Crackers

It debuted on 23 February 1929 as a replacement for Lot-o’-Fun; straight replacement seems to have been the prewar equivalent of a merger, with the odd story continuing. As AP was rarely challenged from the end of WWI to the launch of The Dandy they could kind of do what they like with this sort of thing.
The title was initially a 12-pager using 12″ x 14″ pages. For anyone lucky enough not to have to deal with a 12-pager they’re an absolute pig; rather than being three sheets divided into four pages each there’s one massive one that has pp. 1-6 and pp.11-12 printed on, with an insert featuring pp.7-10. As such, often with old 12-pagers, pp. 7-10 will be missing.
Crackers laid the framework for most of AP’s new titles with an increase in both colour pages and the new-fangled adventure picture strips.
Editor was Stan Gooch, who like most group editors at AP had something of a company-within-a-company of regular artists – Roy Wilson, Reg Parlett, George Parlett, Alex Akerbladh and Louis Briault were among the most prolific contributors.
Many of the “first wave” adventure artists like Vincent Daniel, Jock McCail, Alan Gelli, George Heath and Hilda Boswell also contributed. Most still did the whole ‘picture book’ thing, though.
Stalwart characters included Reg Parlett’s chirpy Injun papooses Wildflower and Little Elf, namesake Crackers the Pup (introduced in 1932; around this time IIRC several established comics suddenly came up with eponymous characters, which suggests it was possibly some edict from Harold Garrish, or even higher up), flapperish schoolgirl Kitty Clare by George Parlett, and Roy Wilson’s Happy Harry and Sister Sue.
Gooch does not appear to have been a man who liked retiring characters, though, and like many of his books Crackers had revivals – including “Strongheart”, a Lassie rip-off who’d outlived something like three or four comics and came onboard when the comic incorporated The Sparkler in 1939, and “George the Jolly Gee-Gee” after everyone realised what a stupid strip it was to have on the front of Radio Fun.
Crackers survived the May 1940 paper rationing purge of AP comics, albeit as a fortnightly and with the paper size cut to 8.5″ x 11.5″ (the same size as Radio Fun at the time). However, this only lasted a year, and the comic presumably was no longer profitable enough to justify its’ paper allocation. After the 31 May 1941 edition it was merged into Jingles, and even Strongheart seems to have been nobbled by that one.

Crackers 1931-12-26
Crackers 1932-01-02
Crackers 1932-12-17
Crackers 1933-01-14
Crackers 1933-01-28