Part 3: Ghostbusters!

These are taking longer to write than I imagined they would but it's oddly amusing, fun and kind of horrifying to dive back into your childhood sometimes and look at it from a new perspective. Like how much money you got your parents to spend on Ghostbusters toys. £1,000? Over the years it probably adds up to that much. What a spoiled brat I was! Anyway that leads me into this. Ghostbusters! They need no introduction.

This was probably one of the biggest franchises I experienced whilst growing up and that's mainly due to all the toys that kept coming out supposedly based on the cartoon although like the Ninja Turtles toys it seemed like most of them were never in the cartoons or the movies at all. A brief list of what I remember having was Slimer (who came with a rubber pizza), the main four ghostbusters, the Ecto-1 (everybody has one of those), the firehouse (which I begged and pleaded for one christmas), some old lady with a monster mouth, a wolf man, the four ghostbusters again but when you pressed their arms they made weird faces, tubs of that fucking shitty ecto plasm stuff, Janine (for the firehouse, for the firemen?), colour changing Ghostbusters (why I wanted these I do not know), the ecto copter or some shit, Stay Puft, a proton pack, a ghost trap... the list just goes on and on and on. Then again that's the hold marketing has over kids, you want them but you don't know why.



Now let me recal back to when I was playing with Ghostbusters when I was a kid. I'd just unwrapped the firehouse to which I wanted so much and it was really fun for a while I liked it a lot but two things really pissed me off about it... wait, make that three things.

1. The Ecto-1 was so fucking huge it didn't fit in the firehouse right so you had to park it outside.

2. Stay Puft was TINY compared to the firehouse which I guess was ok but even back then I was a stickler for detail.

3. The Ecto Plasm tubs you got with it to pour down the grates were horrible! It dried really quickly when you poured it down the grates so it stuck to all the plastic leaving you having to clean it up for about half an hour after only seconds of Ecto Plasmic fun and most importantly IT SMELLED LIKE AN ARSE! Terrible.

But I can't lie, for the most part the toys were awesome, especially the proton pack, and even though Egon's tie snapped on the run of figures where you squeeze them and looked shocked I can take solace in the fact that everybody else's tie snapped as well. Yeah, take that. Where did we get the urge to buy these toys though? Well that would come from the TV series titled, The Real Ghostbusters.

The Real Ghostbusters was one of those shows that when you were a kid just made you feel just that much more grown up. It's not that it was particually mature but it just had that style, look and feel that stood out from most other cartoons at the time and it was great for a time. I do remember that during it's run they changed Peter's voice actor to someone else. People probably say that kids don't notice that stuff, well I know I did! I tried watching it after the voice change but this new guy just pissed me off. Then they went the double shit and putting Slimer cartoons at the start. Bastard.



The Extreme Ghostbusters was pretty bad from what little I saw of it (Two episodes I think). I can't even be bothered ranting about it. At least Egon and Janine were there is all I'm gonna say.

Too be honest I don't think I saw the movies until much later, though I was still pretty young at the time (about 7 or 8 I would imagine) and I remember it being a ball busting experience. Seeing the Ghostbusters in real life shooting realistic ghosts was just overload. But wait... WHY THE FUCK ISN'T EGON'S HAIR BLONDE??

The scene with Slimer in the hotel from the first movie will always remain a classic with me along with the Stay Puft rampage. The best thing is that the Ghostbusters movies still hold up today as funny as they ever were. Sure the special effects are mostly outdated but who cares, the effects still have that certain charm and everything else ticks the right boxes. I'm sure I'm not in the minority when I say that the first movie was miles overhead of the second but that's not to say the second was really that bad and has some classic scenes like the courthouse. Even though not as good as the original it's better than most comedy movies being made today. A tragic trend?

What do I think of Ghostbusters 3? Well from what little info we've got about it it's going to be CGI and that's an instant BLECH from me I'm afraid but as to if the movie's going to be any good? We shall wait and see. I'm willing to give it a chance and since Dan Akroyd, Bill Murray, Enrie Hudson and Harold Ramis are all set to do the voices that's at least one plus with me.

Well that's it about the Ghostbusters from me. Now cover yourself in ecto-plasm and take a look at some more Super Gerbil.

Wub, Sy.
xxx