Tag: nostalgia

The Curious Case of the Vampire Express

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Last week I stopped into my local library to pick up an item that I had on hold. I hadn’t realized until I walked in that the library was having a huge used book sale. I perused the tables to see if anything caught my eye. I was pleasantly surprised to see a Choose Your Own Adventure book among the stacks of bargain books. I remembered the series fondly from my youth, having checked out many of them from that very same library when I was a kid. Vampire Express by Tony Koltz wasn’t one that I recalled reading, but for the price of 25 cents I couldn’t resist picking it up.

Choose Your Own Adventure books were popular in the 1980s and 90s. The stories, which spanned genres including mystery, sci-fi, fantasy and more, inserted the reader into the role of main character via use of the second-person present tense. (Instead of “Jim entered the haunted house,” it would be, “You enter the haunted house.”) Every so often the reader would come to a decision point and could take control of the narrative by making a choice. If you go up the rickety old staircase, turn to page 17. If you explore the dark and dreary hallway, turn to page 39. Each story had multiple endings, some good and some bad, that were driven by the choices you made.

In an effort to share the wonder of Choose Your Own Adventure with a new generation, I started reading Vampire Express out loud to my daughter, Cora, and letting her make the choices.

The story starts out as you, your friend Nina, and Nina’s aunt, Mrs. West, are riding on a train to Romania. You are going to meet up with your Uncle Andrew to go on an expedition to prove that vampires exist. Mrs. West has an amulet around her neck, and you are traveling with a painting concealed in a wooden box that is in the baggage car. Suddenly Mrs. West becomes quite agitated and goes to check on the painting. She does not return. After a while you and Nina become concerned and go look for her.

The first few choices that you make revolve around who you talk to on the train. There are a couple of men, a pair of gypsies (is that term even PC anymore?), and a count and countess. You also have the option to go to the baggage car and look around there.

Cora chose to talk to the count and countess, who have their own private car. A troll-like servant named Bela answers the door and tries to send you away, but the count shoos Bela aside and invites you in. The count and his wife encourage you to partake in a spread of candy, cookies, pastries and fruit punch. You can choose to accept or decline. Cora chose to decline.

I turned to the appropriate page to decline the treats and resumed reading. I was confused. The page had you and Nina walking into a room that you recognize as your own bedroom back home, and that Nina also somehow observes as being her room. I stopped reading aloud and silently skimmed for a second. Was this some plot twist that was going to make sense in a minute? Not at all, as Uncle Andrew and Mrs. West walk into the room, and the painting (which last we knew was still in the baggage car) begins to growl.

“Sorry,” I said. “I must’ve made a mistake.” I quickly retraced our steps in the book to get back to our last decision point. I double checked the page number for the choice to turn down the treats. Turn to page 112.

I turned to page 112. Sure enough, that was where we had just been. You and Nina walk into a bedroom that you each somehow recognize as your own. Uncle Andrew and Mrs. West walk in. The painting starts growling. Maybe this would’ve made sense if you had accepted the snacks, and they turned out to be laced with LSD.

Cora demanded that I hand her the book so she could check my work and see if she could figure out where I messed up. While she skeptically scoured the pages, I grabbed my phone and did a quick Google search. I doubted there would be anyone else reporting an issue with a Choose Your Own Adventure book published in 1984, but I looked anyway.

Apparently, Vampire Express is well known among Choose Your Own Adventure enthusiasts for having multiple mistakes that send the reader to the wrong page, robbing them of the intended experience. Subsequent printings corrected some of the errors, but apparently it took multiple attempts to get it right. I had a first edition which had the most mistakes.

Upon learning this, I did what any rational person would do. I read through every possible choice in the book, took notes on what all the errors were, then figured out what pages they were really supposed to go to. So, if you, dear reader, are stumbling upon this blog thanks to a Google search of your own after you have also picked up a copy of the original 1984 printing of Vampire Express at a book sale, you are in luck! See the handy chart below for the corrections!

From what I can tell, the fully corrected version sports an alternate cover which depicts two characters riding away from a castle on horseback. I assume the characters are intended to be Nina and “you,” although it might be the author and editor of the original version trying to flee from angry readers.

Flaws aside, this is not a bad example of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. It has a creepy and ominous vibe with some interesting characters. One thing that I liked was that there are certain scenes that you circle back to in multiple paths, but they play out a little differently depending on how you got there. For example, that moment of knocking on the door of the count and countess and being greeted by Bela can happen with just you and Nina, or it can happen later when you have another character named Professor Hartz with you. The same illustration of Bela is used for both scenarios, so for a second you might think you’ve found yourself back at a page you’ve already read, but you quickly see that the storyline has changed now that you’ve picked up the Professor on your way there.

On the other hand, the villains of the story don’t really do anything. The count and countess (spoiler alert, they are vampires) are trying to get ahold of the painting and the amulet because the painting has the power to destroy them and the amulet can protect them from the painting. The story doesn’t even commit to its own logic though, because there is one ending where you destroy the vampires with the painting while the countess is still clutching the amulet. Most of the endings are pretty tame, including some where the story ends before you even encounter the vampires. There are a few endings where you defeat the count and countess, and more than a couple where you meet your demise. One involves the train going over a cliff, and there is another where you are surrounded by an army of undead zombies. The most disturbing ending is probably one where you and your friends all become vampires yourselves, and the story concludes with you all heading to town to find people to feed on. There is also one ending that implies the whole thing was a dream, which is an ending that I absolutely hate any time it happens in a movie or TV show.

Overall this was a fun read, and the errors actually made it even more of a unique experience because it prompted me to really explore every possible path. I consider Vampire Express a quarter well spent.

Russ Dimino is the author of Spilling My Guts: A Crohn’s Chronicle. It is not a Choose Your Own Adventure Book.

Finding “Love”: In Defense of the Muppets’ Melancholy Melody

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A few years ago a story made the rounds that a “lost song” from The Muppet Christmas Carol had been found. The song was “When Love is Gone,” sung by Meredith Braun as Belle. Fans took to social media to express confusion, saying that they remembered that song being in the film already. Many went on to say that the movie was better off without that number, insisting that the slow, sentimental song (which didn’t even include any Muppets!) was a show-stopper, and not in the good way.

I’m going to explain the complicated history of “When Love is Gone,” and why it’s actually essential to The Muppet Christmas Carol.

The tune was always supposed to be part of the movie, with its intended place occurring about 45 minutes into the film when the Ghost of Christmas Past caps off her guided tour of Ebenezer Scrooge’s formative years by making him revisit the day his fiancée, Belle, broke off their engagement. Not long before the movie’s 1992 theatrical release, Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg observed fidgety kids in test screenings during that scene. He insisted that the song be cut, stating that it would lose the younger audience members. Brian Henson and the rest of the creative team pushed back, but they found themselves at a stalemate.

Eventually, a compromise was reached. “When Love is Gone” would be, well, gone, from the theatrical release, to assuage Katzenberg’s concerns about restless rugrats. However, when the movie was released on VHS, it would be restored to its proper place so audiences could experience it as intended. So if you remember the song from your youth, you’re probably remembering watching it on videocassette in the comfort of your own home sometime in the 1990s.

