The Hardy Boys: Differences Between the Original Text and Revised Text Versions

 Hey guys! How's it going? I'm doing quite well. So I got a question in one of the comments on Facebook on my review of The Tower Treasure, the first book in The Hardy Boys, which I did last week. The person asked me what the differences were between the original text and revised text versions of the books, on a story level. I explained it to him, but it got me thinking about discussing this topic here on the blog. Since I've read both versions of book 2, The House on the Cliff, most recently I'll be using that for my frame of reference. Let's start with an overview of the series.

The Tower Treasure was originally published in 1927. Two more came out in 1927 and then three more came out in 1928. However, only two came out in 1929 and one came out in 1930. After 1928 the series averaged one book a year until 1957, then they skipped a year with The Mystery at Devil's Paw not coming out until 1959. Then they went back to releasing them one per year until the final book, The Sting of the Scorpion was published in 1979. 

While Grosset & Dunlap and the Stratemeyer Syndicate continued publishing new books in the series, they also started publishing revised text editions of the first thirty-eight books in 1959. The Tower Treasure was first, followed by The House on the Cliff, but the other thirty-six books being revised sporadically, with the third book, The Secret of the Old Mill not being revised until 1962. Some were also revised out of order as well. Like book 11, While the Clock Ticked was revised in 1962 while book 10, What Happened at Midnight, wasn't revised until 1967. These revisions also varied, as some were only slightly altered, while others were drastically altered, and the rest were changed to a completely different story, but carried the same name as the original text version had had. The Tower Treasure and The House on the Cliff are only slightly altered.

The House on the Cliff  had only slight alterations made to it in 1959. The story is intact, though dialogue is updated and some of the characters are switched around or removed entirely. In the original book, Frank and Joe stumble onto the mystery of the Polucca house by accident when they're out with Chet Morton, Biff Hooper, Phil Cohen, and Jerry Gilroy and the boys decide to check the abandoned house out. It turns out that the case their father is working on has to do with the boys saving "Jones", leading the boys to help their father out. Oscar Smuff is in this version as well. The villain's name is Ganny Snackley in this version and he's the leader of an international smuggling ring. Callie Shaw and Iola Morton appear here as well.

The revised text version of The House on the Cliff has the same basic story. However, this time around, Frank and Joe are sent to the Polucca house, now called the Pollitt house, as a viewpoint to look for smugglers on the bay, using a telescope. Jerry Gilroy is absent completely from the book, and Phil Cohen is still in the book, but Chet Morton and Biff Hooper still accompany Frank and Joe on their mission at the beginning of the book. Oscar Smuff is removed entirely and a new, one-off character, named Pretzel Pete (he sells pretzels on the Waterfront) is introduced as a friend and informant of Frank and Joe's father, Fenton Hardy. The boys still save "Jones" and take him to the Kane farm, though Bill Kane is named Henry in this version. Fenton still disappears. The villain is now called Felix Snattman and seems to be a slightly different person than he was as Snackley in the original book. He's still a dangerous smuggler, but he has a soft side that is shown at the end of the book, which I won't go into here. Otherwise the book is pretty much the same. As an example of a book that was changed drastically from the original but not completely different, let's take a look at book 10, What Happened at Midnight.

 Like the original version of The House on the Cliff, this book also has Frank and Joe accidentally stumble onto the mystery. Instead of drug running though, this time it's a jewel smuggling ring they uncover. And this time Fenton is away on another case and doesn't appear in the book at all. Oscar Smuff shows up again here, though he's not as obnoxious as he is in the revised text version of The Tower Treasure or the revised text version of book 3, The Secret of the Old Mill. 

While the revised text version of What Happened at Midnight was drastically changed from the original, it's still a similar story. This time, Fenton assigns Frank and Joe to protect a scientific breakthrough developed by one of their neighbours in Bayport. There's still a party at the Morton farm, and Joe still gets kidnapped, with Frank and the other boys hot on his tail. The criminals are all the same too, no name changes or anything. The FBI agents are the same as well, and other things that happened in the original text version also happen in the revised text version as well. So it wasn't changed very much in the revision process, but changed enough that it gives the reader a different experience than reading the original does. 

