Big Eggo

Gracing the front cover of issue 1 of The Beano Comic, dated 30th July 1938, was Big Eggo. Drawn by Reg Carter, his quest was to find his missing egg, and his misadventures in that endeavour was the defining element of the early strips. This storyline would be forgotten however, when World War II broke out only a year later. Now, Eggo, along with other characters in The Beano would give out messages of war support, such as one incident where Eggo gets pranked by a house owner, so he gets revenge by putting up lights outside, getting the man into trouble during the blackout! This was a lesson to readers to keep lights off during blackouts, as the lights attract the enemy and their bombs. Prior to the launch of The Beano, Reg Carter and the DC Thomson staff were considering what character to use on the front cover. They came up with two possibilities. Eggo was one of them, but he wasn't called that originally, instead the original scripts refer to him as Oswald the Ostrich. Doesn't quite have the same ring to it...

Because the Beano Book ended up merging with the Magic Fun-Book to create the Magic-Beano Book starting with the 1943 edition, as a consequence of wartime paper rationing, Eggo would team-up with Magic's cover star Koko the Pup in a joint strip in the annual, called Eggo and Koko. In one such strip, the two go horse riding, but lose the horses. In the end, Koko rides Eggo instead.

In 1947, it was decided that children couldn't relate to Eggo as he didn't have a humanoid body, having wings instead of arms. As a result, The Beano got it's first front cover redesign in issue 327, the first issue of 1948, with Biffo the Bear replacing Eggo as the cover star, Eggo's strip moving to a black and white half page inside, and Eggo replacing Peanut in the masthead. Unfortunately, Carter's health was failing, and early in 1949 he died. As a result, Eggo was dropped from the comic after issue 358, dated 2nd April 1949. However, he remained on the masthead until Dennis the Menace took over in 1954.