"Pete and his Pimple!" was a strip that ran in Oink! and later Buster. It was created by Lew Stringer.
The main character was Pete Throb, a boy who had an enormous spot on the end of his nose, and sometimes on his bottom or elsewhere. The strips usually ended with the spot bursting, covering the room with pus. A request was made for readers to send in ideas for how Pete could get rid of his pimple, several of which Pete would try out in later strips, and all of which would of course end badly.
Pete first appeared in a two-panel quickie gag attached to the end of an early Tom Thug strip, before returning as a regular character some months later. His almost-as acne-ridden big sister, Zitty Zeta, also debuted in "Tom Thug" before becoming an occasional character in Pete's strip.
After the short-lived Oink! folded, the strip moved to Buster (as an aside, Stringer had previously drawn a special six-panel strip for the latter comic, showing Peter meeting Buster, to promote Oink!). The Buster incarnation of the strip, simply titled "Pete's Pimple", was toned down, with Pete's pimple no longer popping, and was dropped within a year.[1] He did however appear in both the 1990 Buster annual and Oink!'s 1989 Winter Special. He also made a cameo appearance in the last original "Tom Thug" strip in 1996.
The "Pete and his Pimple!" game on the Commodore 64.
"Pete and his Pimple!" also has the distinction of being one of three strips to be adapted for the Oink! computer game which was released on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in 1987. The strip was turned into a clone of the game Breakout, with the player moving some kind of metal bar up and down the screen, bouncing Pete's pimple (depicted as a flashing yellow ball) around to demolish a set of bricks while being attacked by enemies, such as the floating blue face in the screenshot to the right. Not much relation to the original strip, then, although one level did involve smashing some bricks arranged to form the face of Oink! co-star Mary Lighthouse.
An Oink! special was given away with the Spectrum magazine Crash to promote the game. This featured specially-made strips tying into the portrayals seen in the game; Lew Stringer provided a strip showing Pete using spot cream, causing his pimple to fly off his face and smash a fence [2]