Saturday Six – Random Magazines I Bought For a Quarter

Welcome to the Saturday Six, where each week I let you get to know me a bit better with the help of a list. Any idiot can do a Top 5 list, which is why I kicked it up a notch to a Top 6. This week’s topic: Random Magazines I Bought For a Quarter.

If you follow me on Facebook, you’ll know the reason content has been lite of late is because over the Fourth of July holiday, I hit up massive sales at Frankenstein Comics and Fat Jack’s. I bought so many comics, I had to build new underbed storage for them, and I’m still busy bagging and boarding them, only up through the E’s. But while I was at Frankensteins, they had a box of crazy old magazines, all marked down to a quarter. These are the magazines I saw in that box of old garbage that I just had to own.

Go Bots Magazine, Summer 1986
I basically just picked this up for the sheer insanity that the Go Bots, the K-mart of Transformers, managed to get their own magazine. Plus, it had a preview of the movie Space Camp, and if there is anyone whose opinion on that film can be trusted, it’s the writers of Go Bots Magazine. If I had managed to get a subscription to this as a kid, I would be pissed, as the magazine, even through written by the staff at Lorimar-Telepictures, has almost nothing to do with the Go Bots. There is one 4 page comic, and the rest is all ads and a letter page with clearly fake letters. Not only did they not have a final opinion on Space Camp, their two page write up of what actually attending Space Camp was like is full of lies, at least based on my attendance as an adult.

Batman Official Souvenir Magazine, 1989
I picked this up because I just don’t understand the concept. A souvenir magazine for a movie? What, you mean like the programs you get at the circus or the Ice Capades? Did they sell this at the concession stand along with the popcorn and Milk Duds? I realize that this was 1989, and the internet didn’t exist, and it could take up to a year for media to come to home video, but a souvenir magazine for a movie just seems weird to me. Like you’d pull it out later and be all like “Oh man, I remember that movie. Good times!”. Plus their is very little content to it, it’s mostly just a picture book recap of the film, with a few behind the scenes photos and fluff pieces about Batman’s history and collectables and whatnot. Doesn’t seem like that would be worth $2.95 in 1989 dollars to me.

Return of the Jedi: The Storybook Based on the Movie, 1983
I was too young to have ever seen Return of the Jedi in the theatres, but I vividly remember owning the hardcover edition of this, and I’m pretty sure it was my introduction to the world of Star Wars, as I don’t think we got a VCR until I was older. This was produced by Scholastic, so this is one of those books you could order from those flimsy paper catalogs they sent home in grade school every month. It managed to condense a two and a half hour movie into 48 large print pages full of pictures and written at a child’s level and keep it as exciting as the film. I read it so many times the corners were all torn up and dogeared. Had they done this with the Batman magazine, it would make far more sense.

Marvel: The Year in Review 1991
Now, I thought this would be exactly what it sounds like based on the cover, a year end review of all the crap that Marvel did in 1991, which was a crazy year, what with the Infinity Gauntlet and a bunch of of other stuff going on. I figured it would be in a similar vein to the Official Handbooks to the Marvel Universe. I could not be more mistaken. For some reason, the people at Marvel turned this into a spoof of Time Magazine. It’s full of “articles”, like the “Best Dressed of the Year”, and a bunch of fake ads, like “Pang-Away”, the appetite suppressant strong enough for Galactus. It’s just all around weird.

 
Marvel Swimsuit Editions, 1991-1993
I remember buying the 1993 edition, because I was a 12 year old boy, the Internet did not exist yet, and this was the closest to porn I could legally buy. The 1993 edition is just cover to cover sexy photos, but the 1991 edition is a straight up Sports Illustrated spoof, including a bunch of articles about the “Super Hero Olympics”, superhero workout routines, more fake ads, and a bunch of other garbage. Someone at Marvel clearly had some strange ideas. Both these and the year in review did start right around the time Ronald Perelman bought Marvel, so I’ll bet he had a hand in it. Even if there were too many articles, there were still plenty of pictures of super heroes in bikinis that had as much coverage as three postage stamps and some dental floss, so there wasn’t much to complain about.

Star Trek Magazine #35, 2011
Like I would turn down a Star Trek magazine for a quarter. Sure, there isn’t really anything in it I don’t already know, but there was a interesting piece on Matt Jeffries that had a few tidbits.

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook