The Fantomen mask was issued with the Tomtepåsen activity book published by Åhlen & Åkerlunds Förlags AB in Sweden in 1954. Tomtepåsen (which translates to Santa’s Bag) was published on a yearly basis at Christmas time, containing activities for young children such as games, puzzles, contests, cut-out models, stories and much more.
Åhlen & Åkerlunds Förlags AB is a publishing house which was created by Johan Petter Åhlén and Erik Åkerlund in Sweden in 1906. It produced high quality publications for the local Swedish market, including books, newspapers and magazines. Vecko-Journalen, Husmodern, Allt för alla and Hela världen were the 4 newspapers published by Åhlen & Åkerlunds have a combined circulation of 700,000 copies per week.
At the end of 1929, Åhlen & Åkerlunds Förlags AB was sold to Bonnier AB who continued to operate under the trading name.
Åhlén & Åkerlund Förlags AB would go on to create a sub-company named Serieförlaget, which commenced publishing comic books in Sweden, including well known comic book characters such as Fantomen (1950), Blondie (1951) and Tarzan (1951).
Serieförlaget was preceded by comics imprint Alga (1942–1950).
In the mid-1950s, the name was changed to Åhlén & Åkerlunds Ungdomstidningar and in the mid-1960s, in connection with the internationalization of the business, the publishing house was given its current name, Semic Press, the word ‘semic’ was an amalgamation of the words series and its English equivalent comic.
Bonnier would go on to sell Semic Press in 1997 to Egmont, a Danish-owned media company.
Tomtepåsen activity books were issued in 1941, 1942, 1948, 1951, 1954-1958, a total of 9 editions were produced measuring 23.8cm x 32cm. Some editions featured comic book characters which included Disney characters, Lisa and Sluggo, Hopalong Cassidy, 91 and Rune Andréasson.
Fantomen edition number 22, published in October 1953 by Serieförlaget advertise the 1954 edition of Tomtepåsen, with a mention of the Fantomen mask seen in the description advertising the activity book. The front cover of this edition of Fantomen comic book, plus page 19 containing the advertisement in the lower part of the page can be seen below.
The advertisement also features the front cover of the 1954 edition of Tomtepåsen, with Santa Claus seen with an array of gifts surrounded by children. Translated to English, the text reads:
TOMTEPÅSEN
The great delight of all children, this year is full of nice crafts, which provide fun employment throughout the Christmas holidays.
A Phantom mask makes you exactly like the superman of all horrors and the Boeing Stratocruiser – you get the huge four-engined American plane on a nice clipboard. You can make the television cinema for comic book guys yourself. My idols is an autograph block, with space for autographs, which you can collect yourself. For those of you who are weak in math, Santa’s Calculator helps you both multiply and divide, and the Drop game is a new, fun game where you play with water drops! Another gossipy dice game is called Wild West. All this and a prize competition with a prize bicycle can be found in the Tomtepåsen!
Tomtepåsen activity book released in 1954 can be seen below, alongside the various activities it contained, including the Fantomen mask.
The Fantomen mask is made of heavy stock paper with a matt color finish. The eyes on the mask contain holes, with the nose area pre-cut to enable the wearer to poke their nose through. Holes are present on either side of the mask to allow for a string to be looped through before wearing. The Fantomen mask provided with the 1954 edition of Tomtepåsen can be seen below.
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