Hopefully this answers your question. I honestly wasn't sure what to post today. I know I have Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew #4 to review, but I decided to push that back to next week so I can read all six issues and review the series as a whole. I figured that'd be more fun than reading and reviewing the final three issues individually. WandaVision begins tomorrow on Disney+ so I'm going to watch the pilot episode in the morning and then write my review of it right after that and then we'll see what the weekend brings in terms of reviews, because I have a few other pilot episodes to watch and review since I bought the first season of Stargirl on iTunes today, as well as the rest of the first season of Titans as I had already gotten the first episode back before Christmas. So stayed tuned for those coming your way. That's it for me for tonight so I will see you here tomorrow for my review of the first episode of WandaVision. Take care. 

The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin (1985) VHS Review

 Hey guys! How are you all doing today? I'm pretty good. I hope you all had a good weekend. I had a quiet one. Today I'm here to talk about the 1985 live action TV movie, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, which preceded the animated series of the same name, which came out only two years later. Today I'm going to be talking about the movie as well as it's 1986 VHS release, which is actually the only home video release this movie has ever had. Thanks again to Vincent Conroy of the Grundo Gazette for sending me the digitized version of his copy of the tape, as well as all the other ones that he sent me. Let's get into it.

 This VHS cover evokes so many fond memories of this movie. The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin is an adaptation of the first two books in the The World of Teddy Ruxpin book and tape series sets, "The Airship" and "The Missing Princess". Pretty much all of the dialogue from the book and tape sets were brought to the movie though there are pieces of dialogue that were written for this movie as well. The story was also expanded to include Tweeg and L.B. who weren't introduced until "Tweeg and the Bounders", the fifth book and tape set that was released by Worlds of Wonder, as well as the crystals that rarely popped up in the book and tape series, but became prominent in the animated series beginning with episode 5, "Escape from the Treacherous Mountain".

There were four video rental chains here in Ottawa in the late 80s and early 90s. Rogers Video, Blockbuster, Jumbo Video, and West Coast Video. I'm not old enough to have seen The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin when it aired on TV on the ABC Weekend Specials in 1985, but sometime in the early 90s my parents rented it on VHS from West Coast Video. I don't remember exactly when they first rented it for me but it was before the summer of 1993 because we hadn't moved out of the city yet and the West Coast Video location they rented it from had closed down by 1993. 

Rogers Video had a copy though and we rented that all the time. Unlike the copy from West Coast Video, the original VHS cover was slipped into the rental case, which Rogers Video actually stopped doing around 1993 and had their own covers inside the rental cases. Though they still had the retail VHS box in front of the rental case, which you had to take to the counter when you were going to rent a movie. At least for the slipcover cases. For the clamshells, they just had the rental cases. 

Eventually Rogers Video was getting rid of some of their old stock and put The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin on sale. My parents bought it for me and I ended up watching the tape a whole lot more once I owned it. Trust me, it did not go unwatched. I wish I still had my old copy, unfortunately it looks like we got rid of it with a few other VHS tapes that I had intended on keeping before we moved. Thankfully Vincent was nice enough to send me the digitized version of his copy, so I at least have it in my collection that way. 

One of the things that I love about this movie is the models, animatronic costumes and sets used for it. I'm not a big aesthetics guy when it comes to movies and TV shows. However, the fact that the sets, models, and animatronic costumes were made on such a small budget is impressive. Especially in 1985. Most TV shows and movies that are made in this style are pretty limited. I mean if you look at the first few Barney & The Backyard Gang tapes, the sets look terrible compared to what AlchemyII was able to accomplish for this movie. The airship moves wonderfully, as do the Gutang airplanes. And of course the characters move amazingly too. And the models used for the main locations of the series (Gimmick's House, Tweeg's Tower etc) look spot on as we've seen in them in the books. The Hard to Find City is my favourite of the models. It looks absolutely gorgeous, and exactly how it looks in the book for "The Missing Princess". 

