfriend from Blupo’ – decidedly on the ‘fairly mad’ end of the realism scale, this one featured a girl looking for a boyfriend who then finds one, although he is actually an alien. Ok….

Back to serious – ‘Born to Dance’ involved the relationship between aspiring dancer Catherine and her grandmother who forbade her to get involved with ballet in case she replicates the accident that killed her mother.

Then, just for some levity, ‘Lydia and the Little People’ featured a girl enslaved by leprechauns. Well, why not?

One really popular story was ‘Penny’s Place’. Penny was the daughter of café-owning parents and the plots revolved around her life with them and her three close friends. It started life in another magazine entirely, M&J (itself a merger of two of D.C. Thomson’s other publications Mandy and Judy) before transferring to Bunty in 1997 when M&J wound up. Penny’s Place shut up shop at the end of the 90s but readers clamoured for it to come back – and D.C. Thomson obliged by publishing the entire story again from the beginning.

For 43 years Bunty ran weekly but the interests and desires of its young readership were changing and Bunty was feeling decidedly old-fashioned, despite its attempts to modernise. As circulation numbers began to slide it dropped to a monthly publication at the beginning of 2001. Unfortunately this still couldn’t stop the fact that the pre-teens and teen girls of the new millennium were looking for something more contemporary and fresh. Bunty survived for five further months, before folding in June of that same year with a grand total of 2,249 issues under its back catalogue.

Bunty’s influence didn’t just stop with pre-pubescent young ladies though – it found itself being represented in a most unlikely genre in 1979. British punk rock band The Damned sang the song ‘Melody Lee’ which featured lyrics taken from actual text used in Bunty’s story ‘Melody Lee – a dancer she’ll be.’ Written by The Damned member Captain Sensible, he also went on to pen an ode to Raddy, Simpy, Fieldy and Cotty: ‘The Four Marys Go Go Dance All Night At The Groovy Cellar' – something I’m not sure their parents would have been too pleased about. 


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Do You Remember Bunty?

Do You Remember Bunty?

  • Anonymous user
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    Yes I do. I used to trade my Dandy for The Bunty with a girl from my class in school, and came to love it. Of course I remember the Four Marys and Lorna Drake, both storylines of which were quite iconic. But over the four or so years I read Bunty every week my absolute favourite was a story called The Hiking Hendersons about two sisters - Heather & Isobel Henderson who ran away from their cruel aunt to rejoin their widowed father working up in Scotland. This required them to hitch-hike a distance of over 500 miles, during which time they had many adventures, scary experiences and met many dangers. I guess the story ran for about a year or so, and, looking back, I think Heather Henderson was my first 'crush' - a brave, resourceful, vivacious and kind girl who also had to look after her younger sister who was very naive and rather reckless by comparison. Oh the bittersweet recollections of those innocent years when I would count off the days until I could next exchange comics with my classmate and catch up on the latest adventures in Bunty-land. I hasten to add I was aroun
  • Anonymous user
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    Used to love The Four Mary's ❤️. I have many memories creating reinactments of the stories with my Sister. When ever she asked me 'what do you want to play', my reply was always 'The Four Marys game!!' ❤️
  • Anonymous user
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    Can anyone out there tell me how the series Danger Doll ended? A girl named Gemma (Jemma?) was given a doll which to begin with appeared to be like any other. As the weeks went by and the story developed it became obvious that the doll was far from the innocent child's toy it was supposed to be and turned into a malevolent entity. I seem to remember the army was eventually brought in to destroy the doll. Sadly for me the Bunty issue which contained the very last episode of the story did not get delivered and I never found out what Danger Doll actually was, or what happened to it. If anyone can shed light on the end of this story I would appreciate it. I've waited fifty years to discover what happened.
  • Anonymous user
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    Does anyone remember a story about Princess Marina. She had lived alone for centuries and worn the stone steps down by herself alone. My mother stopped buying it and I wondered what had happened as I loved that story.
  • Anonymous user
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    Does anyone remember the story of a girl who was visited by a strange orb, which passed into her bedroom, landing on her carpet. It then shrank her to the same size and there were little people who took her on a journey... Trying to rack my brains what it was called and no, I haven't been on the cat-nip again!
  • Anonymous user
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    I believe the first Bunty Annual was published in 1960 And had a ballet dancer on the front. Does anyone know what it looked like without the cover
  • Anonymous user
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    I too remember the story of the legend of the bells and remember crying, it has stuck in my head even though I am now 69. My Bunty annual was one of my favourite Christmas presents.
  • Anonymous user
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    Lovely memory of this wonderful comic especially when I got a ring free in one and said I wanted this some day as an engagement ring. Well in 1978 I had the wonderful chance to get a ring designed to the same spec as the ring I had from the Bunty comic
  • Chaobaby7
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    Loved Bunty. I love the girls' comics around in the 70s and 80s, kids and teen magazines are so dull these days, just Junior Celeb gossip mags and no decent stories and adventures.
  • Anonymous user
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    My Mum bought me a Bunty every week. In the spring it would have a free gift in it (a ring or something). Everyone in the class wanted the free gift but the newsagent was always sold out so the free gift became a prized bobble for a week. I loved the cut out doll and clothes. That was about 55 years ago but it still warms my heart to remember my Mum coming in from her cleaning job with my Bunty in her bag. I was a skinny kid with dark hair and I always wanted to look round and blond like Bunty - I am round and blond now - be careful for what you wish for. ha-ha
    • Anonymous user
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      How precious!
    • Anonymous user
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      Hi there, you brought me back in time a million years!! you said it all.