My 90s and 2000s Experience: Star Wars Insider Magazine (1994-2006)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today, in spirit of this Sunday being May the 4th, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, I've decided to do another blog post on Star Wars Insider magazine. Last time I talked about this magazine, I went over the general history of the magazine from its humble beginnings as The Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine in 1987 to it celebrating its 200th issue in 2021. I've also talked about my personal history with the magazine as well as the very issue that I ever got back in the spring of 1999. This time I'm going to be going over 12 issues of the magazine that came out between 1994 and 2006, which covered the announcement of the Shadows of the Empire Multimedia Project that Lucasfilm put out in 1996, the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition releases, the Prequel Trilogy, and The New Jedi Order book series. So let's get into it!

The first issue of the magazine as Star Wars Insider was published in the fall of 1994, around the time George Lucas began writing The Phantom Menace. While the prequels had been announced the year before, and the Lucasfilm Fan Club Magazine had increasingly been adding more Star Wars content to the publication since that announcement, this was the first issue where Star Wars was the sole focus of the magazine. 

Back in 1994 we didn't have the internet the way we do now. There was no official Star Wars website, no Wookieepedia, only message boards. There was no Disney+ or DVDs, Blu-rays or 4Ks. Star Wars Celebration wouldn't even exist until May 1999. There also wasn't Andor, The Mandalorian, or Ahsoka. The only way you could watch the movies and the two animated shows that were out at the time, Droids and Ewoks, were on VHS or on TV. In the case of the two cartoons, they were reruns, and those only happened in certain areas. So you were lucky if you got to watch those cartoons in the early to mid '90s, like I was as those two cartoons were my introduction to the Star Wars Universe. So this magazine was the only way to get news about the franchise, be it the novels, comics, video games, the Special Editions or the prequels themselves at this time. Yes, other publications such as Starlog, Entertainment Weekly, and Vanity Fair covered news about the movies, but not to the degree that Star Wars Insider did.

The very next issue announced the Shadows of the Empire project that would have everything except a movie. I'll be talking about this insane project in the very near future, but this was a way for Lucasfilm to gauge fans reaction to a new Star Wars project before the Special Editions came out the following year and before Episode I would be released in 1999, though at this point the plan was to release the movie in 1998, followed by Episode II in 1999, and Episode III in 2000, as George was planning on writing all three movies at once, and then film each one back to back, similar to how Peter Jackson would produce the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in the early 2000s (I know, I need to talk about those at some point). As we all know, it didn't end up working that way with the prequels due to the sheer amount of work that needed to be done on The Phantom Menace, which resulted in the movie's release date being pushed back to 1999, Attack of the Clones being released in 2002, and Revenge of the Sith being released in 2005. This issue also introduced readers to Rick McCallum, the producer of the Special Editions and the Prequel Trilogy.

Issue 25 began a new column known as Prequel Update. This was a series of interviews the magazine conducted with Rick McCallum, updating fans on the state of each of the prequel movies which would run for ten years, from 1995 to 2005, and would end in issue 81, shortly before the release of Revenge of the Sith.

Issue 32 (not pictured) covered the 20th Anniversary of the franchise and issue 33 (pictured above) covered the premiere of Star Wars: The Special Edition in early 1997.

Issue 34 was the beginning of the magazine's full coverage of Episode I, which ran until issue 46, which I'll be talking about later on in this post. This issue announced the cast of the movie, including Jake Lloyd as the young Anakin Skywalker and Natalie Portman as Queen Amidala, though I don't think the character's name was announced until issue 43. Unlike today where, thanks to social media, you know just about everything about a movie, including all of the characters's names, before you ever see a trailer, back in 1997, the people who made movies and TV shows actually made the effort to keep some things secret from the audience, so that there'd be some surprises when you sat down in that dark theatre to see a movie for the first time, or when you sat down in your living room to watch the latest episode of your favourite TV show. Obviously there would still be leaks to the media, but studios and networks did their best to keep those to a minimum. And it was much easier, because, again, you didn't have production people posting pictures to their Instagram or Twitter/X feeds like you do today.

