On January 21st 1967, just one month after the
final episode of Thunderbirds had aired on British television, CANDY ‘the comic
full of fun and magic’ was launched for the nursery market. For 9d, its young
readers were introduced to Candy and her brother Andy, who live with Mr and Mrs
Bearanda above a toy shop in the High Street of the village of Riverdale. That
nine penny purchase is in my opinion - and I’d wager this goes for just about
anyone who has ever come across it - the most bizarre experiment in the history
of this nation’s comic book output.
Mr and Mrs Bearanda are never actually identified as either parents,
guardians or foster parents. They are adult-sized Panda Bears in human form,
and well, Candy and Andy are blond-haired life-sized dolls of children who
appear to have been inspired by those spooky kids in ’The Village of the
Damned’, the 1960 film adaptation of John Wyndham’s ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’. Just what could Gerry Anderson have been
thinking of, when Candy was given the green light by City Magazines and Century
21 productions, to unleash this craziness upon the minds of pre-schoolers?
Well, when I spoke with Gerry at his office in Pinewood Studios
back in December 1993, even he admitted that he was slightly hazy about the
origins of Candy, but he recalled what was going through his mind at the time: “I came up with the idea, instead of
writing a story and having it drawn, I thought that it would be a great idea to
produce the story photographically. Use 3D imagery, and presenting the real
world in photographic form as a story”.
Two years earlier, TV21 comic had pioneered banner-style headlines and news-style
copy lifted from the adult press. The combination of dramatic photography and
bold brightly coloured artwork has made this much loved classic publication a
60s icon. But Candy has slid out of sight. It has been dismissed as a big
budget flop, and now so easily forgotten, sandwiched in the time frame between Gerry
Anderson’s two greatest creations (Thunderbirds and Captain Scarlet).
The weekly adventures of Candy and her Riverdale family were
depicted by Doug Luke, who was one of Anderson’s most trusted stills
photographers. He’d worked on Thunderbirds, and would stay with the Century 21
team up to the final episodes of UFO. But Candy was the only time he’d been
handed a special new studio to run, crammed with a dozen sets, two assistants,
and a D-reg pop art styled Mini called ‘Stripey’ which was merchandised by
Century 21 as a Dinky Toy accompanied by tiny plastic Candy, Andy and Bearanda
figures. For the comic, Luke churned out dozens of weird and wonderful three
page photo stories, usually read horizontally within its unconventional
landscape format.
Most of the adventures in Candy are mundane, domestic
accidents, shopping, flying kites, trips to the countryside (usually a few miles from Century 21's Slough studios) though it is often the adult Bearandas that seem to get into tangles.
Candy and Andy are always assured and graceful. They not only live above a
toyshop, but the doll children can communicate with their toy friends, passing
ducks or squirrels, and of course, real-life children. Indeed, the most
disarming imagery in Candy is the presence of real people in the photo strips. Adults
like farmers, fishermen, vicars, petrol pump attendants, and even the Marquess
of Bath at his stately home in Longleat turn up within the pages. Then there
are the real children, Candy and Andy-sized, sometimes Candy-competition
winners immortalised in the year 1967 meeting their heroes. What do you all
remember of it now, I wonder?
The Bearandas, Gerry Anderson believed, were born out of the
love children have for giant, cuddly, fluffy panda bears - and in fact the whole
nation had gone panda crazy since Chi Chi had arrived at London Zoo in 1958.
But for Doug Luke, they were cumbersome heavy monsters, which would often topple
over into a muddy field just before the shutter of his Rolleiflex clicked. The
Bearandas would then get a firm kick in the ankle from Luke! Together with
Candy and Andy, their photo stories lasted until comic book number 54 in January
27th 1968, and then they all saw out the year, re-jigged for a
series of annuals and hardback story books with titles like ‘the Duck who could
not Swim’.
Gerry Anderson had hoped that “Candy would be the basis for high
quality children’s books for forever and a day. But it didn’t catch on”. The
comic Candy itself actually stumbled on until the end of 1969, by this time ditching
its horizontal format and the Bearanda characters. It was unrecognisable from its
optimistic and glossy early months, instead ending up offering the crudest of juvenile
art work.
Candy and Andy and the Bearandas were thus banished to
oblivion. Only surfacing in jumble sales and charity shops, which is exactly how
I came across them back in the 1980s. Then in 1994, eight massive prints from
Candy taken from the original 2” x 2” transparencies were exhibited at ‘Who’s
Looking at the Family’, at the Barbican Art Gallery. It was an amazing photography
show exploring representations of family life since the birth of photography. Gerry Anderson and Doug Luke were now being
lauded by the critics and the public for Candy’s bizarre psycho-imagery. During the exhibition’s run, I’d hear
comments like ‘obviously a precursor to the work [of the then emerging YBA
artists] Jake and Dinos Chapman’, or ‘it’s like a Jeff Koons’ (often dubbed
America’s king of kitsch).
All this a far cry from what was a stylish, yet
innocent, 60s comic book for the very young. The press were intrigued by the
discovery of Lady Penelope’s long lost relatives, and were delighting in either
their astonishment of, or their repulsion by, the Candy and Andy dolls they
were looking at. And, let’s face it, I’m certain that we still are.
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