In the early 2000s, The Muppet Christmas Carol was released on DVD. As was not uncommon in this era, the DVD included both “full screen” and “widescreen” versions of the film. (DVDs were still relatively new and most TVs were 4:3 rather than 16:9. Audiences were used to home media releases being modified to fit their screens, so most movies had the picture cropped on the sides via the notorious practice of “pan and scan.”) Here’s where it gets interesting. The “full screen” version was the same as the VHS release, so it included “When Love is Gone.” The “widescreen” version was the theatrical cut, so it had the song omitted!

Check out the back of the DVD release, which touts the full screen version as including a “deleted scene!”

To make things even more complicated, a rendition of “When Love is Gone,” sung by Martina McBride, plays over the end credits no matter which version you’re watching!

Why didn’t they add the song back into the widescreen version too? This is where the song being “lost” comes in. It was the original widescreen version of the scene that had gone missing. And, as the “full screen” format in general began to fade from popularity, so too did the version that included the song. Surely any future re-releases would be of the theatrical version going forward.

It wasn’t until 2020 when Disney went back to the original negatives to prepare a possible 4K release that an additional reel of film was discovered. Brian Henson was brought in to see if it was anything that would be useful for the re-release. Lo and behold, it was the original footage of “When Love is Gone.” They quickly went to work on restoring and reinserting it back into the movie.

The cropped “full screen” VHS and DVD version on the left, the restored widescreen on the right.

So where can you watch the complete version? The most recent Blu-ray release is still the theatrical cut, sans song. The only place you can currently watch The Muppet Christmas Carol, in its highest quality widescreen format with “When Love Is Gone” included, is on Disney Plus – but even there it’s a bit hidden. If you just click “Play” on the movie, you’ll get the truncated version with no song. Instead, click Extras. There’s an option to watch the song on its own, or, to watch the “Full Length Version” which includes the song back in its proper place.

So why does the song matter? It’s slow, it’s sad, it’s sentimental, and it must be superfluous if it was able to be cut without impacting the film, right? Wrong. It’s actually crucial to Scrooge’s character arc, and the movie doesn’t work nearly as well without it.

In the theatrical cut, we observe young Ebenezer Scrooge with Belle on a park bench on Christmas Day. Belle points out that it’s been another year and they still aren’t married. Scrooge attempts to justify this by saying that business continues to be poor and they can’t afford a wedding right now. Scrooge insists that he does love Belle. “You did, once,” she replies. Then she gets up and walks away from him. Cut to Rizzo the rat bawling his eyes out, and the modern-day Scrooge begging the Ghost of Christmas Past not to show him any more of this. It’s an extreme reaction to what we’ve just seen and does not feel at all earned. We can read between the lines that they broke up, but it’s only implied by the brief conversation. It certainly doesn’t carry the weight that would justify the reactions of Rizzo or Scrooge.

In the version with the song, the scene goes on as Belle lyrically laments:

There was a time when I was sure
That you and I were truly one
That our future was forever
And would never come undone
And we came so close to being close
And though you cared for me
There’s distance in your eyes tonight
So we’re not meant to be

Meredith Braun’s voice is gentle yet powerful, conveying sorrow but with a sense of conviction. It’s a compelling performance. As Belle sings, Young Scrooge approaches her several times, trying to touch her arm or put a hand on her shoulder. Each time she turns and walks farther away from him.

Old Scrooge, though he only exists in ghost form and cannot be seen or heard by young Belle, stands beside her and joins her in singing. It’s the first time we’ve heard Scrooge sing. Michael Caine purposely doesn’t match Ms. Braun note for note. His timing is a little off from hers; he is about a half a beat or so behind her.

“And yes, some dreams come true,” the song goes. “And yes, some dreams fall through.” Scrooge stumbles over this lyric. He gets choked up and starts to cry. That line got to him. We’ve found a moment that he regrets. There is a consequence to his actions, and we can see that he feels it. Now, the fact that Rizzo was moved to tears makes sense.

The scene is a turning point for both Young Scrooge and Old Scrooge.

Before this, everything we had seen of Young Scrooge indicated that he didn’t understand or particularly care about Christmas, but he didn’t seem like he hated it. We saw him as a boy, using the Christmas holiday to catch up on his studies at boarding school. We saw him as a young adult, poring over the books at Fozziwig’s Rubber Chicken Factory and questioning why his boss would waste money on a party. But it’s not until after his split with Belle that he seems to truly despise the holiday, wishing ill upon anyone who celebrates it.

Old Scrooge changes as well after seeing this flashback. Prior to this we don’t see an ounce of remorse in him. Seeing the Marley Brothers spooked him, and he was surprised and amazed at seeing the sights and sounds of his past. But nothing seemed to really get through to him before this moment. He was skeptical, bitter, and kind of annoyed at having to go through this time-traveling nonsense in the first place.

Once he has re-experienced his breakup with Belle, his attitude is different. The next spirit he meets, the Ghost of Christmas Present, asks him, “Have you ever noticed that everything seems wonderful at Christmas?”

For the first time, Scrooge doesn’t answer with a “Bah, humbug!” or other expression of disgust. Instead, he looks a bit ashamed. He hesitates. Then he admits, “In all honestly, spirit, no. Perhaps I’ve never understood about Christmas.”

The ice around his heart has been chipped away a bit. For the first time, the adult Scrooge is willing to concede that maybe Christmas is something he just doesn’t get. That maybe, just maybe, he’s been in the wrong.

The song is reprised at the end of the movie, when Scrooge, seated at the head of the Cratchit family table, leads the whole town in “The Love We Found.” It’s an emotional coda that harkens back to the day he lost his love. It’s a total tonal contrast between the moment that left Scrooge bitter and broken, and the day he allowed himself to accept and be accepted by the people around him. The emotional high of “The Love We Found” is not nearly as poignant when it doesn’t have that juxtaposition with “When Love is Gone.”

It’s getting to be that time of year when we all put on our favorite Christmas movies as we wrap presents, drink eggnog, and get into the spirit of the season. If The Muppet Christmas Carol is on your to-watch list, I’d encourage you to watch it with “When Love is Gone” this year. You might just see the story of Scrooge’s journey a little differently.

After all, wherever you find love, it feels like Christmas.

Russ Dimino is the author of Spilling My Guts: A Crohn’s Chronicle.

Waxing Nostalgic

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When I was a kid, there was no more magical place to visit than Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Just across the U.S./Canadian border were not only the awe-inspiringly majestic waterfalls that provide the city’s namesake, but also a veritable wonderland of tourist attractions. Clifton Hill and the surrounding streets of Victoria Avenue and Falls Avenue are lined with restaurants, arcades, mazes, haunted houses, and, my personal favorite, two wax museums: Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks and Movieland Wax Museum of the Stars.