Issue 43 included full sized pictures of the main characters of Episode I, as well as their names and rolls in the movie. I don't know for sure, but I think this was the first time it was confirmed that Samuel L. Jackson was playing a Jedi Master in the movie. I think it had previously been announced that he was going to appear in the movie, but I think this was the first time his roll, and the name Mace Windu, was mentioned anywhere. Being that this was my first issue of the magazine, I don't know if he'd been mentioned in an earlier issue or not. The issue also announced that Del Rey was publishing a new series of Star Wars novels, beginning in the fall of 1999, with R.A. Salvatore having been hired to write the first book, which would be a hardcover, and Michael A. Stackpole writing a trilogy of novels (that ended up being reduced to a duology that would be published in paperback immediately after the first hardcover), and James Luceno, a newcomer to the world of Star Wars novel writing, writing two more of the paperbacks.

Issue 45 covered four things. The first was opening night of The Phantom Menace in various cities in the U.S., including George Lucas's hometown of Modesto, California. The second was the press screening of the movie in New York City, including bytes from the main cast. The third was a full chapter excerpt from the first book in the New Jedi Order book series, Vector Prime, which was still a few months away from coming out. This is the only time in my memory where Insider actually had an excerpt from an upcoming novel included in its pages. Maybe it happened in an issue that I missed, either before this one came out, or after, but it's the only time that I know of where this happened. The fourth and final thing this issue covered was the inaugural edition of the convention, Star Wars Celebration, which just wrapped up this year's edition in Japan almost two weekends ago. This event happened in Denver, Colorado in 1999, and it ended up happening the weekend after the shooting at Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado. There was even a letter from a girl whose sister was a student at Columbine in the letters column, Rebel Rumblings in the back of the issue.

Issue 46 was the last issue of the magazine to have full coverage of The Phantom Menace, with interviews with Jake Lloyd, Liam Neeson, Samuel L. Jackson, and Anthony Daniels. Sadly, I think this was the final time that Insider had an interview with Jake Lloyd. The magazine would return to the movie in later issues, being that The Phantom Menace would come out on VHS in 2000 and then on DVD in 2001, but this was the last issue to include indepth coverage. Also, by this point Vector Prime had come out, so they had an interview with R.A. Salvatore about the book in their book section called The Star Wars Bookshelf, which alternated with the comic book column, The Horse's Mouth (originally known as From the Horse's Mouth), for the first year or two of the book column's existence, before both columns would be included in every issue.

Issue 50 began covering Episode II in earnest with the announcement of Hayden Christensen being cast as Anakin Skywalker in Episode II, as well as in Episode III. There's also an interview with Hayden in the issue as well, the first of many for him. The issue came out in July, 2000, three months after The Phantom Menace had been released on VHS, but before it was announced that the movie would be released on DVD in 2001 about four or five years before it had been originally planned for all six Star Wars movies to be released on the format.

By issue 69, which covers the first season of Genndy Tartakovsky's traditionally animated Clone Wars micro-series, Attack of the Clones had been and gone in theatres, and the movie had come out on VHS and DVD simultaneously, it being the final Star Wars movie to be released on VHS, at least in North America, so the magazine began covering Episode III in earnest. However, unlike with Episode II, only three years earlier, there was no big casting reveal accompanied by an interview. Instead, it was announced in this issue that Peter Mayhew would be returning as Chewbacca for Episode III. Clone Wars was the first TV show for the franchise since Droids and Ewoks ended in 1986. It was also just a small taste of what was to come for the franchise in regards to television. 

Again, there were no streaming services back in 2003. In fact, Netflix was still a DVD rental service at the time. So the only way you could watch this show was if you had Cartoon Network, or Teletoon if you lived in Canada when this show aired. And even then, because they were short cartoons airing between episodes of whatever shows were on on Friday nights, I think a lot of people missed this show when it originally aired, and caught it once the show became available on DVD in 2003-2004. Also, at this time the only Star Wars shows and movies that were available on DVD at this time were The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones. So, if you missed the show when it aired on Cartoon Network or Teletoon, that would be it.

Issue 81 was the final issue of the magazine to have the Prequel Update feature, after ten years and nearly 60 issues of updating the fans on the production of the Prequel Trilogy. Revenge of the Sith was wrapping up post-production at this point and it wasn't that long until the movie was going to be coming out in theatres. So while coverage of the movie would continue strong, including pieces on the movie's novel and comic book adaptations, this was the last chance that Rick McCallum would have to talk to Star Wars Insider before the movie came out.

