2017 marked 50 years of Amar Chitra Katha, the company under which Tinkle comics falls. Among the various activities to celebrate its golden jubilee, Amar Chitra Katha tied up with Bookaroo Children’s Festival (which also completed 10 years) to make a spectacular mural outside a Delhi metro station. The mural featured heroes from Amar Chitra Katha comics as well as popular characters from Tinkle, with Uncle Pai in the centre.
In terms of content, Tinkle explored new character series and features in 2017.
We had two awe-inspiring personalities contributing inspiring incidents from their childhoods for our It Happened to Me segment—filmmaker Gauri Shinde and badminton ace PV Sindhu. The segment has been popular since Uncle Pai’s times, and has our young readers send in true-life incidents from their lives that are either funny or inspiring. We have earlier featured Indian cricket captain, Virat Kohli.
This year also saw the launch of two new character series. Launched in July, NOIS (aka Nilgiri Orchid International School) is a hostel series about the adventures of a bunch of kids led by Nadia and Aadi, as they uncover the mysteries of their school. The series has turned wildly popular in the short time it’s been out.
The second was YogYodhas, launched in Tinkle’s anniversary issue in November. The adventure-fantasy series is based on yoga and the martial art form of Kalaripayattu. It follows the outings of siblings Bir and Bala as they discover their secret powers.
Meanwhile, Tinkle’s popular superhero WingStar, stepped out from the pages of the magazine and into her very own book, chronicling her adventures. This book on India’s youngest crime-fighter comes with free goodies including labels, tattoos and wristbands. It also includes a scannable QR code on the cover which allowed readers across the country to see WingStar come alive in full 3D glory, on downloading the WingStar app. This bit of augmented reality also extends to the WingStar cut-outs and images in stores.
Tinkle also hosted the IdeaStar Contest for its young readers, prompting them to send ideas for stories. This time kids brainstormed on figuring out a new villain in the WingStar series, a new monster to scare Billy the vampire in Dental Diaries and a new superweird power in the SuperWeirdos series. The winning entries were published from the anniversary issue in November till the December issue.
The year ended with the third Tinkle Awards where readers voted for their favourite issue, cover, story, character series and feature to appear in Tinkle over a year. The contest ends on 10 January 2018!
A busy year for us, but a fun year for our young readers and our Tinkle Toons!
(These are purely personal views of Tinkle editor-in-chief Rajani Thindiath and AnimationXpress.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views)
