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AWESOME-tober-fest begins on Monday!

Posted in Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines on September 26, 2014 by Paxton

This is it. My month long Halloween celebration, AWESOME-tober-fest, begins on Monday. I’ve taken down the “normal” header and colors and put up the spooky Halloween decorations. On Monday I’ll begin talking about all things Fangoria magazine. Expect to see covers, Scream Greats posters, articles, pictures and ads. All the things that made Fangoria the best in horror entertainment.

Plus, every Friday in October I’m going to review a cult horror B-movie of the type that you could typically find inside the pages of the magazine. And, honestly, considering the 5 movies I’ve picked, calling them “B movies” is probably a bit generous. But they are all chock full of ridiculous fun and a plethora of all your favorite cult movie stars. And I’ve picked movies I’ve never watched before. It’s going to be a blast.

See you back here on Monday.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2014 is coming!

Posted in Halloween, magazine, nostalgia, pop culture with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, magazines, nostalgia on September 4, 2014 by Paxton

It’s the first week in September! Which means we are now officially 1 month from October 1st, which is the beginning of my annual AWESOME-tober-fest Halloween celebration. Needless to say I am hip deep in preparations for this year’s festivities.

Technically, this is my EIGHTH year doing a Halloween celebration as I started in 2007 with a few posts during the month of October. However, the daily AWESOME-tober-fest as you’ve come to know it wasn’t really born until 2009 when I did Frankenstein. Which means this is my sixth year of doing the full blown AWESOME-tober-fest celebration.

Since Frankenstein in 2009 I’ve covered; wolf men, vampires, movie maniacs and then zombies. My original plan was to do ghosts as my theme this year, but you know what, I thought it was high time I paid special attention to one thing that really had an effect on me in my high school days. And it crosses all these boundaries. This year I want to focus on Fangoria magazine.

I’ve used scans from old Fangoria magazines throughout each year of AWESOME-tober-fest, but this year I’m going to be doing an entire month of only Fangoria goodness featuring covers, articles, ads, pictures, Scream Greats movie posters, the Video Eye of Dr Cyclops and the Nightmare Library.

Video Eye of Dr Cyclops
Nightmare Library

I’ve got a stack of magazines and I’m going to comb through them all and bring you some of my favorite content from all of my favorite issues of horror’s greatest magazine.

And, as a bonus, every Friday in October is going to be Fangoria Movie Friday. So it’s not just all scanned magazine content I’m going to review old B-horror movies that were featured in 5 of my favorite issues of Fangoria. These won’t be the A-listers like a Nightmare on Elm Street or a Friday the 13th. I’m talking something more along the lines of The Reanimator (which I reviewed last year). I’m looking forward to those reviews because I’ve picked 5 movies (one for each Friday in October) that I’ve never seen before but have always wanted to watch. And the movie will definitely have been featured in some way in an issue of Fangoria. It should be a lot of fun.

So gird your loins, ladies and gents, and head back here on Oct 1 and, you know what, that’s a Wednesday, I’m making an executive decision, AWESOME-tober-fest 2014 will start two days earlier on Monday Sep 29. Holy crap, I’m starting AWESOME-tober-fest in September! I hope I don’t get cited by the Halloween police. The staff here at the blog just looked at me with murder in their eyes. Oh well, hopefully I’ll see you back here at the end of the month!

And, as always, I’ll be a part of the giant Countdown to Halloween celebration as well.

Check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more information on how you, too, can join in on the fun.

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Thumbing through a SkyMall catalog from 1996

Posted in magazine, nostalgia, pop culture with tags magazines, pop culture, SkyMall, technology, vintage on August 25, 2014 by Paxton

Right after college I joined an IT consulting firm. Our business was based on clients. So I traveled 100% to client sites all over the country implementing a corporate financials software suite called PeopleSoft. So, during my eight years as an IT consultant I became very familiar with airplanes and flying across the country. Because I was flying nearly every week I picked up one of the first commercially available portable DVD players on the market back in 1999, the Panasonic DVD L-50. I still have it and it still works. I literally just let my nearly 4 year old son use it a few weeks ago when the family flew to Colorado.

Because I was on planes 50 weeks out of the year I also became intimately familiar with the in flight magazines. Namely, the SkyMall Catalog. It offered interesting products the likes of which you wouldn’t see unless you walked into a Brookstone in the mall. It was fascinating every month to check out what oddball items were being offered that you could order directly off the Airfone.

During my recent family trip to Colorado I thumbed through the current magazine and thought back longingly to the old catalogs from back in the day. What would they look like now? Well, I got an old copy of the catalog so let’s take a look at the treasures contained within.

The SkyMall copy I have is from mid 1996 and is stamped Southwest Airlines.

