Target was a popular India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n children's magazine that was published monthly in English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 from 1980 to 1995. It featured a mix of reader contributions, stories from regular writers, do-it-yourself articles and several popular comic strips.

History

In 1980, Rosalind Wilson (1942–1992), a British

British people

The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...

 expatriate

Expatriate

An expatriate is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing...

 educationist settled in Bombay started Target and became its founder-editor. Target was owned by Living Media

Living Media

Living Media is an Indian media conglomerate based in New Delhi, India. It has interests in magazines, newspapers, books, radio, television, printing and the Internet.- History :...

, who also own the India Today Group. After Rosalind Wilson's death in 1992, the magazine's publication continued under Amena Jayal with its successful formula of stories and illustrations.

In 1995, in a move to target a larger age group, India Today Group wound up Target to start Teens Today magazine. This move was a failure, because, with its emphasis on fashion and urban life, Teens Today did not have the wide appeal of the unpretentious Target. Teens Today was edited by Target old-timer Vatsala Kaul.

Content

Targets outstanding production values as well as the quality of cartoonists and writers on its editorial board made it stand out from other contemporary Indian children's magazines like Tinkle

Tinkle

Tinkle is an Indian monthly magazine, published mainly in India. Originally owned by the India Book House, the Tinkle brand was acquired by ACK Media in 2007. The Magazine contains comics, stories, puzzles, quizzes, contests and other features targeted at school children, although its readership...

, Champak

Champak (magazine)

Champak is a popular monthly magazine for children published by the Delhi Press Group since 1968 in India. Champak competes with Amar Chitra Katha's Tinkle and Geodesic's Chandamama brands of magazines...

 and Chandamama

Chandamama

Chandamama in Kannada and Telugu means moon. It may refer to:* Chandamama, an Indian monthly magazine focused on kids and youngsters* Chandamama , a Malayalam film starring Kunchacko Boban...

.

A popular feature in Target was pages with information on international pen friends. In the age before email revolutionised communication, having pen friends was a popular hobby, both for the purpose of knowing about the world at large, and collecting stamps from foreign countries.

Some of the popular comic strips published in Target were:

• Gardhab Das
  Gardhab Das
  Gardhab Das created by cartoonists brothers Neelabh and Jayanto Banerjee was a comic section run in the Indian youth magazine Target. The main character Gardhab Das had a donkey face and was always depicted wearing a kurta and pajamas. His main trait was his singing or lack of it. He was a...
  
   by Jayanto and Neelabh
• Detective Moochwala and Pooch
  Detective Moochwala
  Detective Moochwala is an eponymous Indian magazine comic strip created by the well-known Indian cartoonist Ajit Ninan. The strip chronicles the adventures of Moochwala, a fictional detective, and his dog Pooch who solve several crimes armed with high tech equipment and a little...
  
   and Funny World by Ajit Ninan
  Ajit Ninan
  Ajit Ninan is a well-known Indian political cartoonist, best known for drawing the Centrestage series of cartoons in India Today magazine and Ninan's World in the Times of India....
  
  
• Granny's Gupshup by Praloy Chakrovorty

and Joygopal Podder and others

• It Happened in History written by Renuka Narayanan and illustrated by Suddhasattwa Basu.
• Science News illustrated by Priya Nagarajan and others

Writers

• Dilip Salvi
• Sigrun Srivastava
• Ruskin Bond
  Ruskin Bond
  Ruskin Bond, born 19 May 1934, is an Indian author of British descent. He is considered to be an icon among Indian writers and children's authors and a top novelist....
  
  
• Geeta Dharmarajan
• Jacquelyn Singh
• Joygopal Podder
• Mala Marwaha (author and illustrator)
• Margaret Bhatty
• Meera Govil
• Meera Uberoi
• Paro Anand
• Renuka Narayanan
• Roopa Pai
• Rupa Gupta
• Subhadra Sengupta
• Swapna Dutta
• Vijaya Ghose (Associate Editor)
• Viswajita Das
• Vatsala Kaul (Associate Editor)

Illustrators

• Ajit Ninan
  Ajit Ninan
  Ajit Ninan is a well-known Indian political cartoonist, best known for drawing the Centrestage series of cartoons in India Today magazine and Ninan's World in the Times of India....
  
   (made the Funny World and All in Fun cartoon pages)
• Jayanto Dasgupta
• Neelabh Banerjee
• Suddhasattwa Basu (creator of India's first animated cartoon series, Gayab Aya)
• Praloy Chakrovorty
• Sujata Singh
• Manjula Padmanabhan
  Manjula Padmanabhan
  Manjula Padmanabhan is a playwright, journalist, comic strip artist, and children's book author responsible for the play Harvest. She has also written such plays as Lights Out! ,Hidden Fires The Artist's Model and Sextet .Born in Delhi to a diplomat family in 1953, she went to boarding school in...
  
   (author and illustrator)
• Priya Nagarajan
• Atanu Roy (illustrated the "HA! HA!" jokes page)

Ajit Ninan and Neelabh are now illustrators and cartoonists with the Times of India.