Saturday, March 03, 2007

 

Obscurity of the Day: Charmers



If you thought comics couldn't get any more saccharine sweet than Love Is, behold the ultimate sugar rush in Charmers. This feature should have been forced to carry a diabetic warning.

Produced by the Hallmark greeting card company, the artists and writers, probably anyone in the creative department that didn't look busy enough on any given day, were uncredited.

Field Syndicate distributed the feature as a Sunday strip and daily panel. The Sunday strip started on March 9 1975, the daily panel the next day. The daily never really did well and was discontinued on October 13 1979. On January 6 1980 the Sunday strip made an attempt to establish itself better as a continuing series to readers by introducing a recurring character. The Sunday was renamed Betsey Clark and from then on featured a cherubic little girl as the subject of the weekly jaunts into sugar-coated inanity.

Those with a strong enough constitution to stomach this material, primarily grandmas and pre-teen girls, went into mourning when the strip was cancelled with the June 28 1981 episode. The rest of us heaved a sigh of relief.

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# posted by Allan Holtz @ 5:03 AM
Comments:
Whoa! I thought the kid in the bottom panel was going to the bathroom behind the tree at first!

The captions seem more suited for motivational posters, but maybe that's just the luck of the draw.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 3/03/2007 3:23 PM
 
My grandmother has several books filled with these little cartoons - cut out and mounted on pages for endless, smile-inducing enjoyment. I'm serious! Page after page. I don't know what to do with them! Ahhhh, Grandma, I miss you. And these Charmers are so you. Guess I'll keep them and breathe a sigh of happiness when I pull them out to show my kiddos.
# posted by Blogger Unknown : 4/06/2009 8:08 PM
 
I am looking for those Betsey Clark cartoons. If you have any and would like to part with them, please let me know.
# posted by Anonymous Anonymous : 6/18/2009 6:13 PM
 
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