A deep dive into New Zealands iconic 'Surpise School Guests'

From Harold the Giraffe to those terrible drug awareness assemblies!

There are certain things you look forward to at school. Something to get you through the rest of the trudgery of the school day/year.

Recess, calf club, jump jam, athletics, cross country, or an end-of-year trip to Rainbows End for being a bus monitor for a year (this one might be very specific to me and anyone who attended a country school).

But sometimes you’d rock up to school, and you’d be taken out of class for a “special guest visit”. Could be a national sports star popping in to do their contracted school visits, maybe a giraffe and a creepy animatronic robot with removable guts, or a terrible theatre trope with a specific safety message.

These guests were a roll of the dice sometimes, but they were a staple of our childhoods, and in this edition of Slices of Heaven, we deep-dive into those very guests. After the comic, I’ll share some personal stories that inspired a bunch of this comic, too!

Enjoy!