04 Bullies (Apr 1959)

Article rewritten in May 2024

'Bullies' is a Royale storyette about a young sailor who is relentlessly bullied by two comrades but eventually turns the tables on them. The image above is a thumbnail from Royale's catalogue showing him being chastised as he is forced to scrub the deck. There's a better copy in the full Gallery article (link below).

This is Royale's description of the set. 

It appears in list 7 of the 1960 Catalogue, dating the set at Apr 1959, 

it was splashed in the August edition of Man Alive (No 6)

I'll save the surprise ending for the full article (link below)

Royale must have thought highly of this storyette because they included a second thumbnail promoting it in their catalogue. Despite that, however, the only other pictures in the Archive have come from ads and listings in beefcake magazines, not individual photos that had been collected by customers. Most of the 24 pictures are missing. The images I do have are presented in my best guess of what the set sequence might be and numbered according to that.

The man in the middle of the thumbnail above is very obviously David Reid (accidentally misnamed as Reed in the description). The two bullies are named as John Bastock and John Brien*. I don't have any separate information clarifying who is who but have assumed that Royale named them in the same sequence, left to right, as they appear in both of the images.

Read 'Bullies'

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John Brien* also appears in photos from the Caned Sailors set (see image below) and I explain in that article that the creases in his trousers are almost identical suggesting the two sets were photographed on the same day. Moreover, there he has a partner wielding the cane, just as there is in Bullies. For that reason it's possible his partner in the picture below is David Reid although it's not so obviously him and his clothes are completely different. His clothes and chunkier build are the main reason why I have designated 'Caned Sailors' as a separate set but I may have been influenced too by the superior quality of these images. 

You can still see a copy of the original 'Bullies' article at mitchmen

(as revised on 22nd may 2022)

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The picture pricing given in Royale's Catalogue may seem a little confusing and contradictory. The 24 pix for 10/- (50p) offer at the top relates to the thumbnail sheet which would have had good enough thumbnails to warrant buying in it's own right. Underneath it gives the price of 7x5 inch enlargements. 3/6 is the pre-decimalisation equivalent of 17.5p now. In those days there were 4 dollars to the pound.