You might be asking yourself, does the town really need two wax museums? How different can they be? As someone who has visited both of them numerous times over the years, I can tell you that they each have their own style. Louis Tussaud’s has mostly statues of celebrities (actors, musicians, even politicians) in a gallery environment where you can pose with the figures and take photos with them. Movieland has figures of characters from movies or TV shows displayed in scenes that are set back in such a way that you can view them but not get up close to them. There are exceptions to these rules at both museums (Movieland has a really great superhero gallery at the end with tons of figures you can pose with), but by and large that is what distinguishes them from one another.

Me with Superman and Batman in the superhero gallery at Movieland in 2022

Both museums currently reside at different locations than they did when I was a kid. They were originally across the street from each other at the bottom of the hill. Tussaud’s has since relocated all the way to the top of the hill and is technically on Victoria Avenue now and not on Clifton Hill proper. Movieland didn’t move quite as far, now residing about halfway up the hill across from the Rainforest Café. They have been in their current locations since around 2005.

Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks

Here is a picture of me as a young tyke, circa 1991, where you can see the original Louis Tussaud’s on Clifton Hill in the background. Compare that to the picture on the right of the museum’s current location on Victoria Ave.

Here are a couple of photos from the old Tussaud’s location. Left, my dad with Ronald Reagan. Right, Martin Luther King Jr. Neither figure is included at the current location, although there is still an area with many historical figures.

My wife remembers the original location having a “torture chamber” display in the basement, with statues in medieval torture scenarios – complete with placards describing what these poor souls were being subjected to. I can tell you for a fact that I did not visit this part of the museum! This area was apparently scrapped when the museum moved up the hill. (There is some torture stuff on display at the nearby Ripley’s Believe It Or Not museum, if that’s your cup of tea. Also, Tussaud’s and Movieland both have optional “horror” sections that you can skip if you’re a chicken like me…!)

Even in more recent times, the statues at Tussaud’s change fairly frequently as celebrities enter or exit the public eye.

Here’s me with Bruce Willis in 2007. Bruce is no longer on display.

Here’s me with Christina Aguilera in 2007, also no longer on display. I guess the genie went back into her bottle.

Here’s my wife, Amanda, with Oprah Winfrey in 2007. Oprah is no longer on display.

Here’s me with Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, and James Dean in 2007. None of them are on display today.

Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman seems to have had a wardrobe downgrade over the years. The top photo, from 2007, has her in a very faithful vinyl version of her Batman Returns costume. In 2024 she is in a different mask (the “ears” are too long), and the rest of her costume is a different fabric that doesn’t match her mask or boots. Her pointy fingernails are gone as well. No clue what might’ve happened to Selina Kyle’s original threads. It’s a shame, because the old outfit was purrrfect.

Movieland Wax Museum of the Stars

The original Movieland location can be seen in a photo from an old brochure that I still have from the 1990s. Note that it was just called “Movieland Wax Museum,” and they had not yet added the “Of The Stars” to its title. The current location is in the photo on the right for comparison.

Movieland originally had an Indiana Jones display at the entrance to the museum, where Indy was suspended from the ceiling via a rope. This can be seen in a photo from that 1990s brochure. Today the same figure is still in the museum, but he’s been relocated to a completely different display.

Also near the entrance to the museum was a statue of Marilyn Monroe standing over a grate. Every so often, a gust of air would blow upwards and make her skirt flutter, mimicking the famous scene from “The Seven Year Itch.” Marilyn is no longer on display at Movieland.

Also in that old 1990s brochure was a figure of Eddie Murphy from Beverly Hills Cop. Mr. Murphy is no longer on display.

One of the first scenes Movieland added that visitors could pose in was The Simpsons, sitting on their famous living room couch. As you can see from these pictures, that scene has changed over the years as well. The first photo is from that old brochure, and you could not pose with the family – note that Bart is standing on the couch. The second photo, taken in 2002, moved Bart to a stairwell and allowed fans to sit on the couch next to Homer, who was wearing a new shirt. In the third photo, taken in 2024, note that both Homer and Marge have changed clothes, and baby Maggie is missing.

In this 2002 picture of Darth Maul, we can see him holding his infamous double-ended lightsaber. In 2024, the lightsaber is gone – perhaps some aspiring Sith lord absconded with it? – and Maul is instead holding onto his belt, which seems a bit strange. Jar Jar is still there, he’s just mercifully not in the photograph.

In 2002, E.T. had his finger pointed outward so you could recreate the famous “ouch” moment with him. Either that, or that mischievous Extra Terrestrial wanted you to pull his finger. By 2024, his arm had been repositioned so as to force E.T. to keep his digits to himself.

Jack Nicholson’s Joker and Michael Keaton’s Batman were originally part of a display based on the bell-tower scene from the 1989 film. By 2024 they had both been relocated to a window display at the front of the museum and are now joined by Heath Ledger’s Joker. (There’s a Joaquin Phoenix Joker at Tussaud’s… if they were all at the same museum they could do a Three Jokers display!)

Other Attractions

These photos aren’t from either of the wax museums, but since they are from Clifton Hill I thought I’d share them. On the left is the exterior of the House Frankenstein, circa 1991. Note the monster looks like the Boris Karloff version of the character, and he’s accompanied by the Bride of Frankenstein. Sometime well before 2024 they were replaced by the version on the right – a more generic version of the monster and a mad scientist bringing him to life. No more Bride. (I guess Franky got to keep the house?)

Here’s a picture of me with a statue of the world’s tallest man, Robert Wadlow, taken at the now defunct Guinness World Records Museum. There is an animatronic statue of him that alternates between standing up and sitting down in the Ripley’s museum today.

Last but not least, here’s a picture from inside the Fun House, which used to have a wall of cartoon figures that you could stick your face through. That part of the attraction is long gone, along with many other elements that have been changed out over the years. I have a vivid memory of a giant skeleton behind glass at the end of the Fun House that was supposed to light up as you walked by it, but the lights were not working. The image of the huge skeleton in the dark was a very creepy way to end a walk through a Fun House! At least there wasn’t a torture chamber!

And that, at least for this edition, my friends… is the whole ball of wax!

Russ Dimino is the author of Spilling My Guts: A Crohn’s Chronicle.

VHS Memories

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The first time it occurred me how much the way we consume media had changed was when my son Dominic was three years old. We were at my parents’ house and I asked him if he wanted to watch something on TV.

“Yes,” he said. “I want to watch the Mickey Mouse where the Clubhouse disappears.”

“Oh,” I said. “That episode isn’t on right now.”

He was confused.

“What do you mean, it isn’t on?”

I struggled to explain that on “regular” TV, you could only watch what was airing at that time. You couldn’t pick the show, let alone the episode. I think I said something along the lines of, “This TV doesn’t have as many choices.” Then Dominic asked if we could go home.

To be fair, if I could’ve gone back in time and told my childhood self that someday you would be able to choose any movie or any episode of any show and watch it with a few clicks of your remote, that would’ve seemed like absolute magic to me. For anyone who grew up in the days before Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus and the like, you really could only watch a show when it was on. In fact, many of us subscribed to a weekly magazine that informed you of what shows would be on when. If there was something you wanted to see and you weren’t going to be home, you would have to go to the lengths of setting up your VCR to record it onto a VHS tape.

