Comic Book Review: Bunty Picture Story Library #242: Tina the Tester art by Tony Speer
Bunty was a weekly British comic paper for working class girls under the age of 14, which ran from 1958-2001. It primarily focused on serialized stories with teenage girls as the protagonists, dealing with school, jobs, family issues, and sometimes fantastical occurences. The longest-running strip in the magazine was “The Four Marys” about four girls with the same first name at a public (private) boarding school and their misadventures. In addition to the weekly magazine, there were annuals, and the subject of today’s post, the “Picture Story Library” which had longer one-shot stories and came out monthly.
“Tina the Tester” had originally run in Bunty 1967-68, with periodic one-shots thereafter drawn by Diane Gabbot (creators were not usually credited, and the names of the writers are not generally known.) In the first story, Tina Roberts is a product tester for a firm that wanted to make sure the items vendors were trying to get them to carry worked as advertised. This led to hilarious shenanigans.
This last appearance of the character was drawn by Tony Speer in 1982. She’s now Tina Dixon, the daughter of the manager of Modmiss Ltd., a firm that makes gear targeted at teenage girls. As she’s readily available her father makes Tina test the products. (This may violate some nepotism and safety regulations…I should really just relax.)
First up, he has her stand in the rain to test a “waterproof” school uniform. It isn’t penetrated by water, that’s true, but it shrinks when exposed to H2O to embarrassing results. (This isn’t that kind of comic book, so the skirt only shrinks from knee length to mid-thigh.) Father is disappointed, but glad he didn’t skip the testing step. On her way out, Tina is handed a new hockey stick by her father’s secretary.
At school, Tina participates in a field hockey match, only to have her new stick bend like a pretzel when it hits another stick. This throws her off her game even when issued a normal stick, and she is scolded by the gamesmistress. As it happens, the match was witnessed by some sixth form (17-18 years of age) boys, one of whom is Barry Brayne, a budding scientist. He asks if he can examine the stick to determine what went wrong with the plastic construction.
Tina’s father agrees to let the boy have a look, and issues Tina some new clothes meant for the disco. (That’s them on the cover.) At Barry’s house, in his private lab, he discovers evidence of tampering. Someone may be trying to sabotage Modmiss!
Tina asks Barry to come to the disco with her in case anything goes wrong (we don’t really get a fix on her age, but I’m guessing she’s no younger than 15.) He’s not keen on dancing, but agrees. Sure enough, under hot lights, the disco outfit becomes floppy and baggy. A tall, lanky girl calls attention to the Modmiss label on Tina’s outfit. Barry is able to sneak a look at her bag and discover she’s Sandra Snape, an agent of Soopergear.
Soopergear is Modmiss’ biggest rival in the market. They’d certainly want to sabotage Modmiss if they could, but how could they? Tina’s father trusts his workmen.
Next to test is a bicycle, which Tina’s father claims has never even been seen by anyone outside the factory and therefore could not have been sabotaged. Tina takes it to Barry for an examination, but he can’t find anything wrong, so they’re off for a ride in the country.
The pair is followed out of town by a mysterious car, and then when brakes are needed, they work too well and Tina goes flying into a river! The car turns out to be driven by Bill Snape, director of Soopergear, and he’s brought his niece Sandra to take pictures of the disaster! The sabotage turns out not to be the brakes (Barry had overcompensated when he did the tune-up), but the water-soluble paint job! No way of proving it was Soopergear, but then how did they know where to be?
Tina tells her father she wants no more testing jobs until the saboteur is caught, but no girl could resist a pony ride with new gear! Sure enough, though, the gentle pony suddenly turns into a bucking bronco, and Sandra is johnny on the spot to take pictures. Barry does chemical analysis, and discovers that the clothing was treated with a substance that irritates horses.
Tina’s father agrees to have his own chemists test the samples, but the tubes containing them are accidentally smashed when his secretary bumps into him.
It’s summer holiday time, and Tina is supposed to go to a youth camp for the long weekend. Her father wants her to test a bunch of the new gear that Modmiss has come up with, and Tina balks. He’s forced to double her pocket money for the rest of the year as a bribe.
As expected, all the Modmiss gear is defective, and Sandra takes every opportunity to show off the seemingly superior Soopergear products. Until the morning of the canoe rides. Suddenly it’s Sandra’s canoe and paddle that bust! We learn that Tina switched the labels on the nearly identical boats the night before and Sandra failed to notice.
Tina saves Sandra from drowning, and Sandra finally admits she knew all along that someone was sabotaging Modmiss. Her job was only to call a certain phone number, get the details on what to look for, and take the pictures; she doesn’t know who’s responsible for the actual tampering.
Barry tricks the secretary into admitting she knows the new hairspray is defective, then reveals he’s been bugging her phone and recording it since the smashed test tube incident–he hadn’t told Tina as he might have been wrong. In light of his intelligence and scientific savvy, Barry is promised the offer of a good lab job at Modmiss when he leaves school.
The story closes with Father offering even more products that need Tina’s attention, and her hoping this will not be another “testing” time.
The back cover is a random photograph of Brian May.
Given the intended youth of the audience, Bunty stories traditionally played down “romance”, so there’s no mushy stuff here. Tina shoots her father down the moment he suggests she and Barry might be more than good friends. Older readers may see the relationship through “shipping goggles” but the story works just as well with Barry being interested in scientific detection and Tina being his unofficial client.
It’s a cute story with very mild peril, suitable for young readers from about ten up, especially girls. The art is decent and the writing okay. I don’t know if these stories were ever reprinted, so it might be difficult to track down a copy in good condition, but as I had an opportunity to talk about it, here it is.
