OOJAH ANNUAL, THE

Oojah was an Elephant comic strip character as featured in the Daily Sketch Newspaper and various children's books. Values tend to be generally up to £5 for poor to fair copies, £5-10 for average copies, £10-£20 for slightly above average copies, £20-30 for anything approaching quite nice/Fine and on the rare ocasion when an almost as new copy of an early example turns up, a buyer could be looking at £50-100

1923 was the first annual, printed in 1922 and probably available for Christmas that year. Illustrations by THOMAS MAYBANK. Also Peter Fraser. Four colour plates. Red, black, blue green ink printing.

Uncle Oojah (originally known as Flip Flap, The Great Oojah) first appeared in the Daily Sketch on 18 Feb 1919. He subsequently appeared in annuals such as 'The Once Upon a Time Children's Annual' 1920 and 1921 and 'The Joy Book Annual' 1922. He also appeared in the Twilight Series for Little Folks published by McClelland and Stewart in 1920 including 'Flip Flap The Great Oojah', 'The Children of Funbeam' and 'The Pigmy Pirates'.

By 1922/23 he had his own annual which continued through until 1951 with a few gaps during the war years. There was also an Oojah comic strip and between 1921 and 1929 an Oojah supplement in The Daily Sketch, initially running to four pages each Saturday. Oojah was revived in the Jack and Jill Annuals in the 1950s but bore little relation to the original character of the early 1920s and played second fiddle to his nephew, Jerry. 

The stories were written for over 30 years by Flo Lancaster. They were illustrated by Thomas Maybank until his death in 1929. H.M.Tallintyre took over as illustrator from then on.

The stories in the early twenties are exciting, surreal and highly imaginative. By the thirites they had become somewhat tame and predictable but still good fun. The series did seem to improve again from the 1937 annual onwards. There was also a Daily Sketch Birthday Club of which Uncle Oojah was honorary chairman. There were real benefits to members including vouchers for a pound of chocolates and some great badges and postcards (Thanks to Comics Wiki)