Back in April, I took a look at perhaps D. C. Thomson's most obscure weekly humour comic, Hoot. This led me down a bit of a rabbit hole as to the terrible twosome of terrifying toddlers, Cuddles and Dimples, whose strips were merged into one when Hoot folded into the Dandy. If for some reason you don't care to read back through the three or four posts I've written on this subject, the story so far is:
In October 1986, the Dandy and Hoot merge. Cuddles, the cover star of Hoot, is carried over, but his strip is merged with the very similar one featuring Dimples which has been running in the Dandy since 1984. This creates Cuddles and Dimples; the two boys are originally depicted as next-door neighbours, with the first strip depicting Cuddles moving in next door to Dimples.
It was later decided that the strip would work better if the boys were brothers; however, contrary to what certain official sources published by D. C. Thomson claim, they were not suddenly retconned in a single strip. Instead, the process was subtly done over a period of several months, with Cuddles' parents slowly being moved into the background. By around October 1987, only Dimples' parents were featured, and strips strongly implying that the two are brothers (whilst not directly saying so) started appearing.
However, owing to the different schedules they were produced on, a few strips where the two are still intended to be neighbours appeared after this in various spin-off publications. Most prominently, the Dandy Book 1988 (released for the Christmas 1987 market) still features a solo Dimples, and the one published a year later features a strip where they are clearly intended to still be neighbours (alongside two others where they're brothers), with Cuddles' dad (nicknamed the "Teddy Boy Dad") appearing. A Dandy Comic Library with Cuddles by himself (with an explanation for Dimples' absence hastily written into the first panel) was released as late as 1989.
In 1988, a Panini sticker album celebrating the Beano/Dandy golden anniversary was released. I was sent some images of a completed album by Joseph Begley and Sam Page, and am very grateful to them for this, as I believe the album contains the very last appearances of Cuddles' dad after the retcon not already featured on this blog.
Although a Cuddles and Dimples strip assembled by the stickers at the very least strongly suggests they're siblings...
...The two fathers also make individual appearances in the album which were done pre-retcon:
So it seems most likely that Dandy editor Morris Heggie made his proclamation that the boys should be brothers whilst the album was in production.
The only other place I can think of where Cuddles' parents may have appeared after they were removed from the weekly strip is the Dandy Summer Special. but I don't believe those were produced so far in advance as some other spin-offs. Nevertheless, if you have any Specials from 1987 onwards in your collection, I would be interested to hear from you.
For one very last point, please consider this page from a Dandy Cartoon Book published in 1989:
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