Throughout the nineteen sixties, seventies and eighties, most issues of
Archie Comics featured a two-page spread titled Archie Club News. The
banner at the top of the page announced, "ARCHIE CLUB MEMBERS send in
your reports and be eligible to win cash prizes in the Archie Series
Magazines." The results of this venture were generally irrelevant notes
sent in like, "Dear Archie, I want to tell you about the snow owl."
Often what was sent in appeared to be part of a class project.
Elementary school children were in the process of learning how to write
letters and encouraged by a teacher to send something Riverdale way.
Sometimes the letters were weird or even profound and other times
prophetic or just silly.
The following letter originally appeared in Archie #211, August 1971:
Dear Archie,
This year Edgewood has it all together. Especially with our new group The Subjected Soul's. We are a small group who can copy any group in the recording business. We try to do the best we can. Sometimes many of us get nervous because of the new people we see and old ones we know. But we keep on pouring on the sound of today.
We dig playing for little children at Elementary schools and Catholic schools. We get so many requests. We once had the crazy idea that we could be the first colored group on cartoons, and could prove that the blacks and whites and blues, reds, pinks, and greens and many other colors can get it together. And prove that we all can make it groovy.
L. Davis
710 Laverne Avenue
San Anotonio, Tex 78237
L. Davis' letter won 2nd prize of three dollars for this issue.
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