''Cuddles and Dimples'' is a British comic strip published in the comic book magazine ''

The Dandy ''The Dandy'' was a British children's comic magazine published by the Dundee based publisher DC Thomson. The first issue was printed in December 1937, making it the world's third-longest running comic, after '' Il Giornalino'' (cover dated 1 O ...

''. It was first published in 1986. The stories' protagonists are two toddler brothers who like to cause double the trouble wherever they go. The artist when the strip first started was

Barrie Appleby Barrie Appleby is a British comics artist who works mainly for Scottish publisher D. C. Thomson & Co., drawing strips such as Dennis the Menace and Roger the Dodger for ''The Beano'' since the 1970s. He has also drawn Cuddles and Dimples for '' ...

, who continued until 2004 with a strip by Gordon Bell in the 1994 annual and a sole strip by Nigel Parkinson in 2003, who took over the strip next year as part of the revamp at that time.

History of the comic

Cuddles and Dimples actually started out as two separate strips. While Dimples started out in ''The Dandy'' on 27 October 1984, Cuddles had already been in '' Nutty'' since March 1981. When ''Nutty'' merged with ''The Dandy'' in 1985, Cuddles did not follow, instead becoming the cover character of ''Hoot''. ''Hoot'' combined with ''The Dandy'' the following year, and the first ''Cuddles and Dimples'' story showed Cuddles' family moving to Dandytown, where he met Dimples. This took place in issue 2345, dated 1 November 1986. By late 1987, without explanation, one set of parents disappeared (Cuddles'), and the toddlers were said to be twins. Grounds for this change had been somewhat prepared previously by a short-lived spin-off strip called "That's Our Granny" which established that the two boys shared a grandmother. For many years, the characters appeared in the centre pages (with full colour) of ''The Dandy''. When they first appeared, they appeared in pages 16 and 17 of the then 20-page comic with red and black as the only colours. The characters took over the front page of ''The Dandy'' from issue 3008 (July 1999) until October 2000, when they got 'thrown out' for misbehaving too much (in reality, readers wanted Desperate Dan back on the cover). They were both preceded and succeeded on the cover by

Desperate Dan Desperate Dan is a wild west character in the now-defunct Scottish comic magazine ''The Dandy'', and became its mascot. He made his appearance in the first issue which was dated 4 December 1937. He is apparently the world's strongest man, ...

. By the time of the revamp in October 2004, Cuddles and Dimples were assigned to Nigel Parkinson to freshen up their look (prior to the new look, the strip had been reprinted since early 2004). Dimples was made the older brother and now has a patch of Brown Hair. He also became vaguely intelligent. Cuddles look was toned down from the grotesque little monster he was before, and was made the younger, more naive and disgusting brother. Both of them appeared slightly less childish; for example, they no longer called their parents "Mumsie and Daddums", instead calling them Mum and Dad. Their parents were also revamped, dad being a pot-bellied balding idiot and mum an up-to-date babe or a yummy mummy. The strip was axed with ''The Dandy''s revamp in October 2010; however, they returned in reprints from February 2012 onwards.

Sources

DC Thomson Comics strips Dandy strips 1986 comics debuts Child characters in comics Comics characters introduced in 1986 British comics characters Male characters in comics Fictional tricksters Comic strip duos Comics set in the United Kingdom {{UK-comics-stub