Which Kitty With Which Comic?

[shaz]

I've been having fun with Kitty comics again!
I've decided to try to work out which kitties came free with which comics....I think I may have set myself an impossible task! At first I thought that the kitties pictured in the little square at the top left of each cover were the kitties you got free....but that only seems to have applied sometimes (e.g. #4 had a picture of Sophie and came with a free Sophie, but #9 had a picture of Sapphire and came with free Danny). Sometimes there's a section about the free kitty inside the magazine, and sometimes there isn't.
So here's what I have so far:

#1 Grey and white Comic Kitty
#2 Grey Comic Kitty rolling on back; also ginger Comic Kitty with a phone
#3 Siamese Comic Kitty, sitting
#4 Sophie (no white bib)
#5 Came in a bag marked "Kitty in my Pocket, Redhill". Could have been Miss Pretty, Bella, Lucky, Coco or Brandy.
#6
#7 Jade (white Heath with sparkly shoe)
#8 Rufus
#9 Danny
#10 Anna (i.e. Minka with a different name)
#11
#12 Possibly Tammy?
#13 A grey version of Fluffy
#14
#15
#16
#17
#18
#19
#20

Other free Kitties not yet matched with a comic include Bella, Tiger, Miss Pretty, Lucky, Coco, Brandy, Talulah and of course the Comic Book Kitties. Free Kitties sometimes came with the later Puppy & Friends and Pets in my Pocket comics, but I'm not getting involved with those just yet!

If anyone knows more, please let me know! Issues 11 and 12 have the "please see page -- to find out about your free kitty" on the front cover, so if you have those issues and could check them for me that would be awesome I think Issue 13 has the same message, so it would be interesting to find out what Grey Fluffy's name is if anyone has that comic.

[catcoo]

Hi Shaz, I can't help at all, but this is a great idea (and a monumental task for you!) so hopefully you get some help from others here xx

[piddy]

Hi Shaz, I have complied a list of Free Kitties I had seen on front covers and mine match yours except I don't have Rufus on #8, so not sure if that may of been the cream version of Rufus? I did wonder if Issue 3 with featured Max the Manx cat was the kitty with the log, which is a Manx cat as well, but then none of the other names seem to match a reworked Kitty with that name, so drew a blank on that. The Kitty on Issue 10 was the grey cat 88 it was called Anna for that comic, there was an advert for it in a puppy comic, here is a link to the photo of her.
www.flickr.com/photos/68284844@N07/50929727481/in/album-72157656936854020/

I have issue 11, and although it says about see page 13, there is just a picture of two real kittens in a basket and nothing about the featured free kitty, Issue 13 does not say that message and nothing about free kitty inside.

I don't have comics 5, 8, 12, 15-20 so no details about them.

It is very rare to have any info in the comic about the free Kitty, same with all the other comics, from what I have of the Puppy and Friends and Pets in my pocket comics, I only ever seen ones with free puppies, no other animals! 

I do wonder if it was always the same Kitty free on the same issue or if the kitty can vary but have nothing to base this on, so hard to find out anything as you don't see many with them still attached to cover.

[shaz]

Oh dear what have I got myself into? The world of free kitties seems to be surprisingly complicated!

Issue 8 is one of the few that does actually have a piece about the free kitty, and it's brown Rufus:

http://instagram.com/p/CLH4J_3hOGO

There's even a little bit about the next free kitty being Danny, so well done, Issue 8, you did things properly 😆

I will add Anna to the list Minka obviously has an identical twin sister!!

The only non-kitty magazine that I've seen with a free kitty was one of the Puppy & Friends ones, I think, it came with the ginger version of Bella. So I'm guessing there were others too.

I'm quite puzzled by how the Comic Kitties fit in, really, as so many of the free kitties seem to have been recognisable characters or at least made with familiar moulds. Issue 1 says on the cover that the free toy was made by Corinthian Toys, instead of the usual Vivid Imaginations, so I thought maybe the Comic Book Kitties were made by Corinthian and that's why they have all-new moulds etc. But then every other magazine I've seen says "manufactured by Vivid Imaginations" so that was the end of that theory!

Oh, one other strange thing I've noticed: Issue 13 has a picture on the front of a kitty named Jack....but who is Jack?!

