Lovebirds publication years

[delicasalat]

Does anyone have any reliable info on the years vs issue correlation for Lovebirds? They don't seem to ever refer to dates in the magazines.

I know that the second issue of vol 1 was 1976, but they soon gave up on volume numbers and just used issue numbers, so it's not possible to figure out the years of the later issues.

If anyone has any knowledge of this, I'd be grateful (as I want to make my index as good as I can)

[40plus]

I think this was discussed in passing in the Lovebirds thread once. Hattertim is the expert on these matters.

Regards

40+

[hattertim]

Hardly the "expert"! But I do have some info...

Lovebirds, like quite a few of the DS publications, didn't have any publication year data until the much later issues, although I suppose you can sort of use this and work backwards from it. The first issue I have with a publication date inside it is # 184, which was published in 1996. The highest numbered issued I have is # 235, which was published in 2003.

Other info that may help is the following footnote from Mary Millington's Wikipedia page...

David Sullivan’s magazines were often undated, as such the only way of dating them is by which Sullivan produced films were being promoted inside the magazines, i.e. a Sullivan magazine which promotes Come Play With Me would be from 1976/1977, ones promoting The Playbirds would be circa 1978, and ones promoting Confessions from the David Galaxy Affair from 1979.

...so this may help to date them based on what's being advertised inside them.

Additionally, Ladybirds # 1 contains an advert that declares "New! 1976 Releases from Scandinavia", and there's also an advert for the Playbirds 1977 calendar...so perhaps that's the biggest clues of all as to when the title started.

[delicasalat]

Thanks hattertim. This is pretty much what I figured (that you'd need to look for clues in the adverts).

Taking your two dated issue numbers and subtracting them gives 51. That spans a period of 7 years, so a little over 7 issues per year (not a very round figure!).

But it doesn't help me with the earlier issues, of course (which is my main interest).

I'll look again at the content.

I wonder why Sullivan shyed away from dating his mags? (or maybe it was just incompetence)

[hattertim]

Back before back issues became a major thing, perhaps not dating the mags meant that they stayed on the shelves that much longer? And also maybe they were published on a less than monthly basis in order to perpetuate this? Anyways, unless you bought them at the time and kept a record of when they were on the shelves, it's tricky to work out exactly when they were published!