Look-in Wiki
Look-in Wiki

Annuals were always the perennial favourite Xmas gift in the 60's and 70's, they were about in the 80's but their popularity had waned a bit. There can't be many people my age who don't remember getting an annual of their favourite TV series. Look-in fulfilled this need too, releasing annuals until at least 1991.

The Look-in annuals were different in that they obviously didn't focus on one particular TV series, but they encompassed (or tried to), everything that was going on in the entertainment industry in the particular year that they were produced, not an easy task in some 80 or so pages, but they did it pretty admirably.

Annuals contained strips of course, great in the beginning, as it meant some new stories to read, but as the years progressed they became a bit lazy, and resorted to edited reprints of strips that had appeared earlier on, in the magazine.

And there were posters, but in the earlier ones TV actors and stars seemed to be favoured as opposed to pop stars, but later ones had a diverse spread of pictures, including some sports stars.

There were many features over the years, most featuring pop, TV or Films, but ever-current, Look-in annuals made space for other subjects that had everyone buzzing, thing's like UFO's (71 & 78), Stamps (75), Skateboarding (78) and The Micro-chip (80).

Other features were designed to include as many different stars as they could pack in, the only drawback was that the information on each star was quite sparse leaving you thinking, maybe it would have been better to concentrate on one or two of the more popular stars.