Surprise Surprise

On the 23rd May 1970 'Billboard' magazine announced: "Budget label Music For Pleasure goes into singles on May 22 with the national launch of its Surprise Surprise children's line, which was test marketed in Lancashire and central London last September..."

This is a sub-label of Music For Pleasure was used to release a mixture of reissues (from EMI and from other labels) and cover versions of hits with kiddie-appeal; often the artists were left uncredited. All releases contain either the words Surprise Surprise or, more commonly, these words over a bunny logo.

Many of the releases say "Music For Pleasure - London & Sydney", although releases exist with "London & Johannesburg" or even just London on it's own.

Picture sleeves were the norm; the reverse of these sleeves featured a drawing for children to colour-in. The dates given on the records often refer to the original year of issue rather than to that of the 'Surprise Surprise' release, which makes dating them problematical, but a review in one of the 'Gramophone' magazines from 1970 suggests that the first batch appeared in that year.

Several different numerical series were used, starting in
1970: NO -1 to NO -26 then changing to FP - 27 to FP - 66
1972: FP-10000s to FP-10067, which came out c.1975.

For most of its life the label was yellow in colour, but items in each series occasionally appeared in different colours such as grey, blue, green or red.

The label name also appear as Surprise! Surprise! on some releases.