Stewart's Haunted Manor

Part I - No-one at Home! (This Page)

Part II - Spooks in Residence!

This superb 3D model of the Haunted Manor was designed and built for me by Stewart, based on the artwork from the comic advert. I knew it was going to be good, but my jaw dropped in amazement when I saw it for the first time. It goes far beyond the original and has some terrific details, such as:

trap-door and secret panel (inspired by the Maxwell Hawke stories in Buster comic)
rafters
window and door surrounds
references to Sugar Puffs in pictures at sides
hand-drawn and shaded stonework
flagstone floor
3D effect staircase
spooky cat shadow
terrific box artwork

Also, I like the way that space is implied beyond the boundaries of the diorama, i.e. through the windows, door and trapdoor. This is absolutely fantastic - well done, Stewart!

Fantasy cereal box artwork at rear and sides of the new Haunted Manor. Every stone is hand-drawn and shaded! Spot the references to 1965 and 2009:

Here's the artwork that was used to make the packet top and packet front. The latter was bigger than the A4 page size, so two pages were used and Stewart skillfully combined the two.

(See how all the elements of the promotion on the front are also present on the Farm Animal box that we came across much later! As Stewart commented: I definitely did not have any recall of the SP/Spooks box when I put all that together; rather I was gathering all the usual components that appeared on cereal boxes during those years, but it's still good to see that we got the overall look in keeping with the times.)

Updated box artwork to reflect more closely the interior scene - two gothic type windows, with Tilly at one of them (Bertie having just flown away!).

The pictures above are of the model that Stewart very kindly made for me. Here are some great pictures of his own version. Have fun spotting the differences!

Stewart says:

On the box front, you will see various differences, old and new, and apart from the addition of the three free-standing Spooks which were added for completeness, all the changes were to disguise flaws, i.e. Sidney to cover some blemish during assembly, and the box around "Haunted Manor!" and the extension to the castle for similar reasons: rather a dog's breakfast of a job. The letters for "Free" were ones I found randomly and I liked the look of them as I was never happy with my hand-drawn attempt to replicate that sort of lettering, so they are stuck on, with the remainder being Letraset. I have done a close-up in case you want to replicate this.

In the interior view, the ship's wheel with Sidney lookalike was in my spares box for years and seemed a good fit. The only other difference is the gap in the left-hand landing. It was not as wide as in the comic advert, and of course for me it stood out a mile so I disguised it by having the left baluster broken which gives the illusion of making the gap look wider, at any rate enough to satisfy a critical eye. It was surprising that the two Manors did not have many more differences of that type but the identicality was very close throughout.