Finally we come to issue 86, which covered Revenge of the Sith and how watching all six movies in episode order (I-VI) would change people's perspective of the Original Trilogy now that we had the full saga. It also began my second era of reading Star Wars Insider as after issue 49 in 2000, the magazine was hard to find at the bookstore I went to, the hobby store my dad still goes to wasn't carrying new issues of the magazine, I didn't have access to a comic book store in the early 2000s, and geek events like Ottawa Comiccon and the Geek Garage Sale were still about a decade away from becoming a thing here in Ottawa. So, besides issue 57, which came out in 2002, and issue 80, which came out in 2005, the magazine didn't start becoming available in my area regularly again until this issue came out in 2006. Occasionally, I would miss an issue, but for the most part I had every issue from 86 to 111, and then I had issue 113, and then every issue from 120 to about 197, as I was able to pick the magazine up at my local grocery store, which was great, as this was after Titan Magazines took over publication of the magazine in 2007, starting with issue 93.

And that my friends is it for my look at Star Wars Insider during the mid '90s to mid 2000s when the magazine covered the Special Editions and the Prequel Trilogy, as it was basically my era of the magazine and my favourite era of Star Wars as it was when I became a fan of the franchise. With May essentially being Star Wars month with May the 4th, Revenge of the 5th, and the 20th Anniversary of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, I have three more Star Wars related posts that I have planned for May. The first is a look at Shadows of the Empire, then I'll be taking a look at Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, and then, finally, I'll be looking at Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. So, if you're a Star Wars fan, get ready to celebrate the franchise in all of its glory. Until then, have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: TV Show Premieres and Finales (Season and Series)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today is going to be another easy topic. Even though I'm not watching Andor season 2 (I haven't even seen season 1), the premiere of the season has got me thinking about what TV show premieres and finales, both season and series, were like in the '90s and early 2000s. I'm only going to be talking about premieres and finales in a broad sense, as well as the ones that really stood out to me for shows that I watched. And there aren't any images in this post so I can go off on tangents without worrying about placing a new image in. So let's get right into it.

The premieres and finales that I remember the most of from my childhood are all from Star Trek. In fact the first one I remember ever seeing was the season finale for the third season of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Best of Both Worlds" from 1990. I was still pretty young at the time, only being 3 years old when it originally aired, so I more remember watching it, but don't remember the impact the episode had on not only Star Trek as a franchise, but on TV as a whole. Back in the early '90s, Primetime Television was episodic, with the occasional two parter thrown in for good measure, but serialized storytelling on TV was usually reserved for daytime soap operas like The Young and the Restless and The Days of Our Lives (both of which my mom watched when I was a kid). So for Star Trek to end a season with a cliffhanger was groundbreaking.

Of course, I remember seeing the rest of TNG's season premieres and finales after that, except for the season 7 premiere, "Descent, Part II". By the time it aired in 1993, we'd already moved to the log house, where we didn't have cable, so we didn't have access to CHRO or Citytv, which TNG aired on at the time. My grandparents taped a bunch of season 7 episodes for us, but I didn't see a lot of them because of how different the tone of season 7 was in comparison to previous seasons. Nana taped the series finale, "All Good Things..." for us and I definitely remember watching it.

I didn't see DS9 until I was a teenager in the early to mid 2000s, so I didn't see any of its season premieres and finales, except for the series premiere, "Emissary", until I was much older. Even then, I remember being blown away by episodes like "Way of the Warrior", a two hour episode that opened the fourth season, and aired in two parts in reruns, and "A Call to Arms", which was the season finale for season 5, simply because DS9 was more heavily serialized though it still very much had an episodic nature, which is something most network shows had all the way through the 2000s and the 2010s, even though there were overarching stories throughout a season, with some carrying over into the next season.

Voyager and Enterprise are probably the Star Trek shows I remember the most when it comes to their premieres and finales. Particularly Enterprise because by the time it began airing in 2001, I was a teenager and in high school. But like, I remember watching Voyager's season premieres and season finales from later seasons more. For example, my parents taped "Equinox, Part I", the season 5 finale for us to watch on the weekend after it aired as I didn't have a TV in my room yet, and being that I had to get up early for school on weekdays, I wasn't allowed to stay up late enough to watch Voyager very often being that it aired on Wednesday nights on Citytv with an encore airing on Sunday nights on Space Channel at that time. I do remember watching the season 6 finale, "Unimatrix Zero, Part I" the same way. I also remember watching the series finale, "Endgame", on the TV in my room in 2001, with the Enterprise series premiere, "Broken Bow", that same year. 

