Beano Summer Special 2026

Last week was badd...very bad for the super hot drying up conditions we endured as we went over 30 degrees and felt by Thursday night really off so Friday's cooler temperatures, fresh breeze and even some thunder was welcome.

And that was Spring!

Now this month we enter Summer officially where you might it expect it to be warm, where in the past we looked to Summer Vacations and no school for seven or so weeks before we got crazy, stomping our feet saying "I'm bored!" 

Okay, you could play with your Chromebook, Tablet or Smartphone all day which isn't that good for for other reasons, run about like crazy playing weird games which is what I did with mates or read a comic or book.

That's where summer special comic editions with more pages came in coupled with puzzle books that remain big with modern children.

While the world of children's comics and magazines has changed a lot in forty odd years - and not necessarily for the better - The Beano Summer Special, today styled as a Summer Activity Special remains available and is out...NOW!

This years plot revolves around the notion the Beanotown children think they’ve bagged the perfect getaway, a dream holiday to a seaside caravan park in Beanotown-on-Sea. 

However this is Beanotown so of course nothing is what it seems! Their hoped for R & R (rest and recreation) turns out to be more like run-down and rotten - and the weirdness doesn’t stop there. Something fishy is happening both at the seaside and back home… and the kids are determined to uncover the truth!

Packed with mysteries, mayhem, jokes and puzzles it takes you back to those times even if the world is very much the modern one with enough to keep you occupied indoors or out and doesn't require a connection nor recharging.

With this weeks weather recharging is what I need!

I loved rope climbing and exploring.

The Beano Summer Special 2024

 It's May and something starts every year around this time as we move through Whit Bank Holiday not so far away and then we build up to the school holidays which takes us your time away whither or not it's a caravan park, seaside guest house or foreign resort.

Something needs to help fill that time that doesn't have batteries that go flat, internet connections that cut out, is in your language and you can easily return to.

For many of it was the Summer Special of our favourite comics, Tammy, Dandy or for a good many of us The Beano that we got and took with us to deal things like wet afternoons.

In the past they were just special editions of your regular comic with new exclusive stories but with the Beano in recent years there has been more of an attempt to program a theme across the whole edition involving many of the other characters and more fun activities.

This years is et more around the notion of a set of Pranks in Beanotown often at the expense of the adult  authority figures like Teacher from the Bash Street Kids, the Mayor of Beanotown, Walter's Dad or attraction bosses.

Here Dennis is working on something (he's ceased to be "The Menace") and like society today is more multicultural but it's still recognizably a child's world we enter and today's child would recognize where many things are but just a smartphone away.

And that's really the point, we enter that world again, the signs may be different, the Public Telephone isn't on the street corner but it's the basically the same so we enjoy our time.

I'm enjoying it.

Footwear of the past II (and something to read)

Well it's a week after the Coronation and a warmish weekend after the damp squid that was much of last week and we are officially going backwards as far as this blog goes, more with an entry in line with its earliest.

Coming I believe Wednesday, after last weeks Coronation inspired edition which given used prices are starting to rise already so I'll keep, is this years Summer Activity Special, the more modern and hip title of what we knew as the Summer Special with quizzes and stickers.

It isn't going to be be available to order at D C Thompson's online shop but can be ordered via Amazon as this has only just emerged unlike most years and I don't know, very few people do know, the across the issue plot as there's been no advance publicity unlike previous years.

If we're going back in time to the years we'd devour that, then there's every probability we'd of been in cute girls ankle socks with your skirt, dress, short tails or short trousers not unlike these and oddly enough I hadn't posted about cute socks for a good few years here.

If we'd of gone back a bit further laying across the floor in our school skirt or pinafore dresses reading or playing you might of been in long socks and these are some white pereline ones with a poppy patterned weave I had recently which are genuine vintage designs.

Everything as it was in an entry just like they used to be on here.

How about that boys and girls?

Summer Fun with The Beano 2022

While I take a bit of breather outdoors this weekend as I post stuff slightly in advance and with anyone looking at their calendars and diaries bought just before Christmas and fingers being crossed I do get to get away this year will sense Summer is almost upon us. 

Summer in times gone past meant we bought or were given things to help us as kids pass that time away and in the heyday of The Comic that tended to mean a deluxe full colour expanded edition with all new stories.

Well, it's that time of the year again and so the sole survivor on the street of the comics some of us were brought up with returns with its special edition.

It bills itself as a Summer Activity Special which gives us a clue as all modern comics have a social side not just a collection of new individual comic strips but incorporating fun things to do being given stickers to stick anywhere you wish, joke pages, quizzes and competitions as part of the mix.

The Clock struck at the top of the hour signalling the end end of Summer School Term as Ms Mistry the (new) teacher at Bash Street School questions why all of Class 3C are looking at it wanting to set Homework while back in Class 2B the Bash Street Kids are getting rebellious.

Little does anyone realize they set to involved in historical time travelling high jinks thanks to Professor Screwtop, Rubi's father's inventions that affect everyone in Beanotown with it facing the prospect of  being lost in time forever.

Somehow all the regulars from Beanotown must find a way saving it from such a fate.

Unlike some years they haven't dispensed with the individual page strips for Rubi's Screwtop Science, Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace and naturally enough the Bash Street Kids although sometimes characters do guest in each others cartoon strips as the story develops.

Nobody has got any older over the years although we are clearly in 2022 and not 1972 and the world the modern girl or boy inhabits for whom this is really aimed and perhaps some of us remain even if things such as Smartphones were things we never could of foreseen.