If you ever pushed the little flap of the VCR door open when there was no tape in it and looked inside, you would see there was so much crazy-looking gadgetry in there that it didn’t seem like it should even work. When you would insert a tape into the machine it would make noises like you were somehow inconveniencing it, cranking and whirring as all of those little gears and doo-dads loaded the tape and got ready to play it. Eventually you could wear a tape out from watching it too much. Who else remembers seeing the slow, gradual degradation of the picture as those little static lines would begin to creep in from the bottom and top of the screen? You could try to adjust the tracking to get rid of them (I still don’t even really know what that was actually doing), but after a while it became futile. And don’t even get me started on the horror of pulling a tape out of the machine to find that your VCR just “ate” your favorite video – seeing a trail of the tape’s innards being stretched out from the back of the cassette and into the mouth of the machine was like it was some kind of carnivorous animal that had turned against you. It was a stinging betrayal.

Well before DVD box sets existed, I would try make my own sets on tape. The first time I remember doing this was in 1989 when I made collection of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles episodes. It was a sort of “Best of TMNT” tape of only my personal favorites. Every day after school I would have a tape in the VCR ready to go, and I would wait for the title card to come up to see which episode it was. (I only had the theme song recorded once, at the very beginning of the tape.) If it was an episode I wanted, I’d hit record. If not, I’d wait for the next day and try again. (If you’re wondering which episodes made the cut, the four Eye of Sarnath episodes were on there, the Baxter the Fly origin episode, the first Casey Jones episode, and the episode where Leatherhead meets the Rat King.)

There was a fine art to what setting you would have the VCR on when you recorded something. Most had at least two, or possibly all three of the following options: Standard Play (SP), which could fit two hours of high quality video on a single tape; Long Play (LP), which could fit four hours of okay-looking video on a tape; and Extended Play or Super Long Play (EP or SLP) which could fit six hours of pretty crappy looking video on a tape. I would almost always record in EP/SLP because my not-very-discerning young mind emphasized quantity over quality. I wanted as much content as I could get on a single video. The fact that it didn’t look as good wasn’t something I paid a ton of attention to. This was in the days before high definition and wide screens, so shows didn’t always look all that great even when you watched them live. Compared to the 4K resolution we’ve become accustomed to nowadays, TV recorded onto a VHS tape in SLP would look like an impressionistic painting.

If you buy a movie on DVD or Blu-ray, or purchase it digitally on Amazon, Apple TV, or Vudu, you have the exact same copy of it as everyone else. If you recorded something off TV, you had captured that specific airing of it. It might have the commercials that aired along with it, unless you took the time to “cut them out” by pausing the recording each time the show went to break and unpausing it when it came back. We had a tape of Christmas specials from the 80s, and the ads were just as much a part of the holiday magic as the shows. Who could forget the 7-Up commercial with the Countdown to Christmas calendar, or the bizarre Isotoner gloves ad with the nerdy guy who had eight girlfriends?

Speaking of that Christmas tape – sometimes you might have only part of a movie or show recorded, and that became ingrained in your mind as the complete version. Our recording of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer began a few minutes in, when Mrs. Claus is imploring Santa to “Eat! Eat!” because he was too skinny. Obviously I knew that wasn’t how the special actually started and that we’d missed the very beginning of it. Yet, even now, when I watch Rudolph at Christmas time, the first few minutes of it seem foreign to me. I watched our truncated version so many times as a kid that it feels like the special should start abruptly with Mrs. Claus fattening up her husband.

You could also form associations between movies that had nothing to do with each other just because you had them on the same tape. For example, we had Clue and the Martin Short movie Clifford taped back to back from a time they had aired on Comedy Central. In my mind, those two movies still go together, even though there is nothing else that connects them besides the Dimino family having them on the same cassette. Same with Batman: Mask of the Phantasm and Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, both of which we recorded off of Cartoon Network. Somewhere burned in my brain is the idea that after Batman finishes saving Gotham City from the Phantasm, Daffy comes in and recruits Bugs and Porky to start catching ghosts.

If you taped a movie off TV there was a good chance you were recording an edited version of it. I will never forget the time in high school when I had some friends over and one of them referenced the movie Space Balls. I proudly announced that we had it on tape and suggested that we watch it. I didn’t think about the fact that I had recorded it from Comedy Central and it had been edited for language. My buddies gave me some grief for having a toned-down version of the movie, but we ended up watching the whole thing and laughing even harder at the dubbed-over curse words and awkwardly censored scenes. (The line “We ain’t found shit!” when they are combing the desert was completely omitted, which was the scene we’d been talking about in the first place.)

My penchant for assembling “Best of…” tapes lasted pretty much right up until VHS went obsolete. In college, I made a tape for my then-girlfriend (and now wife!) Amanda of her favorite episodes of Full House by waiting for each one to air on ABC Family. Some guys made their girlfriends mix-tapes of romantic songs; I made mine a mix-tape of a T.G.I.F. sitcom. Now of course we have the whole series on DVD, and it’s also available to stream on Max, so we have multiple ways to view any episode at any moment, but at the time that video I gradually assembled was the only way to have those specific episodes in anything resembling an “on demand” form.

Everything is so accessible now, and there is a kind of magic in that. Again, my kid self would’ve absolutely flipped at the idea of having an instantaneous library of movies and shows at his fingertips at all times. But there was a magic in the VHS era too, in being able to capture that movie or that show as a moment in time. I’m not saying it was better. It was clunky, time-consuming, and if you missed the episode you wanted to tape you were out of luck until it came around again in reruns. But I will always look back on it fondly, and remember how it felt to push a tape into the VCR, listen to the sound of the whirring gears, and, at just the right moment, press “Record.”

It’s not too hard to imagine an alternate timeline where technology never advanced past the VCR. I’m sure in that reality I would’ve been making “Best of…” tapes of all of my son’s favorite episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so he could watch the one where the clubhouse disappears any time he wanted to.

The Top of the Stairs

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It’s Christmas morning. Val, Josh, and I are at the top of the stairs, waiting for the okay from Mom and Dad to come down and feast our eyes on all those glorious presents.

“Can we come down yet?” Val is the one to ask. The middle child, but in many ways the leader of our trio. She doesn’t think of herself that way; she is just always the one to want to clear things up, set the record straight, or be the mediator of any conflict. I often refer to her as Josh’s attorney/interpreter because she will jump in on his behalf in any argument, major or minor.

“Not yet,” Mom replies from the kitchen. “I’m making coffee and Dad is getting the video camera ready.”

The suspense is almost too much to bear. We’ve waited so long for Christmas to arrive. This is the final obstacle to overcome before getting our hands on those gifts! As frustrating as it may be to three young kids, it’s a moment that is magical in its own way. It stretches things out just a little longer, letting the excitement build just a little more.

Josh, the youngest and most adventurous, sneaks down a few steps and peeks around the corner. He needs confirmation that there really are presents down there. “He came!” he whispers excitedly as he hurries back up the stairs. “Santa came!”