Enterprise was interesting because it was also on at the same time as Smallville, so I was watching both shows, and I remember being more enthralled by the season 1 finale of Smallville than I did by the season 1 finale of Enterprise, "Shockwave, Part I". I think it's because I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen to Lana Lang (played by Kristin Kreuk) as Clark had leapt into a tornado to rescue her at the end of the episode, while I knew that Archer and his crew would be exonerated by Starfleet and the Vulcan High Command and be allowed to continue their mission, since Enterprise had been renewed for a second season, and was a prequel to the rest of Star Trek at the time. And while Smallville had also been renewed for a second season and was also a prequel series, it was its own show with no connection to any particular Superman continuity, though retroactively it would be connected to the Arrowverse (2012-2024), so I didn't know what was going to happen except that, eventually, Clark Kent (Tom Welling) would become Superman.

Speaking of Smallville, I watched most of the first five seasons of the show when they originally aired. We didn't have The WB here in Canada, unless we had Satellite TV, so for me, the first four and a half seasons aired on Citytv, before it moved to YTV for the remaining five and a half seasons. Which is why I don't remember the season 5 finale (I have yet to watch the show in its entirety, despite the fact that I've had all ten seasons on DVD for the last six or seven years now). I do remember the season 4 finale though, because the night it was on, a friend of mine dropped by to hang out for a bit before she went on her date. So I actually missed five or ten minutes of the episode, since I wasn't taping it as I wasn't expecting my friend to drop by. 

I haven't talked about sitcoms so far in this blog post, because few sitcoms had season finales with cliffhanger endings. The only one that I can think of off the top of my head that I watched when I was a kid, was season 5 of Boy Meets World as that was the finale where Topanga proposes to Cory at graduation. Otherwise the other sitcom that I remember having cliffhanger season finales was Friends. Particularly the later seasons. I think Sabrina the Teenage Witch had them too in that show's later seasons, after it had moved to The WB from ABC in 2000, after the original run of TGIF had ended. It really wasn't until the mid to late 2000s with shows like How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory that I really saw sitcoms try things like that more, despite them still remaining mostly episodic. The other major sitcom that I watched in the 2000s that had some seasons end in cliffhangers was That '70s Show.

Of course I watched plenty of other shows in the 2000s that had cliffhanger season finale endings, even though the season premieres had different episode titles than the finales did, like The O.C., One Tree Hill, and Everwood. But, I've found that other than the network sitcoms I was watching in the 2010s, like The Big Bang Theory, not many shows have cliffhanger endings anymore. Particularly streaming shows, because not a lot of them stick around for more than a season anymore. Which is why the cliffhangers at the end of season 1 of That '90s Show (a streaming sitcom), every season of Only Murders in the Building, and season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds were so cool to me. They brought back that feeling of anticipation I always felt while watching season finales on TV in the '90s and 2000s. Of course, nowadays I have to wait 1 to 3 years before the next season of a show because of how streaming shows work, rather than the 2 to 3 months I waited for in the '90s and 2000s, but, what can I say, times certainly have changed.

Series finales were also more special back then, because, with the exception of certain shows like Firefly and Mutant X, series finales were planned. So for many shows they were special events. With the exception of Enterprise's series finale, "These Are the Voyages...", all of Star Trek's 1990s shows had two hour series finales. Some shows had two separate back to back episodes, whether the show was a one hour show or a 30 minute show. The Big Bang Theory is probably the most recent show that did this for its series finale back in 2019. My friend, Katie, came over and we watched it together. Unfortunately, she couldn't come over on the night the finale aired, but I recorded it on our PVR (DVR), and she came over on the Saturday night after it had aired, so we could watch it together.