It is available NOW.

Summer Fun with The Beano

While I take a bit of a break with the weather being all over the place anyone looking at their calendars and diaries bought just before Christmas and fingers being crossed I do get to get away this year will sense Summer is almost upon us. 

Summer in times gone past meant we bought or were given things to help us as kids pass that time away and in the heyday of The Comic that tended to mean a deluxe full colour expanded edition with all new stories.

Well, it's that time of the year again and so the sole survivor on the street of the comics some of us were brought up with returns with its special edition.

It bills itself as a Summer Activity Special which gives us a clue as all modern comics have a social side not just a collection of new individual comic strips but incorporating fun things to do giver like stickers to stick anywhere you wish, joke pages, quizzes and competitions as part of the mix.

Like modern Beano Specials like the annual and past Summer editions, this runs with a seamless storyline, this year seeing everyone going on a school trip of a lifetime, with a creepy castle, missing jewels, a mysterious monster, all served with twist in the tale!

Unlike some years they haven't dispensed with the individual page strips for Rubi's Screwtop Science, Minnie the Minx, Dennis the Menace and naturally enough the Bash Street Kids whose coach they are all on although there are some common pages.

Nobody has got an older over the years although we are clearly in 2021 and not 1971 and the world the modern girl or boy inhabits for whom this is really aimed and perhaps some of us remain.

Summer Specials edition

This week as we're a little more able in England to get about and we're into the Summer that staple of childhoods not least when you were away on vacation comes around, the comic Summer Special.

For of us who have been around a bit, the Summer Special had a bigger print size, was printed on luxurious glossy and was often in full colour so it was the thing you bought first after arriving into the town you were spending that time as a child.

For me it was the Beano although I did get the Dandy too because that was the main weekly comic I had so you knew the characters and the sorts of things that might happen within them.

As has been the case with most recent editions, the Beano one is set in Beanotown, where all the characters from the individual comic strips live and this one takes one plot that involves all the main cartoon strips.

The plot this year revolves around the Ban by the Mayor of Beanotown, who is Walter the softies Dad on Pranking following an incident at the launch of Beano Bucks, the towns new currency and the attempt to overturn it by Beanotown's children.

This has been well put together so the plot runs seamlessly across each separate cartoon strip and a few joint panels.

The Summer Special is rooted in the current comic so while featuring such staples as Dennis The Menace, Minnie The Minx and Rodger The Dodger that many of us recall it also includes Bananaman and Rubi, JJ and Pie face which is about as PC as it gets with a female wheelchair user, and Afro-carribean character included.

The older series are as I think I have said before are more toned down and the Demon Whacker absent and the Bash Street Schools teacher doesn't even carry a cane never mind threaten to use it reflect the regular comic as it is in 2020!    

All in all I would say as much as I am a Beano traditionalist, this years Summer Special is really well put together with quizzes, games and stickers to keep the young and the young at heart happy this summer which is what matters.

By way of contrast this years Dandy Summer Special is aimed more at those who grew up on the regular comic that was discontinued in December 2012 with choice high quality reprints but with a few brand new strips of the old favourites to keep us amused.

 Continuing the fast forward to the past theme, I recent acquired this 2006 cd of the 1972 T. Rex The Slider album which was one those things together with the summer specials I remember quite well having the lp which featured the hit singles Metal Guru and Telegram Sam.

Summer Special edition

After all that groan up election stuff on Thursday and the counting bit yesterday let's get back to more agreeable matters shall we?
As we head toward the end of May, we move from Spring into Summer which usually in this country tends to bring warmer weather and lots of Sun, indeed you might remember from last year we kind of over did it with temperatures in the high 20 degrees C range for a long period.
Summer in the UK is marked by the start of school holidays that usually start around the third week of July and run for typically 8 weeks which makes it a highlight of your childhood years and depending on age and in some cases districts marks such milestones as graduating to Juniors or moving on to Secondary schools at 11+ and college/uni at 16 and 18 respectively.
Something else generations of britishers also looked forward to was the publication of unique Summer Specials of their comics that came in full colour on better magazine quality paper with a binding.

They were and are almost like miniature annuals, which are a staple of childhood Christmas's  over here with special cartoon strips, games and things to do in them that you'd pick up before you went off on your summer holidays.
The company D C Thomson are a well known Scottish print media magnet printing magazines, comics and newspapers and two comic titles they are known for is The Beano and The Dandy.
Recently I got my copies of these two Summer Specials.
The Beano is a current comic, read by today's children as well as sizable number of adults who are continuing a enjoyable interest from childhood aimed at both girls and boys  whose cartoon strips have changed by the times with some old ones discontinued for new ones and some changes within the older ones to reflect more the society around today's children.
Thus it features such long established series as Dennis the Menace with his dog, Gnasher, Minnie the Minx, my heroine and the Bash Street Kids set in a working class junior school together with newer ones such as Rubi JJ and Pie Face that feature disabled children and people of colour in an attempt to be more 'inclusive' and all are drawn especially for this years summer special.
It has stickers, games and quizzes too clearly aimed at today's children.
The Dandy's is different because it is no longer published weekly and like the Annual is aimed more at those who remember reading the Dandy as I did as a kid and so has decided to make it a compilation with illustrations of some front covers, of some vintage comic strips featured in past summer annuals.
Reading that does bring back past memories and really childhood nostalgia is where this one is aimed.
Two annuals aimed at different markets all a great summer read.