It plays out this way year after year, becoming a tradition of its own.

Years later, when I am a teenager, I stay in bed, refusing to emerge from my room until we get the green light from Mom and Dad to come downstairs. Val and Josh are appalled. The drawn-out moments of anticipation at the top of the stairs are part of Christmas morning. How could I possibly sleep through them? What they don’t know is that I am wide awake, trying to play it cool. I can’t make it seem like I’m too eager. Me trying to “sleep in” on Christmas morning becomes a new layer to the bit.

Now, as adults, long since having moved out and living in our own homes with families and traditions of our own, my siblings and I still text each other on Christmas Eve:

“See you at the top of the stairs.”

More Action Figures of My Youth

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In this edition we will take a look at some more of the most memorable action figures from my childhood years.  (You can find part one here, and my original post about playing “G.I.S.” with my brother here.)

Lex Luthor (1984)

My first ever impression of Superman’s arch nemesis Lex Luthor was courtesy of this figure of him wearing his green war suit. I did not know at the time that this armor was designed specifically to give Lex a cool action figure. It was a look that the character would sport only briefly; by 1986 the “Post Crisis” Lex wore a business suit and became more of a corrupt tycoon type of character. Still, in the back of my mind I always imagined Lex having this armor in storage or something, ready to bust it out if he really needed to. The war suit has appeared in the comics a handful of times over the years, and even finally made it into live action when Jon Cryer played Lex on Supergirl. The kid in me was excited for Lex to finally “suit up” after decades of wanting to see it happen!

Stonedar and Rokkon (1986)

Kids have always loved toys that transformed. This is a known a fact. Usually that means a robot that turns into a car or an airplane or some other vehicle. Stonedar and Rokkon were robot aliens that turned into rocks. That’s right, they turned into freaking rocks. For some reason though I thought they were awesome. I’d like to say my young mind was fascinated by the extreme contrast between the advanced technology that comprised their robotic selves and the prehistoric simplicity of their rock forms, but I really think they just looked cool. These guys were part of the Masters Of The Universe line, and they all came with mini comic books that explained who the characters were. Stonedar and Rokkon were some of the first figures that I remember really paying attention to the comics and wanting to understand their backstory. (That backstory being, they were robot aliens that turn into rocks.)

Baxter The Fly (1989)

Most cartoon shows would always return things back to the “status quo” at the end of each episode, so that they could be watched in any order. That’s why it blew my mind when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had Baxter Stockman, Shredder’s scientist assistant who appeared in many early episodes, turn into a human-fly hybrid and stay that way. It was unheard of to have such a dramatic change occur and have it stick. Also, it happened because Krang threw Baxter into a disintegrator unit with the intention of freaking killing him. It was the most hardcore thing I had ever seen in my life. (I was kind of a sheltered kid.) I wanted the Baxter The Fly toy so bad that I actually had a dream about it one night, and I was crushed when I woke up and realized I did not really have it. When I eventually got it for my birthday I was overjoyed. (As my dad said at the time, “They can’t make ‘em ugly enough!”) I did wish they had made a figure of Baxter in his human form too though, so I could’ve re-enacted the episode where he transformed.

Casey Jones (1989)

Speaking of Ninja Turtles characters I was obsessed with. When they introduced Casey Jones, I did not understand that he was supposed to be a parody of dark and gritty urban vigilante heroes, probably because he was my first exposure to a dark and gritty urban vigilante hero. I thought the idea of a guy wearing a hockey mask beating the crap out of criminals with golf clubs and baseball bats was incredible; the tongue-in-cheek nature of the character and the fact that his voice was a Clint Eastwood impression was lost on me. I loved the character so much that I went as Casey Jones for Halloween that year. Everyone thought I was supposed to be Jason from the Friday the 13th movies though, which pissed me off. Also, I brought the Casey Jones action figure into school for show and tell one time. Steve C. in my class asked if that was the version of the figure where his mask comes off. I said no. He said he had the version where his mask comes off. I am pretty sure he was lying, I don’t think that was a real thing. But it did make me wonder what Casey looked like behind his mask.

Ace Duck (1989)

As the Ninja Turtle toy line went on, they started adding more and more characters beyond just the turtles and their villains. Sometimes they added characters that came out of nowhere and had nothing to do with anything. Ace Duck was an anthropomorphic duck who dressed like a pilot.  To my knowledge he only ever appeared in a few seconds of the animated Turtles TV show, as a character the Turtles were watching on TV. That’s right, he was a character on a show on a show. However, I was also an avid reader of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures comic books. There was a storyline with a very different version of Ace Duck who was a muscle-bound intergalactic wrestler. Rather than finding this confusing I just found it very interesting that there were such different versions of this obscure character. (Also, it was really hard to get that figure’s hat to stay on.)

Deep Sea Diver Batman (1990)

Aren’t everyone’s favorite Batman adventures the times when he puts on a bright yellow suit and fights crime underwater? This was so odd that my brother and I usually had him be some kind of Batman impostor in our games rather than the genuine article.

Don The Undercover Turtle (1990)

This one came from later in the Ninja Turtles line when they were trying to find new ways to re-release the main characters. Having Donatello come with a disguise, including a mask, so he could go undercover and have detective adventures was really intriguing to me. At the time I wished he was wearing gloves, pants, and shoes too so when his mask was on you could not tell he was a turtle at all. (My son Dominic and I still use this figure when we play action figures to this day. Somewhere along the line we added the fact that he is obsessed with tuna sandwiches to his personality.)

“Jimmy Olsen” (Pee-Wee Herman) (1988)

Often in our action figure games, my brother and I would adapt random figures into characters that we didn’t have. We would pretend this Pee-Wee Herman figure was Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen in our G.I.S. adventures. I guess because they both had bow ties? Jimmy tended to get killed off in many of our games and then miraculously be okay again in time for the next “episode,” almost like a precursor to Kenny from South Park. Good times.

Let’s Get Physical, Media

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For my 18th birthday I got a gift that would change my life: a DVD player. That may sound dramatic, but it’s true. Prior to that, I didn’t buy many movies. Our family had a lot of movies on VHS but they were usually things we recorded off of TV. We would rent movies more often than we would buy them. When DVDs came out though, everything changed. The picture quality was better, there were special features like commentary tracks and alternate endings, and even the packaging was cool and exciting. Suddenly you weren’t just buying the movie, you were owning a collectible as well. 

The day after my birthday I took a trip to Borders Books & Music and splurged on a stack of DVDs for my new collection. Here are some of my favorites from those early days and why they were so cool.

X-MEN – The X-Men DVD had some “Easter eggs” on it in the form of hidden special features. In the Theatrical Trailers section, if you pressed the left arrow on your remote you could highlight a rose that looked like it was just part of the menu background. If you clicked on the rose it would play an “outtake” of Spider-Man showing up on the X-Men set. Even though it was only a gag, in the days when comic book crossovers were just a fanboy fantasy this seemed cool as hell – and the fact that it was “hidden” on the DVD made it even more fun. There was also a secret feature in the Art Gallery which revealed unused designs for Blob and Beast, two characters who did not end up in the film. Add to this some sleek packaging and innovative menus and this was one of my first examples of how cool DVDs could be.