The story is also pretty great. I mean yeah, if you've seen the first five episodes of the animated series, or heard "The Airship" and "The Missing Princess" then you know the basic story of this movie. However, there are a few things that made their debut in this movie, even before they appeared in the book and tape series. The first one is Teddy's mother, Ilana Ruxpin. Her first book appearance, "The Day Teddy Met Grubby" wasn't released until AFTER this movie aired on TV, which is interesting, because I had assumed that a good chunk of the book and tape sets, along with Teddy himself, were out before the movie aired on TV. But only some of them were since the toy debuted in September 1985 while this movie aired in November 1985. The other thing that appeared here, that had made two appearances in the book and tape series up to this point are the crystals, though their full importance wouldn't be revealed until the The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin animated series that would come out in 1987. I think even Tweeg and L.B. made their first appearance here, depending on when "Tweeg and the Bounders" was actually released. The final thing that made their first appearance here was Louie, the Grunge reporter/cameraman who works with the Wizard of Wee Gee/the Wizard of Grundo. He didn't appear in the book and tape series at all, and wouldn't make another appearance after this until "Beware the Mudblups" the second episode of the animated series. 

The only negative about this movie is the fact that the two songs from "The Airship" are missing from here. Of course "My Friend" didn't appear in the animated series either, but "Come and Discover" did, and so I kind of feel it's absence from this movie. Maybe it's because that song, more than any other in the franchise besides the theme song, perfectly encapsulates what Teddy Ruxpin is and it feels weird not having it here since it's in every other version of this story, including the 2006 Backpack Toys version.

I love this movie. I don't think there's a movie adaptation of a toy from the 80s that was as perfectly made than this one. It has the heart and soul of Teddy, it has the sets that make Grundo what it is, it changed very little from the original story, and it has wonderful characters. If you're a Teddy fan and you HAVEN'T since this movie yet, I definitely recommend you check it out. Or if you have kids this would be a great way for them to be introduced to Teddy Ruxpin if you don't have access to the talking toys and book and tape sets or the animated series. Like I said, it was only ever released on VHS, but a few people have uploaded it to YouTube, so if you can't find a decent VHS copy on eBay, then YouTube is your best bet, unless you have a friend who owns the tape and has digitized it. I'm very lucky that I do.

Alright guys that's going to be it for me for today. I will be back either tomorrow or Wednesday for my review of the fourth issue of Nancy Drew & The Hardy Boys: The Death of Nancy Drew. Then later in the week, either Friday or Saturday I'm going to try a little experiment. I've seen a few YouTube channels who put out a "What We Are/I Am Watching" videos where they talk about everything they've watched in a week or whenever, and do mini-reviews of each movie or show they watched before recording that segment. I mean I've kind of done something similar once before, but it was more of a pickups post. So I'm going to try to make a "What I Am Watching" post at the end of the week and see how it goes. I want to watch movies and TV shows, but I don't always have much to say about them. Like last week I watched the live action version of Mulan on Disney+ but found I didn't have a whole lot to say about it individually, and who knows when I'll be reviewing the original animated version of the movie, so this might be an interesting way to talk about more shows and movies on the blog. 

Anyways that is going to be it for me for today. But I will see you on Wednesday for the next review. So until then have a wonderful evening and I will talk to you later. Bye.

The Hardy Boys Mystery Stories #1: The Tower Treasure - Book Review

 Hey guys! Yes, I am back once again for another review as promised. I managed to finish The Tower Treasure before I went to bed last night so that's what I'm going to be talking about today. So let's get into it.

As I've talked about on the blog before, I've been a fan of the Hardy Boys since I was 8 or 9 years old. For years I had a huge collection of the series which was a combination of the original text versions and the revised text versions, as well as a few books in the Digest series and some of The Hardy Boys Casefiles as well. Of course the first Hardy Boys book I ever read was the revised text version of the first Hardy Boys book ever published, The Tower Treasure. I read it in that 2-in-1 edition I talked about in a previous post. 