TV in general felt special back then. Not to say it isn't special these days, it's just special in a different way. Streaming shows mostly feel more like a movie being released every season. And like I said, it takes anywhere between a year to three years for a new season of a show to come out, if a show gets a new season at all, as not many do. Even less these days than during the heyday of network television.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more blog posts. I had just been thinking about this topic for the past week because of Andor having its three episode season premiere last night for its second season. So until next time have a great evening and a great rest of your week and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Choosing Between DVD and VHS in the Early 2000s

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. So today I'm going to do something a little bit different. Rather than talk about a particular piece of entertainment that I grew up with, I'd like to talk about being able to go to the store and choosing between buying a movie on VHS or buying it on DVD in the early 2000s. Specifically I'll be talking about five of my favourite movies that came out on DVD between 1998 and 2002. So they aren't necessarily the most popular movies of whatever decade they were originally released theatrically in. This is also going to be from a Canadian perspective, though if you're in the U.S. you can apply it to your circumstances as well. Also, this is a completely fictional scenario, though the movies are ones I ended up having on physical media at some point in my life, either on VHS or DVD or both. So, let's get into it.

It's late January 2003, and you're a teenager in high school and you're hanging out with your friends at a strip mall that has a Walmart, a Futureshop and a Chapters, a movie theater (very likely Cineplex Odeon) and a restaurant or two such as Denny's and Montana's, with a McDonald's across the road, and maybe a Tim Hortons as well. You just saw The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers at the movie theater and you decided to do some shopping before your parents are due to pick you up because you live in the middle of nowhere, are too young to drive yet, and there's no public transit service out in your area. Knowing the movie and music selections at Futureshop are better than at Walmart or Chapters, you go into Futureshop and while your friends go to the CD section to pick up the CDs they're looking for, you make a beeline to the movie section and start browsing, hoping to pick up some new movies with the money you got from relatives for your birthday and Christmas. Here are the movies you see.

 

The first movie you see on the shelf is Batman: The Movie. Both the VHS and the DVD from 2001. You never owned the official VHS release of the movie as it's a movie you saw on TV and have it taped off of PBS. And, even though you don't own it on VHS outside of that taped off TV version, you pick it up on DVD because you just got a DVD player (it's a DVD/VHS combo player) for Christmas and got Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones, Austin Powers in Goldmember, and Scooby-Doo on DVD to go with it.

Next, you see Batman Forever on DVD only. Since you already own it on VHS, you're not super disappointed that the VHS isn't there. You decide to pick it up on DVD since you already own Batman, Batman Returns, and Batman & Robin on DVD.

Then you see Beauty and the Beast: Special Edition on both VHS and DVD. Your sister got it on VHS for Christmas, so you pick up the DVD for your collection. It's a bit more expensive than the two Batman DVDs because it is a 2-disc release rather than the single disc releases that the other two are.

Then you see Spaceballs on both VHS and DVD and you pick it up on both since you don't already own it on VHS (You rented it over the summer of 2002). 

The last movie you see that you're interested in is Star Trek Generations on DVD. It's also the movie you were hoping to get on the format since it's your favourite Star Trek movie, contrary to popular consensus within the Star Trek fan community on the online message boards. They also had the director's cut of Star Trek: The Motion Picture on DVD, but these five movies, including the VHS and DVD versions of Spaceballs take up your budget for this trip, so you join your friends as they make their way to the cash with the various CDs they planned to buy. You can't wait to get home so you can watch the movies you've just bought.

I chose to go this route with this blog post, because I remember what it was like to find Batman: The Movie and Spaceballs on DVD, as they're both movies I didn't own on VHS when I was a kid. I borrowed Spaceballs on VHS from a friend of the family's in 2000, and I had Batman: The Movie on VHS because my dad taped it off PBS for me in 1992 or 1993, sometime after I started watching some episodes of the 1966 TV show on YTV. In all honesty, I didn't see the VHS releases that coincided with the DVD release of either movie at Futureshop when I got the DVDs in 2004 or 2005, whenever I got the portable DVD player that was the first DVD player that I personally owned (my parents had a DVD player as early as 2002). And you also don't need to have been a teenager in 2003 to know what it was like to find these movies on DVD either. You could be any age as long as you were old enough to have seen the movies on VHS or on TV. Or any movie really. As long as it was coming out on DVD in 2003 or had come out on DVD between 1998 and 2002. Whether it was the latest movie like The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, which had come out on VHS and DVD in August, 2002, or the first James Bond film, Dr. No, which had been out on VHS since 1982, and out on DVD since 1997, with the then most recent DVD release having come out in 2000

I also did it this way so you could imagine going to the store in 2003 and seeing these movies on the shelf on either VHS or DVD or both, whether you already had them or not. Also, it was only an eight year period, between 1997 and 2005 where you could get movies and TV shows on VHS and DVD simultaneously. Where you could choose to pick up a new movie on either VHS or DVD, or both if you had enough money for that.