FIGHT CLUB – The packaging on Fight Club was some of the best and most unique I’ve seen to this day. It looked like something straight out of Project Mayhem, with snippets of airline safety pamphlets in the background behind the discs. It was a two disc set, with the movie on one disc and a second disc chock-full of special features. It boasted commentary tracks with David Fincher, Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter. As if that wasn’t enough content, there was a booklet included with tons of info on the making of the film and cast interviews. When you first pop the DVD in there’s a warning from Tyler Durden himself in the style of the FBI Warning, and there’s a hidden area in the advertising section of disc two that lets you browse a fake product catalog.  There was a rumor that there was an alternate ending hidden somewhere on one of the discs were Tyler lives and the narrator dies, but David Fincher denied ever having filmed such a scene. Still, this set was so wild that it sure seemed like something that could have been real. 

DIE HARD BOX SET – This set was an absolute game-changer for me. Two of the features on this box set were unprecedented. One was an eye-opening feature about the difference between widescreen and fullscreen. In that era most people thought the “black bars” on the top and bottom of a widescreen movie were bad. They assumed that having the picture fill the whole screen was the optimal viewing experience – and in a day and age when TVs were still 4:3, that meant chopping off the sides of the image and/or doing a “pan and scan” to show the viewer crucial parts of the scene. This special feature showed a scene from the first Die Hard in widescreen and then in fullscreen for comparison, and it made me an instant convert to the wonderful world of widescreen. There was also a feature called “The Cutting Room” where you could actually re-edit some scenes from the movie and use alternate takes of dialogue. As a film student at the time this was right up my alley, and I’ve never seen a feature like this on another DVD before or since. Yippee ki-yay, indeed!

UNBREAKABLE – This was one of my favorite movies at the time when it came out, and I saw it no less than five times while it was still in the theater. M. Night Shyamalan’s slow-paced deconstruction of the superhero genre was definitely not for everyone, but I absolutely loved it. The DVD release had really cool packaging, a ton of deleted scenes, a featurette about comic books hosted by Samuel L. Jackson, and even included some artwork by one of my all-time favorite comic artists, the legendary Alex Ross. It honestly felt like this DVD was made just for me.

SE7EN –Alternate endings and deleted scenes were big in this era, and most of the time you could see why they were left on the cutting room floor. In this case though we got one alternate ending that was pretty similar to the movie’s actual ending but with some subtle differences, AND storyboards for another, unfilmed ending where it was Somerset who killed John Doe instead of Mills. The packaging on this DVD was very specific to the film as it looked like one of John Doe’s notebooks.

THE SIXTH SENSE – The packaging on this one matched the tone and atmosphere of the film itself, very ethereal and surreal looking. The special features included a “Rules and Clues” featurette that showcased the hints leading up to that famous twist ending, a bunch of deleted scenes, and even a “Between Two Worlds” documentary about the possibilities of the afterlife. This was a great example of a DVD that didn’t just give you the movie, it immersed you in its world.

SIN CITY – This set offered a truly unique viewing experience because you could watch the film multiple ways. You had the theatrical version of course, but you also had the option of watching any/all of the four storylines broken out as their own separate mini-movies. There was also the option to watch a sped-up “green screen” version of the film, which really showcased how much of the background of each scene was added digitally. Even the menus were exciting, with art from the comics morphing into scenes from the movie as an instrumental version of “Cells” by The Servant blared in the background.  As if all of this wasn’t enough, the DVD came packaged with a copy of The Hard Goodbye graphic novel. Take my money already!

WATCHMEN ULTIMATE CUT – The “ultimate cut” of Watchmen took Zack Snyder’s director’s cut of the movie and interwove the animated Black Freighter sequences to create an experience as close to the graphic novel as possible – and it clocked in at an insane 3 hours and 35 minutes. They obviously figured anyone who wanted to own this version was a hardcore fan, and they were not wrong. The packaging was gorgeous, and it came with not one, not two, not three, not four, but a total of FIVE discs: the movie, special features, a digital copy (back when those came on a disc instead of as a code), and two discs for a motion-comic version of the graphic novel. It felt like they were rewarding you for being a fan by giving you everything they could think of.

TV SERIES SEASON SETS – It is impossible to overstate how the advent of season sets changed television. For the first time ever you could own every episode of your favorite show to watch any time you wanted. Prior to this that was not possible, unless of course you were like me and obsessively recorded every episode of your favorite shows on VHS as they aired…!  The release of legit box sets meant I could retire my VHS copies of Lois & Clark that I had taped off of TNT. But it also meant I could catch up on shows that I had not watched from the beginning. I started watching the show Alias in its third season. The show was continuity-heavy and had a lot of backstory which made it hard to jump into. However, my local Blockbuster Video had the previous seasons available to rent on DVD. So, I caught up on season one and two as season three was airing, which was an interesting and unique experience for sure.

The popularity of season sets really took off around the same time that another mythology-heavy show was becoming a cultural phenomenon… LOST. If you hadn’t watched it from the beginning, DVDs now gave you a way to start with episode one and get caught up. If the previous episodes had not been so easily accessible, LOST would not have been such a huge success, because new audiences would have had no entry point into the series. Now, in the age of Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime, it’s a given that you’ll start watching a show from the first episode, but prior to DVDs that wasn’t the way we watched TV. This shift in how we experience shows has changed television from being very episodic and stand-alone in terms of storytelling to having season-long storylines and plot points that play out over the course of many episodes. 

WHAT’S HAPPENED SINCE THEN?

As physical media releases have progressed from DVD to Blu-ray, they have moved forward by leaps and bounds in terms of picture and audio quality, but they have lost something as well. Most Blu-ray releases have fewer special features than their DVD predecessors. The days of commentary tracks seem to be all but over. And, in general, the packaging tends to be pretty lackluster. 

Take a look at the differences in the packaging between the DVD releases of Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies and their later Blu-ray releases. The DVD releases (above) are the theatrical movie posters. You’ve got Pierce Brosnan, you’ve got the Bond girls from each film, everything looks exciting and dynamic and is a pretty good representation of the movie, right? 

The Blu-ray cover for Goldeneye looks like something you’d find in the back room of a video store if you know what I mean. Tomorrow Never Dies is even worse… it looks like they took a screenshot from the movie, slapped it on a white background in Photoshop and just typed in the title. What a downgrade!

Let’s use Fight Club as an additional example. We saw earlier in this article how awesome the initial DVD release was. Now let’s look at its Blu-ray successor. The packaging is default, there’s no booklet included, and it just feels like something you’d come across in Wal-Mart’s $5 bin. (And you just might.) I am Jack’s sense of utter disappointment. 

Like I said though, Blu-ray is noticeably better than DVD when it comes to how good the picture looks and how clear the audio sounds. I just wish they would take the time and effort to make owning the movie feel like more of an “event” like their DVD predecessors did.

DO THE DAYS OF DIGITAL MEAN THE DEATH OF DVD?