[piddy]

There is a lot about in my pocket that is complicated! Some things are advertised but then never issued or changed completly. The comic world is very messed up, we just don't have enough detail about what was issued, in one comic there was a picture of various gifts you could get by writing in which included amongst others #66 ginger and #72 brown, so some may only of been issued that way, so very limited numbers.

In issue 13 Jack is one of the babies of Tara and Tom, the other baby is called Jennifer in the comic, so odd they decided to name the babies! That one confused me until I got the comic.

There does not seem enough comics for the number of special kitties issued and with no pictures showing the free ones it is very hard to know. Strange that the Puppy ones did not have any specials, the Pony had one called Spring.

There are several manufacturers of the comic kitties, of those I have still in original packet I note all these

Plain clear bag Kitty

66 (orange) 5 (choc) 1 (grey) 73 (brown) 14 (white) 72 (brown)

Kitty in my Pocket print (from Kitty comics) Corinthian HP13 6LS

grey/red ball, ginger/red phone, brown/pink hat, black/dice, grey/white, Siamese sitting
Kitty in my Pocket print (from Kitty comics) Keesing RH1

18 (1995)

Burghley Publishing OL4 1DE (Kitty)

18 (1996 version) Maybe all the 1996 kitties came with the later issues of Kitty comics 15-20?
Kitty Vivid Imaginations UB9 5HN (white back) Kelloggs cereal
7 (brown) 23 (black tail) 5 (Choc) 6 1 (ginger) 9 (choc)

Animal Hospital Vivid Imaginations SS5 4BA (white back) Kelloggs

kitty 88 (grey), kitty 76 (white), puppy 126 (orange), AH Poodle, AH Labrador, Pony 49 Falabella, 142 Puppy Westie
Kitty (white card insert) Weetos

17 24 (cream) 15 22 (white) 4 (grey) 14 (red shoe) - Made in China removed from casting on these versions

If anybody can make any sense of it all be pleased to hear!

[shaz]

Oh wow, I need to look through all of that slowly and see if I can make some sense of it!

My issue 5 still has the bag on the front: it has the Kitty logo on it and the address Keesing UK (Ltd), Redhill RH1....does this mean that that comic must have come with kitty #18?!
I've noticed a crazy number of Miss Prettys for sale second-hand so I wonder if she was available as a freebie more than once.
Edit to add: Ah ha, the Miss Pretty in the Burghley Publishing packet must have come free with a Puppy & Friends comic, they were published by Burghley.

Oh so they named Tara and Tom's kittens! One of the issues I have names Kirstie and Harry's kittens: they're called Ben and Jessica.

I really feel the world needs a digital archive of kitty comics, I'm going to have to get photographing the ones I own and make a start! There's so many fun little details and cute things in them.

I just noticed you said you don't have issue 5. I have a spare one, would you like it?

[piddy]

Shaz

I would love the Kitty comic 5, fills a gap in the series, how much do you want for it, with postage to UK?

I think that 18 Miss Pretty may of been used more than once and with that lettering on packet sure it was issued on the other publications by Burghley, the last 5 Kitty ones were issued by them, but I've not seen any so far.

[shaz]

£4 for Issue 5 plus £2.50 postage? PM me if you want it and we'll sort out PayPal, address and suchlike.

[shaz]

And the plot thickens regarding which kitty came with which comic....

The Letters Page in Issue 4 (thanks Piddy, for sending me the pictures!) features a letter from a person who got the ginger cat with the telephone free with Issue 2 (and made a cute collector's card for it!). But we've seen Issue 2 with the grey cat on the front! There must have been various different kitties available with that issue.

Another letter on the same letters page is from someone who called their free kitty Snowy, which implies it was probably a white cat. The confusion!!

If there were various different kitties available with the earlier issues that might explain (a) why there are so many different comic book kitties and (b) why some of them are quite rare (i.e. because not every issue sold had the same kitty).

[piddy]

Funny never read that in the letters page, so looks like you may of got a random comic Kitty with the first issues of the comic, Snowy could of been the one on his back in a brown basket. In a later issue in the letters they mention getting Sophie on their issue which is the same as the one I have on isssue 4. Maybe later issues from 4 onwards only had a specific kitty on, as some where actually named on the cover where the Kitty was stuck, Danny and Jade for instance.

Can't see any reference in later letters pages to their free Kitty.

Strange that the only ones we had seen with Kitties still attached had the same one on the front?

