Christmas 2014

This won't be a terribly long post, as I have plenty of family things to get to, and I'm sure most of you are pretty wrapped up in your own Christmas / Holiday fun, but I wanted to take a few minutes to not only wish you all a Merry Christmas, but also to show off the neat Ghostbusters stuff I got this year!

Typically, I'm a pretty big Scrooge when it comes to the holidays. They just seem to be best left in the past when you had all the joy and wonder attached to it. As you get older, it seems to wear off, and you fill the role of gift giver and hand the role of gift getter to a younger generation.

The transition is quite hard. It's never fun knowing that your best Christmas memories are far away in the past.

However, there can still be some fun and excitement involved. Alcohol DOES help!

This year Mrs. Ghostbuster let me open one of my gifts early. And what an excellent gift it was:

Yes, FINALLY I am the proud owner of the Ghostbusters LEGO set!

This probably took me a good two hours to put together with minimal breaks. I'll admit, I'm not the best LEGO putter togetherer by any means, but the Ecto-1 was indeed a daunting task to assemble.

After spending a large amount of time putting it together, I can kind of see what the big deal is about LEGO sets. They are indeed pretty fun. 

Now I really have to stop myself from ever buying more, because I could really see myself getting highly addicted to LEGO products.

Christmas Eve was spent at my Mother In Law's. Most people dread their extended family, but I kind of like mine. They are fun people.

My Mother In Law, with a little bit of help from Mrs. Ghostbuster, nailed it this year with 3 AWESOME GB shirts. I may or may not be wearing the Stay Puft shirt as I write this.

For those who may wonder, I am pretty positive these came from the JC Penny website.

As we returned home, ready to unwind and not see or hear another child's scream for at least a century, Mrs. Ghostbuster gave me my last gift, and boy, was it AMAZING.

I am now the proud owner of a giant ass Ghostbusters logo.

My wife knew I wanted this one BAD. A friend of mine sent me a photo of it from a comic shop that is a little over an hour away from here, and Mrs. Ghostbuster had it sent to our door just in time for Christmas Eve!

It's made of thick foam, and measures close to two feet across. Looks spectacular on the wall as well. The perfect addition to the Mr. Ghostbuster HQ.

And the perfect end to Christmas of 2014.

Be sure to stop on over to the Mr. Ghostbuster Facebook page and share what you got this year!

Extreme Ghostbusters Kylie!

It must be a rare day, because I'm actually updating this blog. It doesn't happen often lately. 

I'll be the first to admit that I only have so many hours in the day, and most of them don't pertain to pondering  "how can I get a few more views on my blog today?"

But, as we all know, no matter how much time passes in between postings, eventually, I always find some kind of time to update this page and try to entertain and inform at least some of you.

To be honest, I haven't even been very active on Facebook either. At least not on a regular basis. 

Anyways, you didn't come here to see what I've been so busy with lately, you came to read about Ghostbusters!

Today we take a look at Kylie from Trendmasters' Exteme Ghostbusters toy line.

As I mentioned previously on this page, the Extreme Ghostbusters toy line was highly underrated and produced in far fewer amounts than the Rel Ghostbusters toy line that had come out ten years earlier.

While kids of the late 90's were all about Pokemon and WWF toys, the Extreme Ghostbusters failed to hit a home run.

It's not that they were bad toys by any means, but they weren't something that was highly advertised, and the cartoon itself would be on at weird hours of the morning, like 6am where I lived. Name me one child who is bright eyes and busy tailed at 6am that cares about Ghostbusters.

Basically, we can blame the failure of EGB on poor marketing. Really, that's kind of what it comes down to. Had advertisements been heavier, and the cartoon been in a prime Saturday morning time slot, Ghostbusters as we know it may be a whole different thing today.

Kylie was a pretty cool figure. Not since the days of the Real Ghostbusters had we seen a female GB figure. Yes, technically you can count Janine as a GB, since she always came with ghost-busting gear, and often times suited up in the cartoon.

Kylie Griffin is one of Egon Spengler's students, turned Ghostbuster. She embodies everything of the late 90's goth girl, and also has a deep interest in the paranormal.

One thing I love about  the EGB series is that the equipment is a giant upgrade from your average proton pack.

The Neutrona wand is replaced with an easier to manage Plasma Blaster. Smaller, and more powerful, the Plasma Blaster packs an added punch to busting class five full roaming vapors.

