I don’t trust the dude on that Fibs ‘n Squibs cover.
So we recently obtained a bunch of these mini-books:
We’ve had other copies of these mini-books before…tiny squarebound booklets measuring about 5/8 by 7/8 inches, published in the mid 1960s. The format (at least in the superhero ones) was generally an illustration on one page with text on the facing page, though any attempt to actually read the darn things would risk the danger of, at best, cracking what passed as the spine, or possibly even pulling the entire booklet apart.
The line didn’t just contain Marvel superheroes, but other joke and story books as well, which are named here in this period article, and shown here in an article from the same publication a couple of decades later. It looks to me like this company, Creative House Publishing, licensed the properties from various comic publishers, mixed in their own in-house content (or obtained the joke and story and other content from sources I’m not aware of) and marketed them in this unique format via bubblegum machines and what have you.
Each title featured multiple variations on cover color…here you can see the multiple covers for the Nick Fury book. That brings me to this point: I had been under the impression, from information provided in Overstreet and online, and just from previously having copies of these in the shop before, that each cover was single solid color. You may have noticed that most of the covers in that first pic up there aren’t solid colors, like these two Nick Fury books:
And here’s a better look at one of the non-superhero presumed-variants:
I’ve not seen mention of these particular variations before. I doubt they’re counterfeits, because who’d go through the trouble, really? The person we obtained these from said that, according to his research, these may have been special promotional variations given to the distributors who handled these items, but I’ve yet to find confirmation.
And just for comparison, here’s a close-up of one of the covers with the solid color:
At any rate, I’ve done some research on these things, but apparently not nearly enough. If someone out there has more information on them, particularly regarding the significance of the spotted ‘n’ speckled cover color variations, I’d like to hear it.
These look neat… I wanna make some of my own
I’m flabberghasted…
Have you tried putting one on your tongue yet?
I think the solid ones might not be from the 60s. I think I got them as CrackerJack prizes in the 80s. That might explain why I recognize those but not the others.
BTW, my default load settings for Prog Ruin seem to be with the scroll bars set at 50% down vertical and 50% sideways. Dunno why that’s happening.
Really interesting find Mike! I would love to read more about odd finds.
The Nick Fury one is awesome. I’d like to see someone who doesn’t read comics stumble on one of these after just seeing Avengers.
I think Philfromgermany may be on to something… these look just like the blotter acid samples of yore. Well, what i’ve seen in history books, of course.
i think they came wth crackerjacks… but that was a LONG time ago.
“or possibly even pulling the entire booklet apart”
they were very soon loose pages of TINY paper.
these would have been late 70’s or early 80’s for me to have had them.
There’s actually a publication called Miniature Book News?!