Enid Blyton wrote 21 novels for her most famous series, the Famous Five, between 1942 and 1963. Less well-known: she also wrote 8 short stories featuring Julian, Dick, Anne, George and Timmy.
These were eventually collected in the 1995 collection Five Have a Puzzling Time, and they’re all individually available as ebooks. So they’re not hard to come by. But how did they originally come about?
Most were originally published in Enid Blyton Magazine annuals, or the Princess Book For Girls annuals. But one story, ‘Well Done, Famous Five!’, has a stranger history: it was commissioned for a series of booklets given away in giant cereal boxes, and it was only published in Australia. Lashings of Vegemite!
The cereal in question was Weeties. In total, it gave away 16 different booklets, all written by Blyton and only obtainable, at random, if you bought Weeties in the large box. Some were pre-existing stories, but as the promotional material boasted, “Many are entirely new, written especially for Weeties”.
Spoiler: Just because it was original doesn’t mean it was much chop. I can summarise the plot in a sentence: The Five see a horse escape into a field of corn, and tell the authorities where to find the horse. That’s literally it. But that would have been enough to appeal to many kids in the 1950s, when Blyton was massively popular (and cereal choices were more limited).
But when exactly did all this happen?
Most sources list the publication for this story as 1956, including the Enid Blyton Society. I’m not convinced, because every Australian media reference I can find to the Weeties promotion comes from mid-1957.
Here’s an ad from the Sydney Morning Herald from 11 August 1957:
Note the “Never before in any breakfast food packet!” line – something that wouldn’t make much sense if (say) the products had gone on sale in late 1956 but were still being advertised nine months later.
There’s a similar approach in an advertisement from the Port Lincoln Times for 4 July 1957, which is the earliest advertising for the series I’ve located:
And the most telling evidence also comes from the Port Lincoln Times. In an unsigned article from 22 August 1957, the paper discussed the promotion at some length under the heading ‘Good literature free for Australian children’.
“Distribution is being made in packets of Weeties shortly,” it says (emphasis mine). So it seems clear this was a new promotion at the time.
It’s striking that the article opens by suggesting that any work by Blyton is welcome as it will be free of “racial prejudice” – something that no-one who had actually read the stories would be likely to claim now.
That aside, this piece reads as if a Weeties press release was a major source. Given that, it’s a little surprising that the Famous Five tale is, at least by implication, inaccurately suggested to be a reprint:
Seven of these titles are completely new, having been commissioned and specially written for this purpose; others include adventures of “The Famous Five”.
Anyway, I can imagine that the lead time between the story being commissioned by Weeties and appearing was long enough that it was copyrighted in 1956. But all the evidence suggests 1957 was when Australian kids first got their hands on it.
Getting an original copy of the Weeties booklet is, understandably, tricky. As I write, a copy is listed on eBay for US$185.90. So far there are no takers.
For more Blyton history, check out the full story of her pseudonym Mary Pollock.
Leave a Reply