Dr. Popdoodle's Monsters Sticker Book (Whitman, 1977)

Dr. Popdoodle's Monsters Sticker Book (A Whitman Book #2177, Western Publishing, 1977) is a 16-page coloring and sticker book celebrating the eponymous physician and his menagerie of monstrous patients that wouldn't look out of place in the universe of Mercer Mayer, if Mercer Mayer couldn't draw very well.

Apparently a one-off character created specifically for this book and not based on any existing property, Dr. Popdoodle's Monsters... bears no credit for author or illustrator (though they may very well have borrowed the concept from Mayer's own Professor Wormbog, whose first appearance was the year prior. You tell me.)

The rear cover is a set of cut-out finger puppets, the only detail I could recall from having once owned this book as a child (and in a desperate bid to identify the title, I launched a general appeal to The Internet at large, to no avail).

Below is the entire contents of the book, including the interior pages with and without stickers applied.

First, the stickers:

PAGE 1: Dr. Popdoodle's Monster Parts:

PAGE 2: Ferocious Fanged Fogglewart

PAGE 3: Scaly-Collared Slurper and Hideous Hairy Howler

PAGE 4: Blue-Browed Belly Belcher

PAGE 5: Crimson-Clawed Flower Muncher

PAGE 6: Five-Footed Fompton and Other Creepies

PAGE 7: Weird Wing-Eared Wooklewok

PAGES 8 and 9 (a spread): Dr. Popdoodle to the Rescue, Ailing Forked-Tongue Xerneruptus

PAGE 10: The Fearful Fraternity with Bat-Winged Groucheroo

PAGE 11: Pig-Snoot Grump and Orange-Eyed Feliney Ogre

PAGE 12: Horrible Health-Minded Gorknockle

PAGE 13: Terrible Two-Toed Tree Chomper

PAGE 14: Scuzzy Snake-tailed Fuzzyflaw and Double-Fanged Dopple Gopple

PAGE 15: Scaly-Tailed Long Snoot Snopple

PAGE 16: Floppy-Eared Claw-and-Scrape

One Monster Book After Another!

I previously posted about one of my favorite childhood books, "One Monster After Another" (Mercer Mayer, 1974). Well it wasn't long after first discovering that book that I found my way to "Little Monster's You-Can-Make-It Book" (Mercer Mayer, 1978), a big (144 pages!) activity book centered around The Edge of Nowhere and its monstrous inhabitants.

Not only is it loaded with wonderful Mayer artwork (some pages are color, but most are black and white), the book itself stands as an artifact from a time when little kids could be amused for hours cutting out and coloring decks of cards, puppet parts, masks and board-game pieces.

My original copy was reduced to scraps by my having completed every page in the book. EVERY. PAGE. I recently received an untouched copy, scans of which I'll share below.

Faces of do-it-yourself Kerploppus Playing Cards:

The Stamp-Collecting Trollusk explains that his monster stamps are not valid postage:

Cut-Up appears on the back of pages left deliberately blank because of cutting requirements:
Monster Finger Puppets:

I always felt sorry for this little Useless Blob... (looks like a printing error truncated his name. He just can't catch a break.)

One of my absolute favorite pages: this picture simulates a window looking out onto the Edge of Nowhere. This hung up on a wall near my bed. The conceit that you are not merely decorating your room with a poster, but viewing an actual window to another world, creating a themed experience right in your own room, captivated my young mind.

Here's a series of details from a color board game that spreads across two pages:

Emilia Wingbat's Maze, featuring the fearsome Typhoonigator from One Monster After Another.

A flying Bombanat airplane template:

Another window-related page. You tape these cut-outs to your window to simulate monsters peeking in from outside.