Cracked Collector's Edition

Cracked Magazine from USA

Updated: December 8th, 2020

Period:

1971 - 2000

Companies:

Major Magazines, Globe Communications Corp.

Items:

125

Last added:

Cracked Collector's Edition #125

Officially, this issue was titled Cracked Shut-Ups, but eventually this and the following two issues will become Cracked Collectors' Edition with #4. Cracked Collectors' Edition will eventually become the second longest-running Cracked series with 125 issues, so here we go!

The Cracked Collector's Edition was the most important of the Cracked special editions. These first issues reprinting Shut-Ups were good at the time, but the idea was eventually done too often. Particularly in the 1980's when there were far too many Shut-Ups specials reprinting the same pages that had already been reprinted quite often. The variety of subjects in the '70's Collector's Editions were diverse and interesting, then two many of the same subjects started to be used one after another in the early 1980's, but the Collector's Editions regained their prestige after Mort Todd took over, and continued to be mostly interesting throughout the Silverstone years in the '90's.

The production of the Sproul Collector's Editions seemed quite cheap, with the same intro pages (in lieu of a contents page) used time and time again in different issues. The production values were much better in the later issues.

Tom Smith did some extensive research on the Collector's Editions a few years ago because he wanted to try and place months and solid dates on the early editions, which were undated on the covers in the US. The first few Collector's Editions (before it was officially called Collector's Edition) which were annuals came out around the end of the year. Thus, this edition of Cracked Shut-Ups would have been on the stands in approximately December of 1972, and the previous issue would have been out around December of 1971.

Several of the Canadian copies of the early collector's editions, starting with Cracked Strikes It Rich with Sagebrush included months on the covers, whereas the American editions did not until much later, so several of the issues can be pinpointed exactly by cover date if you are fortunate enough to find Canadian editions.