I think that's going to be it for me for today. I hope you all enjoyed this blog post. I might do something similar with going to the movie theater in the late '90s and early 2000s because it was a unique experience and very different from how going to movie theaters is in 2025. Not that I'd really know what it's like to go to the movies in 2025 since I haven't been to a movie theater since December 2019, but even in 2019, we were starting to get things like assigned seats, they'd removed the old box office booths from the entranceways of the theaters sometime in the early to mid 2000s, and they'd replaced the old theater seats with more comfortable chairs in the early to mid 2010s. So until then have a great rest of the evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga (1991, DC Comics)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I've got a comic book related post for you today. It's been a while and I picked a special one to talk about. So let's get into it.

Star Trek: The Mirror Universe Saga is one of the few collected editions that DC Comics published in the early '90s. It collects issues #9-16 of the original Star Trek comic book series that DC published from 1984 to 1988. It was also my first collected edition and my first trade paperback collected edition.

The book takes place between Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) and acts as a sequel/followup to the TOS season 2 episode, "Mirror, Mirror", about a decade before DS9 would do its first sequel to that episode, "Crossover" from late in its second season. So obviously, everything that happened in the TV show version of the Mirror Universe in DS9, hadn't happened yet, or didn't happen up to that point, as this version of Mirror Spock never challenged Mirror Kirk and took command of the Enterprise. 

The reason this book is so special to me, beyond the fact that, for decades, it was the only Star Trek comic collected edition I owned, is that I got it from a very special group of people. It was given to me as a gift by the cast and crew of Star Trek: The Next Generation, when I visited the set back in January, 1993. Along with several other comic books, including the comic book adaptation of the 1992 film, Cool World, which I reviewed on the Review Basement back in 2020. I still have this copy in my collection. I never got rid of it because it was given to me by the cast and crew of TNG and I really like the story.

Being that this is a collection of comics from the original 1984 Star Trek comic book series, the artwork isn't great. The characters are fine, but the interiors of the ships look more generic Sci-Fi ship interiors than starship interiors from the TOS movies. That would change with the 1989 series, which is mainly set between Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), but this was a problem that the original comics published by Gold Key in the '60s and '70s had as well. 

Because I still have my original copy that I got in 1993, I haven't been on the search for a copy to include in my collection. However, I have come across the original DC published edition it at comic book sales, geek sales, and conventions at least once. IDW also re-published it in 2022 as part of their Star Trek Classics series, and had previously re-published the entire story arc in Star Trek Archives: Best of Alternate Universes, which was volume 6 in the Archives series, in 2009. So it should be pretty easy for you to pick up if you're interested in checking out these classic Star Trek comics.

That's it for me for today my friends. I'll be back next time with another post. I haven't quite decided what I'm going to talk about next week. I'm also returning to the VHS Club Podcast next week to chat about Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie with Katie. The podcast has been on hiatus for the last month, so it'll be awesome to not only have the show back, but to also be the first guest host for their return. I should have a blog post up before Thursday, April 10th though. That's my plan anyway. Until then have a great rest of your week and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: The Phantom (1996, Paramount Pictures)

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Today I'm going to be talking about the 1996 movie, The Phantom, starring Billy Zane, Treat Williams, Kristy Swanson, and Catherine Zeta-Jones, which I just watched for the very first time last night. Normally I talk about movies, shows, music, or whatever it is that I experienced in the 90s and 2000s, but, I've decided to start including 90s and 2000s things that I experience in the present as well, because there are so many things that came out during my childhood that I didn't watch or read that I'd love to talk about on here. So, let's talk about The Phantom. I watched it on VHS last night. Let's get into it.

Despite only watching it for the first time last night, I actually do have some history with this movie. I was nine years old when it came out in 1996 and I remember seeing the commercials for it on TV, starting probably in the fall of 1995, since there was lots of merchandise that came out. For example, on the back of Detective Comics #700, there was an ad for The Phantom trading cards from Inkworks. I also remember seeing the TV spots for it during Power Rangers Zeo as well as during the reruns of The Dukes of Hazzard on TNN, that I was also watching in 1996. I also had a replica of the Phantom's skull ring that somebody got at a convenience store or at Subway for me or something like that. 

