Fiabe Proibite (Forbidden Fairy Tales) was one of Edifumetto’s most successful excursions into the erotic-fairy-tale genre. The pocket series began in March 1973 and eventually ran for 44 issues. Each issue took a familiar fairy tale or children’s story and transformed it into an explicitly adult, usually humorous adventure. Cenerentola (Cinderella), Cappuccetto Rosso (Little Red Riding Hood), Pinocchio and other familiar characters from folklore were given decidedly less innocent new lives. The series formed part of a remarkable boom in erotic adaptations of fairy tales in Italian comics during the 1970s.

Carcupino was among the established illustrators brought in by Edifumetto to provide painted covers for its adult pocket publications. His work for Fiabe Proibite appears particularly in the later part of the series, including La maialetta innamorata (The Amorous Little Pig, August 1975), Le tre arance (The Three Oranges, September 1975) and Per un ciuffo di vergine (For a Maidenhead, November 1975).

The Edifumetto covers gave him an ideal opportunity to combine several strands of his career. His voluptuous, glamorous women are unmistakably the pin-ups for which he was best known, but they inhabit a colourful world of castles, witches, elves, ogres and other fantastic figures. The contrast between the beautifully rendered female figures and the deliberately comic or grotesque characters around them is central to the appeal. Carcupino’s painterly technique gave the inexpensive publications a polished and seductive visual presence, while his exaggerated expressions, lurid colours and theatrical compositions communicated the mixture of eroticism and parody promised by the title.