Lots of Fun Book

The Defenders of the Earth Lots of Fun Books were published by Budget Books Pty. Ltd. in Melbourne, Australia in 1987. Two unique colouring books were released, exclusively produced and sold throughout book stores in Australia. The colouring books were aimed at young children, which required them to color-in black and white images of scenes from the Defenders of the Earth cartoon series.

Budget Books Pty. Ltd. was a prominent Australian publisher and distributor founded in Melbourne in 1976 by the late bookseller and publisher Robert “Rob” Ungar. Drawing on his family’s deep roots in the book trade, Ungar established the company to specialize in the wholesale supply of value-driven books to grocery stores and discount department stores. The business filled a unique market niche by purchasing excess publisher returns and selling them at heavily reduced cover prices, making reading materials accessible to a broader, budget-conscious Australian public.

The publisher rapidly transitioned from a simple distributor into a creative production powerhouse by pioneering themed retail displays and securing highly coveted character-licensing agreements. Throughout the 1980s, Budget Books held Australian publishing rights to some of the world’s most famous pop-culture properties, including Disney, Warner Bros., Garfield, and Snoopy. For comic and pop-culture enthusiasts, they became particularly well-known for producing coloring books, activity sets, and unique landscape-format, black-and-white compilations of classic daily strip adventures, such as their collectible The Phantom and Flash Gordon adventure books.

In 1988, the company’s immense market success caught the attention of global media conglomerate Reed Elsevier, which acquired Budget Books and subsequently rebranded the division as Reed For Kids. Although the original brand eventually dissolved, its legacy continued to shape the Australian discount book market; after leaving the business in the early 1990s, Ungar and his partners used their foundational experience to establish Hinkler Books in 1993. Hinkler went on to replicate and scale the mass-market value model pioneered by Budget Books, cementing the original publisher’s profound, lasting influence on Australia’s retail landscape.

The Defenders of the Earth Lots of Fun Books colouring books contain heavy stock softcovers with black and white pages. At the commencement of the colouring books, we see a page containing all the publishing and copyright information relating to the set, which can be seen below.

The front and back covers of both editions within the set are presented below. The front covers incorporate the name of the colouring book series within a circular yellow logo, “Lots of Fun Book”, accompanied by the double “BB” letters representing the Budget Books publishers name.