I love this movie. At a time when superhero and comic book based movies weren't as prevalent as they became in the 2010s, The Phantom came out at the perfect time. Yet, I never saw it until last night. And the movie wasn't successful at the box office. similar to how The Rocketeer and The Shadow failed at the box office when they came out in 1991 and 1994 respectively. It's funny because just two years later, The Mask of Zorro did extremely well, and yet both are adaptations of old comic strips and pulp fiction novels. 1996 also wasn't a box office hit heavy year either. Though some very good movies came out that year like Independence Day, Twister, and Space Jam.

I love the cast of The Phantom. Billy Zane is great as Kit Walker/the Phantom. He's funny, charming, and very proactive, though not to the obsessive extent that Batman can be portrayed as in the comics, and some of the movies and TV shows. I've only really seen him in Titanic, though he plays a member of Biff's gang in Back to the Future and Back to the Future Part II, and he's apparently in Zoolander as an uncredited cameo role as himself. It's been more than twenty years since I saw Zoolander so I don't remember a thing about it. And he plays P.T. Barnum in season 3, episode 2, "Freakshow", of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. This was my first time seeing Kristy Swanson and I've only seen Catherine Zeta-Jones in Ocean's Twelve, but I really loved them both in this movie. Treat Williams as Xander Drax, the villain of the movie, "X-A-N-D-E-R D-R-A-X, both starts with an x", stole the show though. I watched Everwood for probably about half the show's original run from 2002 to probably 2004 or 2005 (I'm pretty sure I missed the show's fourth and final season) and he was one of the main characters of the show, as Doctor Andy Brown, and I loved him in that role. He's also in The Empire Strikes Back, but I have yet to actually spot him in the movie. The rest of the cast is phenomenal.

As a fan of 90s and 2000s things, I watched The Phantom on VHS last night, because, why not? But, it was rough seeing the opening previews on the VHS because the first one was for the home video release of Harriet the Spy, given that Michelle Trachtenberg passed away a few weeks ago. Especially because the 1999 live action Inspector Gadget movie was one of my favourite movies when I was a kid, and of course, I loved Harriet the Spy when I saw it almost 30 years ago. However, the last preview before the movie started is the teaser trailer for Star Trek: First Contact, which I saw on the VHS release of Mission: Impossible when I watched that sometime in the early to mid 2000s. There's no exterior shots of the Enterprise-E in the teaser. Some scenes, including Picard's line about "The line must be drawn HERE, no further!" are included, but it's mostly shots from the TNG season 3 finale/season 4 premiere, "The Best of Both Worlds" and Star Trek Generations.

I had so much fun watching The Phantom. To this day though I have no idea why I'd never seen it before. It was less violent and scary than Batman Returns, and Xander Drax was a way less scary villain than the Joker in Batman. It was also even less scary than any of the three Indiana Jones movies (yeah, I didn't see those until I was a teenager for that reason), and I was older than I was when Batman Returns came out. The only thing I can really think of is that my parents felt my siblings were too young to see it, though it didn't have sexual content in it, no swearing, and very little blood in it. Who knows at this point. I'm glad I got to watch it last night regardless. I might even watch it again at some point in the very near future. 

Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more nostalgic posts for you. I'm probably gonna talk about a comic book next week. We'll see though. Until then, have a great evening and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: Oreos

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Friday. I've got a quick little post for you today. I don't talk about food at all on my blog. Especially not in this series, because most of the food I ate as a kid (pre-1993) is the same as it is now. Yogurt is still yogurt, sandwiches are still sandwiches, etc. But, there is one food that I want to talk about and that food is Oreos. Specifically the Oreos Summer Fun Pack, which came out sometime between 1990 and 1993 (Wikipedia doesn't list these in the list of Oreo varieties), since they don't exist anymore. So let's get into it.

Like I said, I don't have an exact year these cookies were in stores in, I just have my own memories of when these cookies were out. There were very few foods that I could eat before I had the operation that led me to be completely fed through my feeding tube. But, one thing I could do was lick the Oreo cookie filling off the bottom part of the cookie because it was soft. Someone else would eat the cookie parts for me. 

