Animation Magazine 1993 "Outrageous Issue"

My local comic shop tends to have a large collection of back issue and vintage magazines lurking around, usually for a dollar. One day while digging through some bins of them I came across this 1993 issue of Animation Magazine. I've passed up older volumes of Animation Magazine before because it seems to be largely an insider magazine and generally about stuff I don't care about in the slightest (despite the large amounts of cartoons I watch this side of age 7), but I was pretty excited to stumble across this particular issue, dubbed the "Outrageous Issue" and all about what the early-to-mid 90's did best: ridiculous cartoons. Featuring Beavis & Butthead on the cover and filled with articles and interviews about the shocking cartoons of the day: Rocko's Modern Life, Duckman, Aeon Flux, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and dozens of indie cartoons that have been forgotten through the decades.

I'm not going to scan the whole issue, and I don't plan on including all the things I did scan in this particular post (I plan on saving the MTV articles for another post!) but here are some of the more interesting things. Click for a larger image!

One of my favorite articles in the magazine is the more-or-less negative review of The Nightmare Before Christmas. The Disney movie that was a whole generation's first foray into the world of spooky was apparently not scary enough for this reviewer, who, despite working for an Animation magazine seemed disappointed that Disney didn't make an all-out horror movie.

Another thing I'm particularly fond of is the closing statement in the Mr. Lawrence post, about the merits of working within network standard. I think what he's talking about is where the "Adult Party" new Ren & Stimpy episodes failed.

The Scream: The Official Goosebumps Fan Club Newsletter 1997

I have absolutely no idea if this is still a thing, and I feel that it isn't, but growing up in the 90's, most popular kid's media included the possibility to subscribe to some sort of fanclub. Usually the price was between $10 and $15 and you got a fan-kit of a bunch of cool and useless junk, as well as a newsletter of some sort or another. Growing up my all time mom-I-have-to-have-this fan club was the Lisa Frank fanclub, but unfortunately, it cost about $14 and my sister and I were just not willing to share, and therefore my mom was not willing to shill out an extra $28 bucks on top of the monthly Lisa Frank budget, which I imagine sometime in 1996 was more than I can possibly imagine. Somehow or another in late 1996 I managed to convince my mom that I just had to be a part of the Goosebumps fan club, which was a series I had only just gotten into a few months prior.

I don't remember what came with this fan club, besides a wallet I unfortunately destroyed with hot glue sometime in high school, but I recently stumbled upon one of the quarterly newsletters. I vividly remember the 6-8 week wait to receive the fan-kit in the mail and specifically remember fickle little me thinking "But I'm sick of Goosebumps now!" by the time it finally arrived. Despite my too-cool-for-Goosebumps attitude (I had since moved on to Animorphs and considered it far more sophisticated reading material since the back suggested it was aimed at 6th graders and Goosebumps was aimed at a mere 4th grader) I still loved getting The Scream in the mail and used to reread them constantly.

Lucky for us all, in a recent archeological dig through piles of my old junk, I found a Dec 1996/ Jan 1997 copy that managed to survive. Click for a larger picture!

These also came with a similar tri-folded puzzle sheet with some various craft ideas and word games, but I didn't bother scanning it in because apparently when I was in 6th grade I somehow didn't understand what a Mad Lib was and just filled it in with the most appropriate words and I figure the internet didn't really need to see that, or my half hearted attempt at finishing a crossword puzzle.

Digging around the internet for any other info this fan club, I stumbled across the following video of one version of this fan-kit that has managed to survive the years intact.

This wasn't the same kit that I got, I know mine contained a neon green wallet, but it's about on par with what sort of stuff came with mine. Some stickers, a bunch of pencils and pens, goofy booklets, and just general miscellaneous junk. There was hardly anything sweeter than getting to crack open that junk filled cardboard coffin though, I'm sure much to all of our parents dismay. They may have felt like they flushed $14 down the drain, but a fan-kit like this was a pretty exciting thing to get in the mail.