Well I guess I was probably at the perfect age when the Ghostbusters phenomenon took off as I was 5 years old, I think I was old enough to not get too scared by the ghosts but young enough for the movie to make an impact. Strangely enough whilst I don’t think I can precisely recall when it was I first saw the movie (but I do know I watched it at that time), my strongest memories are associated with the video game on the Commodore 64 (on tape!!! we had a lot more patience back then). I do recall remembering the various associations within the game to the movie, and I think it probably helped fuel the association long after the movie had moved on.
Jump to 1987 and my family was moving to Australia from our native UK and my parents decided to take us to Disneyland and Universal Studios as we moved over here. Unknowingly it was there that I would be reintroduced back to Ghostbusters albeit in an unfamiliar form. Whilst we were in a shop at Universal Studios I saw the now infamous Real Ghostbusters toys, although I didn’t know it was from the cartoon at the time... and yes I was fanboy enough at that time that I didn’t get why they were in different coloured suits and Egon’s hair was a different colour, etc, etc. Anyway I wasn’t allowed to buy any of the figures but we went to go watch the Miami Vice stage show and the figures were forgotten about until...
We finally moved to Western Australia and we were staying at our Aunt and Uncle’s house whilst my parents were finding someplace to live (eventually we rented and then moved again into our permanent residence). During this time my brother and I was still getting acclimatized to this new and weird country, and we had finally found out what TV channels would be playing cartoons and at what time! As luck would have it, it was at this particular period when we were both introduced to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. Needless to say we wanted to get all the toys as soon as possible (which we did) and we would play with then all the time. Also during this time we was introduced the Filmation’s Ghostbusters cartoon, and whilst I did like it to a degree it did bug me that it shared its name with the movie and it was a bit weirder then the other one (it wasn’t until a couple of years ago I found out the truth of the series).
When we finally moved into our new home in 1989, I finally made some new friends at my new school (the previous school was awful for me, no friends and plenty of bullies who loved picking on the fat kid) who were also GB fans, and we made our own fan club (I even made a badge from an old toy card) and we even put on our own GB performance for the class (me with official RGB pack and my friend with a polystyrene packing foam and bag strap pack). About this time Channel Ten at shown the movie on TV, so I had recorded it on VHS and was constantly re-watching it and loving it even more. Whilst during this time the other big thing that came to take over our lives was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles so the GB stuff slowly made its way into the background, only to make a brief resurgence in 1989 for GB2 but never to really take as much of a hold over your minds again after that.
The badge I made 25 years ago.
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