Posted By Dan Greenfield on Nov 28, 2023 | 5 comments

TOYHEM doesn’t have to be strictly about toys…

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Welcome to TOYHEM! For the fifth straight holiday season, we’re bringing you a series of features and columns celebrating the toys of our youth, which often made for the best memories this time of year. Click here to check out the complete index of stories — and have a Merry Christmas, a Happy Chanukah and Happy Holidays! — Dan

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By JIM BEARD

I’ve always loved media tie-in books, especially novels based on popular television shows and movies. That interest began with the Whitman Authorized TV Adventure books of the 1960s and early 1970s.

Now, I grant you that getting a book for the holidays isn’t necessarily something that every kid yearned for, but for me it was an important part of my Christmas “gets” and I appreciated each and every one of them—especially if they were connected with a property I loved.

The Whitman hardcovers are an odd lot, but that makes them even more special to me. They hit a ton of the biggest shows back in the day, but also missed some (Batman, I’m looking at you), which makes for an eclectic line-up of titles. What’s even cooler is that the series represents some of the first and only prose fiction of the properties it included, and that fiction is rarely juvenile. The books are short, but they don’t talk down to their audience. Some of it is relatively sophisticated stuff.

I picked out 13 of the nearly 100 editions in the series; some I had as a kid, and others I collected along the way as an “adult.” Hope you spot a few you’ll want to look for and include in your own tie-in collections.

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Star Trek: Mission to Horatius. By Mack Reynolds, illustrated by Sparky Moore. Talk about a place to start this line-up! This is the very first original Star Trek prose fiction novel ever, and, as far as I know, the only Whitman Authorized TV Adventure to be reprinted in modern times.

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Family Affair: Buffy Finds a Star. By Gladys Baker Bond, illustrated by Michael Lowenbein. I’m pretty sure this was the only Family Affair entry in the series. New adventures of Mr. French!

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Dragnet: Case Histories from the Popular Television Series. By Richard Deming, illustrated by Dan Goozee. Not an actual novel, but six short stories of Friday and Gannon. Would kids have dug it? Personally, I would’ve wanted an Adam-12 book, too.

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The Munsters and the Great Camera Caper. By William Johnston, illustrated by Arnie Kohn. One of two Munsters Whitman novels, but the one I had as a kid and still have today. Love that cover to death.

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Hawaii Five-O: Top Secret. By Robert Sidney Bowen, cover by Larry Frederick. There were two Five-O novels, too, but I like the cover on this one more than The Octopus Caper.

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Dr. Kildare: Assigned to Trouble. By Robert Ackworth, illustrated by Robert L. Jenny. I’m a big fan of Max Brand’s original Kildare novels, but this tie-in to the 1960s Richard Chamberlain television series is a great addition to my Whitman collection.

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The Green Hornet: The Case of the Disappearing Doctor. By Brandon Keith, illustrated by Larry Pelini. If we couldn’t have an official Batman Whitman novel, this would be the next best thing.

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Mod Squad: Assignment: The Arranger. By Richard Deming, cover by Dezso Csanady. There were also two Mod Squad Whitman books, both by Deming and both with ultra-groovy covers by Csanady.

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The Invaders: Dam of Death. By Jack Pearl, illustrated by Robert L. Jenny. Can’t swear to it, but I believe there were far fewer photo covers for the Whitman books than illustrated. If you look closely at this one, you’ll spot a rare “Created by” credit for this novel series.

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Sea Hunt. By Cole Fannin, illustrated by Gerald Hannah. Full disclosure—I have never, ever seen an episode of Sea Hunt, but this is one of my most favorite covers of the Whitman series.

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Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. By Raymond F. Jones, illustrations by Leon Jason Studios. Another Whitman entry without a subtitle. I didn’t get to watch this show as a kid nearly as much as I’d have liked to.

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Land of the Giants: Flight of Fear. By Carl Henry Rathjen, cover by Fernando Da Silva. I’ll go on record here and say this is my favorite of all the Whitman TV books. I still have my childhood copy to this day.

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The Monkees: Who’s Got the Button? By William Johnston, illustrated by Richard Moore. Listen, I know what you’re saying—how do you write a fiction adventure of the Monkees? The answer’s in the book, the first and only official prose fiction novel of the Prefab Four. History, indeed.

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MORE

— The Complete TOYHEM INDEX of Stories and Features. Click here.

— Dig These 13 Fabulous OLD-SCHOOL BOARD GAMES. Click here.

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When JIM BEARD’s not editing and publishing through his two houses, Flinch Books and Becky Books, he’s pounding out adventure fiction with both original and licensed characters. In fact, he’s put words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker, Superman, Fox Mulder, Carl Kolchak, Peter Venkman and the Green Hornet… and lived to tell about it. His latest pop culture non-fiction tome, Galloping Around the Cosmos: Memories of TV’s Wagon Train to the Stars From Today’s Grown-Up Kids, is available here.