Each airline had their own version of SkyMall, the main difference being that there were a few pages in the back that sold clothing and items emblazoned with the airlines’ logo. But they all had the same awesome merch and (now) vintage technology.

So let’s get started.

This ad for a concierge company looks like the cover of a 90s video game simulator called something like Rich & Famous where you play as a wealthy CEO. I imagine it’s a game like Aerobiz.

There are several things that are guaranteed and written into the laws of nature. Death, of course. Taxes. And companies will never stop trying to develop the “perfect” exercise machine. And they’ll all make you look equally ridiculous when you use them (I’m looking at you, Health Rider).

Another guaranteed truth. Companies will always try to design new “gimmick” sunglasses that vaguely perform some “new, cool” function but they look like rejected props from a DEVO video. Or any 60s movie that features people from the future.

This pop up hot dog cooker/bun warmer is STILL sold in SkyMall magazine today. With nearly the exact same picture. Either it’s a best seller or they sold out 20 years ago and just forgot that it was still in the catalog.

This is straight up Rodney Dangerfield from Caddyshack awesome. I would play golf just so I could use this.

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AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Four vintage Fangoria magazine ads

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazine, movies, music with tags advertising, AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, monsters, music, vintage, zombies on October 30, 2013 by Paxton

Fangoria had a lot of great merch that you could purchase directly through the magazine. We saw the masks/costumes collections yesterday. Now let’s take a look at some of the other awesome items you could buy through the pages of Fangoria.

One of the first places I’d usually go, and the place I usually lingered on after I’d read the magazine, is the two page back issue order form. Checking out previous issues and what movies were covered was amazing. I love that they included many of the covers as well. You can see in the lower right I filled out the order form back in the day. I was optimistically hoping my parents would let me send away for some of the issues. I checked off issues #50 and #55 in the form. Issue 50 was the issue featured in the picture on the right with Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund). I always lusted after that issue and never got it. The other issue, #55, I’m less sure why I wanted. The cover pic is above the description with the Invaders from Mars remake on the cover and some first looks at Psycho III.

This ad showed up in Fangoria for many years. One of my favorites. I never wanted to own any of these shirts, I just liked the idea that they existed. I would never have been able to wear one of these shirts to school, so what was the point? Plus the shirts were $25 which was A LOT, even then. But the ad was very eye catching and fun. I like the guy in the luchador mask. WTF?!

Fangoria sold everything to make money within its pages. Here are some horror movie soundtracks for sale. Some of these I would imagine are pretty rare now. Some of these might possibly have been made custom. That Troll soundtrack couldn’t have sold too well. The Return of the Living Dead soundtrack is pretty great. But check out that list of eclectic movie soundtracks on the right. Teen Wolf? Warhol’s Dracula? The first Evil Dead? Transylvania 6-5000?! Wow.

The Gore Store was always a great stop in the magazine to see what cool books and props were being offered. This particular Gore Store is from 1987. Some cool film books about Night of the Living Dead and Stephen King. Also this page was a chance to order the annual Bloody Best of Fangoria issues. In this one you could order all the current 5 volumes of Bloody Best right there for $18 plus shipping. A little over $3 each. Not bad.

Also, check out the blog Countdown to Halloween for more Halloween-y, bloggy AWESOMEness.

AWESOME-tober-fest 2013: Vintage Fangoria mask ads

Posted in advertising, Fangoria, magazine with tags AWESOME-tober-fest, AWESOME-tober-fest 2013, costumes, Fangoria, Halloween, holiday, magazines, vintage on October 29, 2013 by Paxton

I’ve said before I’m a huge Fangoria fan. I still have all my old issues.

Here are some awesome mask ads from Fangoria magazine. Let’s put them in chronological order shall we?

First up:

A Monster Madness makeup kit ad from 1979 featuring several different types of masks. Three space alien designs, but check out C, on the far right. Does it look familiar? Maybe a bit like Darth Vader without the samurai helmet? The ad says the kits were designed by Dick Smith, but his name isn’t anywhere in the branding.

Ad for Don Post masks circa 1980. With the gear up to Empire Strikes Back that year, it’s not surprising that there are several Star Wars masks in this collection. Including a Bith cantina band member.

Massacre Masks ad from 1987. A fun ad showcasing not only masks but gaping wounds. It was always preferrable at the time to want to buy the goriest thing you could find in these ads and then wear them around your parents or other family members.

Nightmares masks ad from 1987. More gory, disgusting mask designs. Even back in the day I really liked the Letcher mask/hands in the upper left. I’m also in love with that “The Coffin” prop in the lower left. And the full size “The Corpse”? Yes, please. In 1987, those two items would set you back $875 plus shipping.