These days most people have gone entirely digital when it comes to their movie purchases, opting to store them in the cloud rather than on the shelf. And, I get the appeal of that. Being able to have your whole collection accessible anywhere, at any time, on your TV, computer, tablet, or phone is incredibly convenient. But your ability to stream that movie in high quality is only as good as your internet connection. And the vast majority of digital releases are the film only, which means no commentary tracks, deleted scenes, or any of the other extra goodies that you would get included on a disc.

While going full digital with your collection certainly saves on storage space, there’s something special about having a physical item to hold in your hand and proudly display on your shelf. It’s not just something you have access to, it’s part of a collection. For me, at least, I don’t think that will ever change.

Mall Memories

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bothmalls

When I was a kid one of my favorite things to do with my mom was go to the mall. Or, I guess I should say, malls, plural. Back in the 1980s, the mall that is now Greece Ridge Mall was actually two separate malls: Greece Towne Mall and Long Ridge Mall, located essentially right next door to one another.  Even back then, I remember my mom saying, “They should join these malls together!” It always seemed like one of those things that just made too much sense to ever really happen.

We would usually hit up both malls. Greece Towne was what you would probably consider the nicer, more “high class” of the two malls. We would usually go there for a hair cut, or back-to-school clothes, or new shoes. This was where we’d go for the serious shopping.

Long Ridge was the “artsy” mall. It was very avant-garde and had lots of interesting things to look at. There was this big, towering contraption that would constantly feed little pool balls through a looping series of pipes, lifts, and drops. (I have more recently come to learn this was called “Electric Ball Circus.”) There were these metal fountains that made echoey chiming sounds as the water flowed through them. There was a giant glowing globe that changed color and had water running over it, surrounded by a pool of water that you could throw coins into. Because of all this crazy unique stuff, this was the mall I loved going to the most. If we were at Greece Towne I’d always ask if we could go look at those displays and my mom would have to remind me that those were at the other mall.

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Of course, like any kid, I always wanted to get some kind of food or treat too. There was no “food court” in either mall, at least not the way we think of them today, but there were plenty of places to grab a bite. My favorite things to get were an Orange Julius, or a Hot Sam pretzel on a stick covered with nacho cheese. But the best treat of all was a big cookie from the Cookie Co. And the best place to eat it was in the Contemplation Area, a trippy little sunken alcove with TV screens and light displays. There was also a play area with big cushy foam blocks for kids to climb on… Mom usually preferred that we avoid that area. You could almost feel the germs of every snot-nosed kid that had just sneezed or slobbered all over the place seeping into the foam itself.

contemplation

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Even with all these unique elements already in play, as if to spontaneously try to one-up themselves there would occasionally be something extra random going on at the mall, like the time there was a gigantic sandcastle being built inside. As a kid it seemed like the mall literally had nothing better to do than try to amaze everyone. And in many ways, maybe it didn’t. Also, every once in a while there would be a card and collectibles show going on, which, in the days before I knew what a comic book convention was, was the biggest gathering of cards and comics I’d ever seen right there in the corridors between the stores.  At certain times of the year (Easter and Christmas I think), there would be a little train that you could ride that ran around the big globe. The fact that this stuff was not always there just added to the mystical nature of the mall. It’s like you really never knew for sure what was going to be there.

sand_Castle

At Christmas time things became even more magical. Displays of animatronic elves and reindeer acting out comical seasonal scenes were set up throughout the mall. It seemed like every few feet there was another display, taking over the areas where you’d usually find a fountain. An elf with ribbon sprawled all around him as he tries to wrap a present, or with his hammer going up and down as he puts the finishing touches on a special toy, were like slices of North Pole life that you were being transported to. Was Santa at this mall, or was he at the other one? Was he somehow at both? There was so much magic in the air already that anything seemed possible, so you hardly questioned it.

My parents and my aunt and uncle would take me and my cousin Nick to Greece Towne as it was getting ready to close and the shoppers were dispersing for the night, so we could run around and burn off some energy. We couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. But I still remember looking up at the big Gold Circle sign. (We called it “Gold Circoco.”) Being at the mall as everything was closing and being told we could run around as much as we wanted was like an adventure. We didn’t know (or care) that our parents just wanted to tire us out so we’d go to sleep. We didn’t even care that we weren’t at the mall with the foam blocks. It was a big, wide open area, it was late, and we had permission to go wild. It was more exciting than a playground.

That too-good-to-be-true idea of joining the malls together finally came true in 1994, and it came with a food court, a two-story carousel, and a big walkway of new stores that connected the two malls into one mega mall. It was awesome… but it came with a price. The unique flair that had given Long Ridge its character was tossed out, literally. Reports say that the metal fountains, foam blocks, crazy television screens and everything else were thrown into dumpsters and discarded. The word is that a private collector managed to recover the Electric Ball Circus, though. Maybe we’ll see it again someday.

The photos included with this post are ones I have found around the internet. If you are the owner of any of the photos please reach out and let me know, I would be happy to credit you as such. If you have memories of the old malls, please leave them in the comments, I would love to hear them!

Russ Dimino is the author of Spilling My Guts: A Crohn’s Chronicle.

Part of This Complete Breakfast

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CookieCrisp3

One of the first home movies we have of me as a kid is me doing my own version of the Cookie Crisp commercial. I’m sitting at the kitchen table, holding a box of the cereal, exclaiming the slogan, “If you like cookies, you’ll love Cookie Crisp!” (I watched a lot of TV.)

Back in the late 80s and early 90s, every cereal commercial made sure to mention that it was “part of this complete breakfast.” It then showed a quick shot of the cereal accompanied by toast, bacon, eggs, a glass of orange juice, a bowl of oatmeal, and about eight other things. I remember wondering why my parents were under the impression that it was okay for me to be eating just cereal and why they didn’t know I was supposed to be having a lot of other stuff with it. Were they being lazy or just uninformed?

Cereal was not just something to eat for kids in that era. It was a way of life. Each cereal had its own personality, brought to life by the colorful characters that appeared on the box and in the commercials.

LUCKY CHARMS – Lucky the Leprechaun.  The kids were always after his Lucky Charms, trying to find them like treasure.  The thrill-of-the-chase theme of the commercials as the kids tried to acquire the cereal was appropriate because it mirrored the quest of trying to get your parents to buy it for you.  Even in the days before nutrition information was printed on the box, getting your mom to buy you a box of marshmallows for breakfast was a hard sell.

COOKIE CRISP – Similarly, it made sense that the mascot for this cereal was a crook who was trying to steal it.  That’s basically what you had to do if you wanted to get your hands on this one.  Eating it felt like you were really getting away with something.

CINNAMON TOAST CRUNCH – It confused me when the Cinnamon Toast Crunch bakers went from being a trio to just being one baker, Wendell.  What happened to the other two guys?  Did they split up due to creative differences?  When the commercials with just Wendell came out I kept wondering if there would eventually be commercials with just each of the other two, like maybe they were spotlighting each baker individually as a series, but that never came.  I did have a wallet with a hologram picture of all three of them.  Nowadays even Wendell does not appear on the box – it’s just a sentient piece of the cereal itself.  Apparently CTC became self-aware and no longer needed its creators. Chilling.