If only we could go back in time to find out what really happened, sad it seems nobody recorded what Kitty they got with each issue, same with all the other in my pocket comics for the other pets.

[shaz]

I've been asking around a few toy collecting groups to see if anyone remembers which kitty came with which comic, but no luck so far. I'm so annoyed that I never had any comics myself! I was only two when the Kitty in my Pocket Specials started, though, so a bit too young to appreciate them! I don't remember seeing the later Puppy & Friends or Pets in my Pocket comics, I'm sure I would've chosen them off the newsstand if I'd seen them.

There isn't that much info around about the history of IMP. The other older toylines that I collect are My Little Pony and Ty Beanies so I'm used to there being a whole lot of information available online, in books etc. IMP is so quiet and unobtrusive by comparison!

I'm wondering if all of the Comic Book Kitties were sold with the three earliest issues, then it was named kitties after that. It seems strange that so many unique new kitties would be created just to be sold in such small numbers! But toy manufacturers are always doing strange things!

How many comics have been found so far with kitties still on the front? I wonder if different areas of the country ended up with different kitties, or if you could go into a newsagents and see a mixture of free kitties? (I would have been there buying multiple copies if that was the case!!)

[piddy]

It has been a struggle to find any factual information, the manufacturers have not been much help, too long ago for them to remember and they don't seem to have an archive of what they produced. 

I think it a good presumption that the first 3 issues may of had a random comic Kitty, but so far have only seen the one type of Kitty on any issue, but the letter does imlpy that the Kitty was different on the first few issues.

So far I have about 19 different Kitties still in the original packaging that came attached to comics, or some that got sent to readers that sent in letters etc, they never produced any of the other lines with special new designs, so why just kitties who knows.

If anybody does have comics still with Kitties attached to front cover would love to see them to try and help with this puzzle?
Thanks

[90skitty]

If it helps, the Puppy In My Pocket issues, at least the very first one, had a random brothers and sisters puppy free with it. I distinctly remember seeing the issue in WH Smith and deciding what one I wanted lol. So it would be fair to assume they did the same with the Kitty comics, when they released those.

[shaz]

90skitty, that's so awesome that you remember buying IMP magazines! And it supports the idea of random comic book kitties, so I feel we're getting somewhere with this mystery Thank you!

Piddy, I have a few questions for you! I've been looking at the pictures of the covers of the Pets in my Pocket magazines. Most of them have the Burghley Publishing logo on the front but from issue #6 they seem to have a different logo. I can't read it in the photos, what does it say?
The other thing is that you mentioned that some different-coloured variants of kitties were available to people who wrote into the magazine (brown Will, ginger Bella?). Any chance you could send me a pic of that page? I've been thinking about some of the more mysterious/rare colour variant kitties and wondering if some of them might have something to do with the comics.


And here are my current theories with regards to which kitty came with which comic:
Only 4, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 13 are definitely confirmed. We know for certain that issues 1-3 came with at least some of the Comic Kitties. The others are (hopefully educated) guesses based on packaging, release dates etc. I've been having a lot of fun researching with the aid of Piddy's Flickr and old threads on this forum!
#1 Comic Book Kitties
#2 Comic Book Kitties
#3 Comic Book Kitties
#4 Sophie
#5 A kitty in a bag marked Redhill. Either Miss Pretty or Bella?
#6 Either Miss Pretty or Bella?
#7 Jade
#8 Rufus
#9 Danny
#10 Anna (aka Minka)
#11 Perhaps Talulah? There's a blue-eyed variant of Talulah thought to be a comic kitty.
#12
#13 Grey Fluffy
#14
#15-20 Kitties in bags marked Burghley. Smaller than their regular counterparts, with shinier paint. Miss Pretty, Lucky, Tammy, Brandy, Coco, brown version of Tiger. Uncertain which kitty goes with which magazine. Six kitties and only five magazines?! The brown version of Tiger seems to be rare, perhaps he was only available in limited numbers.

[piddy]

The name on the publication changed to Just Publishing, which is another trading name of Burghley Publishing, Just Publishing was mentioned on earlier comics. I have sent you a email of the piece about free gifts you may get if you wrote in.

The Redhill address was ones done with Just Publishing I think.

I have also sent you some pics of MIP Kitties from comics.

Hope that helps.