While the book is called The Tower Treasure, the mystery of the Tower Treasure only takes up about half the book. I say half, it's probably more like three quarters of the book. The book is twenty chapters in total and the the mystery of the Tower Treasure is introduced in chapter 6. Because this is the first book in the series, all the characters need to be introduced and so the first five chapters, as well as the beginning of chapter 6, take the time to introduce everybody by having Frank and Joe solve a smaller mystery. That smaller mystery is the theft of Chet Morton's car. Chet is their best friend basically and he accompanies them on pretty much all of their cases after this book. It's only after the boys return to Bayport that they find out about the robbery of Tower Mansion, hence the title of the book.

I really feel like the mysteries in some of the earliest books of the series are more personal for Frank and Joe. For example, in this book, the father of a friend of Frank and Joe's is accused of robbing Tower Mansion despite there being very little real evidence against him. The thing I've never understood is how Mr. Applegate even decided that Henry Robinson was the one who robbed Tower Mansion without any investigation by the police or Fenton Hardy. Sure, the book described Hurd Applegate as a mean man, but he's employed Robinson for years, so surely he would not have employed him if he didn't trust him.

There are alot of characters introduced in this book. However, there are two that aren't introduced here. Aunt Gertrude, who won't be introduced until the third book, The Secret of the Old Mill, and Sam Radley, Fenton Hardy's detective friend, who wasn't introduced until the 45th book in the series, The Mystery of the Spiral Bridge, though he does appear the revised text versions of book #12, Footprints Under the Window, book #16, A Figure in Hiding, and book #19, The Disappearing Floor. Pretty much everyone else is introduced in this book though. Including Oscar Smuff who showed up sporadically through the original versions of the first forty books, but disappears from the series after book #12 in the revised text versions. 

I think that's probably my one real criticism about this book, keeping in mind that the original version was first published in 1927 and this version was published in 1959. There are so many names thrown out at us in this book, with most of them either never appearing again or not appearing as often in the revised text version of the series or the latter part of the series, that it can become overwhelming if you're not used to such a large cast of characters in a book. It's also a little bit annoying when most of the characters introduced here don't matter going forward.

The Tower Treasure is probably my favourite book in the original series. I can't count just how many times I've read this book in the last 25 to 26 years since I first got the 2-in-1 plastic cover edition that I used to have. It must've been hundreds of times. I think it's because while the later books go right into the main mystery, this book gives us time to get to know Frank and Joe. I actually have two favourite scenes in this book.

The first one takes place relatively early in the book. It's such a simple scene too. Frank, Joe, and Frank's girlfriend, Callie Shaw, go to the Morton farm for dinner and it's just the three teens, with Chet and his sister, Iola, who is also Joe's girlfriend, are there making dinner and having fun. Just like my friends and I would do today. Like I said, it's such a simple scene, but it shows that Frank and Joe are ordinary teenagers with friends, school, activities and a life, but they happen to enjoy doing detective work and solving mysteries. The later books usually open with Frank, Joe and Chet doing something together or Frank and Joe doing something together, but it's never like the way this scene is. 

The other favourite scene of mine is actually a whole sequence that starts with Frank talking to Callie at school, and expressing his worry about the whereabouts of his father, who was on the trail of the criminal who had robbed Tower Mansion, but hadn't reported in yet, to her. This shows that Frank and Joe do worry about their father when he's away for long periods of time while he's on a case. It also shows that Frank trusts Callie enough to confide in her, and it shows that Callie is a compassionate person, who is genuinely interested in Frank's life, and will comforts him when he's feeling down about a case or anything else that's bothering him.

You know, I see how dating is in these books and it makes me wish that dating was still this way today. I know the books were written in an earlier time, when romance and dating were very different things than they are today, but it looks so easy and way less complicated than it is today, or was when I was in high school in the 2000s. While Callie is Frank's girlfriend in this book, she acts alot like my female friends would today and would've when we were in high school. Which is probably why Callie is one of my favourite Hardy Boys supporting characters. Well that, and the fact that she has been in pretty much all of the TV show adaptations and has been given more and more to do in each subsequent book series, particularly The Hardy Boys Casefiles, where she's basically Frank and Joe's full-time crime fighting partner. 