TRIX – I never really cared for the ad campaign of a bunch of rude kids who refused to let the Rabbit have any Trix. You have a whole box, it’s not going to hurt to let him have some.  It was just too mean-spirited.  The ads all ended with the rabbit looking depressed as the kids taunted him.  “Silly Rabbit, Trix are for kids!” Eventually they did have a promotion where you could call in and vote on whether or not you thought the rabbit should get some Trix.  I got my parents’ permission and voted for him to have some.  I guess a lot of other kids in America felt the same as me, because at the end of the promotion they did have a commercial where he finally got to try them.  But, things quickly went back to the status quo right after that and he was not able to have them in subsequent commercials. Also, interestingly, this cereal seems to change every so often between being colored balls vs. being actually shaped like fruit. It’s like they can’t make up their mind on what this cereal even is.

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COCOA PUFFS – Sonny the Cuckoo Bird is like the opposite of the Trix Rabbit.  The Rabbit can never have Trix, and Sonny is addicted to Cocoa Puffs like they are crack.  He has a bite and loses his mind.  I also respect the fact that they recently decided that the fact that it turns the milk chocolatey should be a selling point and started marketing this right on the box.

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Imprisoned by the Sogmaster

CAP’N CRUNCH – The Cap’n was different from a lot of the other mascots in that he was benevolently giving his cereal to kids rather than them having to try to steal it from him or anything like that.  Some of his ads even had storylines that increased your investment in the product.  Who could forget when the Sogmaster locked up Cap’n Crunch in a commercial that ended with “To Be Continued,” launching the “Free The Cap’n” promotion on specially marked boxes?  A cereal commercial with a cliffhanger?  I couldn’t wait for the next ad to come out to see how the Cap’n would get out of this one.

FROSTED FLAKES – Tony the Tiger always proclaimed how grrrrrreat this cereal was, usually in the context of it giving you energy for sports.  I don’t know how many athletes really fueled up with Frosted Flakes.  It would give you a sugar rush of energy for about ten minutes and then make you feel sick to your stomach.  It was also one of those cereals that tended to cut up the roof of your mouth.  I don’t know that you’d want to head right out to the basketball court after eating it.  Most likely you’d be laying down with a headache and a bleeding mouth.

FRUITY PEBBLES AND COCOA PEBBLES – These cereals are the only ones I can think of that had pre-existing characters as their mascots.  How did the Flintstones get roped into being Post cereal spokesmen?  I don’t know.  It’s also interesting to think that there are  kids today who only know the Flintstones from cereal boxes.

FROOT LOOPS – Toucan Sam was a hip, laid-back bird who encouraged you to follow his nose to some Froot Loops.  Usually he was offering that advice to someone who was down on their luck and he was suggesting they have Froot Loops as a kind of a pick-me-up.  I never cared for this cereal all that much but I respected that Toucan was a positive role model, trying to help out his fellow man by hooking them up with some of his cereal instead of keeping it from them like some of these other characters.

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GOLDEN CRISP – Sugar Bear was like the Fonz of cereal mascots.  He was cool but also seemed to get into a lot of fights.  He’d say “How about a vitamin-packed punch?” and then punch someone in the face.  In retrospect it seems weird that those ads were so violent, but Sugar Bear was just so awesome you didn’t really care about it at the time.  (This cereal was easily confusable with the very similar Honey Smacks, which featured a frog mascot called Dig’em.  It seems like a missed opportunity that Dig’em never smacked someone when they asked for his cereal.)

MONSTER CEREALS – Frankenberry, Boo Berry, and of course Count Chocula combined every kid’s natural love of monsters with their equally natural love of sugary cereals with marshmallows.  Today these cereals actually go out of production for most of the year and only become available again for a couple of months around Halloween, which only increases their mythological status.

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THE PRIZES INSIDE “SPECIALLY MARKED BOXES” – Every box of cereal used to come with a prize right inside the actual box.  These days most cereals have you send away for stuff in the mail, or enter a promo code online to see if you got something.  Back in the day you’d reach your grubby little hand inside, dig down deep into the cereal, and pull out a toy that was inevitably one of a series of toys that you’d be compelled to try to collect all of.  (Which, of course, meant buying more cereal.)  Sometimes through, to avoid getting a run of duplicates, you could send in some proofs-of-purchase and a few bucks for shipping and handling and have them send you the full set.  I was all about the Disney Afternoon, so my mom did this for me for the Duck Tales, Rescue Rangers, and Darkwing Duck toys that were in various Kellogg’s cereals in the 90s.

Some of my favorite “lost gems” of cereal history:

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TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE CEREAL –  When I look at a picture of the box I can still remember exactly how this stuff tasted.  It was really good.  Even though it’s been discontinued for more than two decades I’d honestly still call it one of my favorite cereals.  It was like Chex, but with more sugar, and marshmallows.  Plus, each box came with a mini-comic book inside, and there were trading cards to cut out on the back of the box.  I was obsessed with the Turtles, so anything having to do with them was already a win in my book, but the fact that the cereal tasted awesome catapulted this one into legendary status. A few years ago I even called the Ralston company to ask them to bring this back into production. They informed me they lost the license for Ninja Turtles a long time ago.  I suggested they could bring the cereal back and call it something else. The person I spoke to did not seem to think that this was likely to happen but thanked me for my call.

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TEDDY GRAHAMS BREAKFAST BEARS – This cereal was amazing and prompted one of my favorite “comfort snacks” to this day, which is to pour milk on a bowl of Teddy Grahams and eat them like cereal.  The difference is that actual Teddy Grahams go soggy in milk in a matter of seconds.  You need to pour a very small bowl, eat it quickly, and then refill, or else you’ll be eating mush.  The cereal would go soggy too but it managed to resist the milk for a much longer period of time.  Actually the best consistency you could get with the cereal was to wait for it to go slightly soggy.  There was a brief window of time where it was just soggy enough to be a little bit soft but not too mushy.  With the cereal that window was a couple of minutes.  With actual Teddy Grahams it’s about ten seconds.  Also the cereal box had a mask of a bear’s face that you could cut out and wear if you were so inclined.

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NINTENDO CEREAL SYSTEM – This cereal came out right when Nintendo was starting to become popular.  It was the first cereal I’m aware of that was actually two cereals.  Each box had two bags of cereal inside, a Mario cereal and a Legend of Zelda cereal.  The gimmick of two cereals in one, coupled with the fact that it had to do with video games, made this one even cooler in concept than the actual product probably tasted.  I don’t remember the taste as much as I remember how exciting it was to have it.

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GHOSTBUSTER CEREAL – I don’t remember this cereal very well. We do have a home video of my cousin getting a box of it for Christmas one year and my aunt asking him if it’s one of his favorite things.

These are all of my cereal thoughts for now, but I have a feeling I’ll have more to say on this topic in the future.  What are some of your favorite cereals, past or present? Let me know in the comments!