The ghost trap was also upgraded and given a new look as well.

Kylie also came with Slimer, who always seemed to find a way to depress me in this series. Naturally nearly ten years had passed since the original boys in grey protected the streets of New York from goblins, spooks, and demons.

Slimer seemed to have aged, and not gracefully, in that amount of time. I suppose it speaks to our own mortality. Egon had aged as well. When they ran the Back in the Saddle episodes, everybody came back looking much, much older than we remember them. 

Again, yes, time passes, we get it, but it's always hard to watch our heroes age.

While Extreme Ghostbusters may not have been what die hard GB fans of the late 90's would have liked it to be, it certainly fit the "slacker, skateboarding, extreme sports, edgy" lifestyle that was present at the time.

Kylie and her upgraded gear, and rather unconventional uniform embody a lot of the 90's culture, but at the end of the day, it wasn't what we were used to, and for many, change is a tough thing to deal with.

Christmas 1988

I suppose you could say it all began 26 years ago.

It was 1988. Ronald Reagan Was the President of the United States, Michael Jackson was still black, and "A Very Brady Christmas" topped the ratings for CBS.

Oh, and I guess that little cartoon called, "The Real Ghostbusters" was pretty popular too.

For what seemed like months, and it very well could have been, I had been begging for my parents to buy me some Ghostbusters toys.

 I needed them more than I would ever need an education, more than I would ever need a liver to process insane amounts of alcohol consumed in High School, and more than I would ever need lungs to breathe.

I NEEDED GHOSTBUSTERS TOYS.

No matter how hard I begged, the answer was always the same. "Santa is going to bring you some."

Santa? How in the world can I possibly just sit here and wait for Santa to bring me some Ghostbusters?

In my 3 year old brain, I simply could not process the fact that I wasn't able to play with Egon, Ray, Peter, and Winston figures because I had to just sit back like a dork and wait for some stranger to drop in my house while I slept and bring me some.

Oh no, the addiction was far worse than anybody could have predicted, even if I had nothing of my own yet.

One night, as we roamed the aisles of our small town Wal-Mart, I begged again. I received the usual response. This is where my memory gets just a little fuzzy. Something happened. I don't know how I convinced them, but it finally worked. I wish I had some kind of video play back, because whatever strategy I used, it would have come in handy much later in life.

My parents caved in. It worked.

I left Wal-Mart with my very first Ghostbusters toy. A Fright Features Egon Spengler.

I was now ready to sit back and wait for the fat  man himself to shimmy his ass down the chimney and bring me more of these.

We spent that Christmas at my Grandma's house in the backwoods, hillbilly town of Nebraska City, NE. I don't remember exactly how long we were there, but I remember the house that shit lived in at the time.

There was this big room, which in all honesty probably wasn't very big at all, but to a 3 year old, it was giant. In one corner there was a Christmas tree with some presents, and in another there was a tv. The middle of the room had a couch and chair, while the other side of the room had a table and chairs, maybe some other crap too!

The few days (at least what I think were a few days) leading up to Christmas were hell. Stuck in small town, middle of nowhere, Nebraska, and wondering if Santa was going to be able to find me and bring those Ghostbusters toys that my parents had promised he would bring for months was just killing me inside.

I was ready to get this shit underway.

Christmas morning finally did come. Like most of my mornings later in life, I woke up and took a shit. Even at the age of 3 I had priorities. Nowadays the first things I do are check Facebook and light up a smoke. Then I think about taking a dump. But hey, at least it's still part of my morning routine.

As I took the browns to the Super Bowl, my dad stood in the doorway and said that we should go see what Santa Claus brought. I wiped and went.

My haul that year was greater than almost any other year that would come after it. I got a talking Pee-Wee doll, several Pee-Wee's Playhouse toys, and yes, plenty of Ghostbusters.

Fright Features Ray Stantz, Terror Trash, and Granny Gross are the ones who come to mind right away. I'm sure there were a few others too.

It was the first Christmas that I remember, maybe that's why I hold it in such high regard. It was also the first one I ever had involving Ghostbusters. There were other years that involved it too, and I'm pretty sure I'll talk about those as well, but nothing beats the first one.

I have no idea where that house is located, nor have I been there in over 25 years, but I'll always remember the "big" room in little old Nebraska City, the room where Santa left me those Ghostbusters toys.