These particular Oreos had colourful filling. The colours were red, green, orange, and yellow. One of the dieticians at CHEO always brought a package of them for me whenever I was in the hospital for however long. As a dessert to go with the soup broth, strained yogurt, juice or milk, applesauce, and whatever else was brought up for me on my lunch or dinner tray since I was on a strictly soft food diet at the time due to the problems I was having at the time with my original esophagus. I also had regular Oreos too, but these colourful ones really stand out to me as something I had as a treat. 

One of the reasons I wanted to talk about this today is because these Oreos haven't been available, at least not here in Canada, in about 32 or 33 years and I really wanted to eat them after my esophagial graft was done in 2003, alas I have never found them. I was also curious to know if anyone else my age or slightly older had these cookies. They were from the early 90s for sure because, like I said, I never saw them again after 1992 or 1993. But, they also could've come out in the late 80s and were just released in the summertime until 1992 or 1993. I just know I was introduced to them sometime between 1991 and 1993.

Aside from eating them in the hospital, I don't have any really specific memory of eating them while watching a particular show or movie, or reading comic books or anything like that. Not like eating strained yogurt for breakfast while watching The Care Bears Family on Global or having a juice box while watching reruns of Batman on YTV (before Power Rangers started airing), or eating soup broth for lunch while watching The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle and Friends and The Flintstones on YTV. Things like that. 

I think that's going to be it for me for today. Like I said, I just wanted to talk about these briefly because I was curious to know whether other people who were kids in the late 80s and early 90s ate these cookies. Plus they were part of my 90s experience and that's what this blog is all about. Alright my friends, that's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with another post next week. So until then have a great rest of the day, a great weekend, and I will talk to you all later. Take care.

My 90s and 2000s Experience: YTV Big Fun Party Mix 4

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. I had planned on doing this post last week, but stuff came up and I didn't have the energy to focus on working on the blog. But, I'm back and this week we're going to talk about a very obscure album that I had on audiocassette in the mid 2000s. In fact, it's so obscure that I can't find a picture of the audiocassette cover, so I have to use an image of the CD cover instead. That album is YTV Big Fun Party Mix 4, which was released on CD and audiocassette in 2003. So, let's get into it!

 So I don't really remember when I exactly got this album. It was either a birthday or Christmas present from my friend, Kelly, in 2003, or I bought it for myself while I was hanging out with Kelly and another friend of ours at the time, at Walmart in 2007. I'm about 95% sure that I got it in 2003 for my birthday or Christmas because I remember still being in high school when I got it. And none of my friends drove when we were in high school, so we had to rely on our parents to take us everywhere. And other than going to see The Two Towers in January 2003, the only other time I went anywhere with Kelly in the car while we were still in high school was when Mom and I picked her up in December 2002 for my party for my 16th birthday.

The songs on this album are a mix of the popular pop songs at the time, including "I'm a Believer" by Smash Mouth, which had been made popular by Shrek in 2001. However, there are three songs on here that are...interesting. The first is the English dub theme song for the Anime, Beyblade, "All Across the Nation" by The Black Europeans. The second is the theme song for the Anime, Hamtaro. The third is called "Super Smelly" by Nuclear Donkey.

For those of you who watched YTV in the late 90s and through most of the 2000s, you'll remember Nuclear Donkey. It was originally formed by the hosts of The Zone, PJ Katie and Pat Kelly and they recorded songs for each of the Big Fun Party Mix CDs, except for 7, 8, and 10 (according to Wikipedia). However, by the time Big Fun Party Mix 4 came out in 2003, Jen (PJ Katie) and Pat had left The Zone, and had been replaced by Stephanie "Sugar" Beard and Carlos Bustamante. As the new Nuclear Donkey, they recorded "Super Smelly" which is probably my favourite song on this entire album. Just because it's such a silly song.

There is one song on this album though that I'd love to talk about because it's my favourite song on this album that isn't "Super Smelly". And that song is "Whole Again" by Atomic Kitten. It's track 11 on the CD, but the third track on side 2 of the audiocassette, and I think one of the reasons that this album sticks out to me among all of the compilation albums I have that came out in the 2000s is that I'd heard this song and "I'm a Believer" on the radio a lot when I was in high school. Majic 100 played both songs all the time in 2001 when they were first released. So, when I got this album and saw that both songs were on it, I was thrilled.

I think that's all I wanted to say about this album. I'm honestly really happy with where this blog is. It took me ten years, but, I finally have it the way I want it to be. Which is great. That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back soon with lots more posts. Until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.