The Twin Dilemma

Precisely eleven days ago, I took a look at one of the shortest-serving British comics on record, Hoot. Of particular interest was Hoot's cover star, the tyrannical toddler Cuddles; when Hoot was merged into the Dandy after just 53 issues, Cuddles was merged with a very similar strip about a tyrannical toddler called Dimples which was already running in the Dandy.

When the combined Cuddles and Dimples story began, the boys were presented as neighbours after Cuddles moved to Dandytown in the first strip. After some period of time, they were retconned into twin brothers and one set of parents vanished without trace.

The Dandy Summer Special 2022, as pictured above, is principally reprints of old material, profiling eleven different stories from across the comic's archive, with a little introduction to each set of repeats giving information about the character's history. The introduction to the section on Cuddles and Dimples states this:

Cuddles and Dimples are very odd brothers. Yes, we all know that they are super-wild and made of mischief, but they're even odder than you'd think, because they weren't brothers to begin with. Cuddles first appeared in The Nutty and Dimples arrived in The Dandy a little later. Cuddles moved to the short-lived comic, The Hoot, before joining The Dandy when the two comics merged. For two weeks the boys were neighbours and on the third week, they had become brothers and one set of parents had disappeared. The strangest thing is that not a single letter was ever received in the office about it. Nobody noticed.

Between publishing that earlier post on Hoot and now, though, I came into possession of a book I'd been after for some time: The Art and History of the Dandy, published to mark the title's 75th anniversary (and not long before it finished completely as a weekly title). And that publication has this to say:

When he left Hoot to join The Dandy, Morris [Heggie, editor of the Dandy from 1986-2006] took one of his favourite characters with him, a naughty tot called 'Cuddles'. The Dandy already had a mischievous toddler named 'Dimples', so Morris decided to have them join forces as next-door neighbours -- it was going to be double trouble.

In 1987 Morris decided the story would work better if Cuddles and Dimples were twins with the same parents. But he got a shock one Monday morning when Barrie Appleby sent in the first new strip with Cuddles' dad and Dimples' mum as the parents! He had no need to panic though, it was just Barrie playing a prank on Morris and it was quickly changed.

The combined Cuddles and Dimples debuted in the first Dandy branded as Dandy and Hoot: issue #2345, dated the 1st November, 1986. Both of these sources cannot be right. The change happened either almost straight away, or after a few months.

Obviously, the only way to work out exactly when it happened is to go through all the issues of the Dandy starting from that one until we reach the strip where one set of parents vanish. I don't yet have these issues in my possession, but I do look in a lot of charity shops.

I do have something that may be a tiny little clue, though. Thanks to an eBay listing, I know the very last issue of the Dandy to be branded as Dandy and Hoot was #2366, dated March 28th, 1987:

One week later, Hoot had disappeared from the comic's masthead. But that wasn't all that changed.

As well as the Hoot name vanishing, the entire comic underwent a fairly substantial revamp with a new logo. Did they take the opportunity at this point to make the necessary retcon to Cuddles and Dimples? The timeframe would certainly seem to fit.

I am a little reluctant to spend seven quid per issue when they might well turn up somewhere for substantially less on a hunch, though. (I am a bit more tempted by issue #2347, as having that issue in my possession seems like it would directly prove or disprove the Summer Special's assertion that one set of parents vanished in the third week.) But maybe somebody, somewhere, already has the answers.

Update! I am tremendously grateful to Ben Baker, who went through his old issues of the Dandy for me and, in short, confirmed that the Summer Special is in error, and it is The Art and History which is correct. In the first issue after the Dandy shed the "and Hoot" part, the terrible twosome moved to the centre pages (meaning they appeared in full technicolour), but both sets of parents were still present at this point. The second set of parents are still around as late as May 1987, but there actually seems to be a slow period of phasing them out: Cuddles' parents do not appear in June, resurface for a little while later, and a strip at least strongly implying they're now brothers appears in October. I suppose quite why the Summer Special was so absolutely wrong is another mystery...