Overall, this is a great book. I have it in three different forms. I have the revised text in the omnibus Meet...The Hardy Boys, I have the 1987 (and later) plastic cover flashlight edition of the revised text, and I have the revised text eBook as well. Even now as an adult, I still go back to this book at least once a year, along with the 1946 edition of the original version of book #10, What Happened at Midnight, which also shows Frank and Joe spending time with their friends outside of solving a mystery. And having it in the plastic cover edition, which was available brand new in bookstores when I was a kid, when I got the 2-in-1 plastic cover edition, makes it even more awesome.

Alright guys that's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back on Monday with my review of the 1985/1986 TV movie, The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, on VHS and then other reviews and posts throughout the week. I know I said I was only going to post on Mondays and Fridays, but you know I wasn't going to be able to stick to that since there's alot of things that I want to talk about on here. So posts will come whenever I feel like doing them. So until then have a great rest of the weekend and I will see you all back here on Monday for The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin. Later  

Star Trek: Discovery (2017) Season 3 TV Show Review

 Hey guys! I'm back. This time I'm going to be talking about the third season of Star Trek: Discovery, which ended last night. I'm also going to be discussing the future of Star Trek and how we don't actually know what the next season to come out is going to be yet. There is going to be spoilers for this season as I have to talk about the season as a whole. So let's get into it!

The third season of Star Trek: Discovery reminds me very much of the first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation with the quality of writing all over the place and the lack of character development. And yet the show is about a thousand times better than it was two seasons ago when it started back in 2017 and 2018. In fact there are episodes this season that are as good as any episode of Deep Space Nine or any fifth season episode of TNG even if the writing isn't quite up to par with how it was on both of those shows in their midway seasons. Visually the show looks better than it did in the first two seasons. But I still feel like something is missing.

At the end of the second season, on my old, no longer existent, blog, I wrote about how Airiam's death near the end of the season had done nothing for me because they hadn't done anything with that character leading up to the episode where she died. And while the main Bridge crew have gotten more development this season, the new characters, particularly Adira Tal and her dead boyfriend/former host of the Tal symbiont, Gray, did almost nothing after a certain point. Like Adira could've been any other character on the show and it wouldn't've mattered because they're basically a one episode character and their story ended in the episode where they're on Trill with Burnham. Same with Gray. I was wary of them as characters, because we'd done the Trill thing before, and it had been done better on DS9, and given the show's history of mishandling characters in previous seasons, a.k.a. not using them to their full potential, it left me nervous. And I was right because they did almost nothing with either of those characters even though they promised an interesting story with them when this season started.

Even Book wasn't as interesting this season as the first episode set him up to be. I mean we learned more about him because we spent an entire episode on his homeworld, but he ended up not being as interesting as I thought he was going to be. And I think the problem is that they try to do too much in a single season and end up having to drop half of the storylines because there aren't enough episodes in the season anymore and I think most of these writers are still used to writing for Broadcast Television where you still get twenty to twenty-two episode seasons instead of the eight to fifteen episode seasons that streaming shows get usually. And I think that's where the problem lies. They're still trying to tell too much in such a small number of episodes and they just don't have the wiggle room they had with the first five live action shows. 

The best episode this season was "Unification III" which dealt with the Vulcans and Romulans and their reunification, which came about because of Spock's efforts in the 24th Century. That was the episode that felt the most like Star Trek. There was alot of things in the episode that screamed classic Star Trek despite the fact that it's modern Star Trek. Which I really appreciated. And the entire season did get there eventually. Especially with the Osyraa stuff even if that storyline wasn't always engaging, particularly the final two or three episodes of the season. But it was still good. Like I said, this season very much felt like the first two seasons of TNG, which I like even if there were episodes in both of those seasons that just didn't work for one reason or another. 

The one thing that I do have reservations about going forward is Burnham having been promoted to Captain and given command of Discovery in Saru's absence. She's been court-martialed for starting a war with the Klingons back in season 1, and was demoted and relieved of her duties as First Officer for insubordination not that long ago. But she kills Osyraa and saves the remnants of the Federation and she gets rewarded, despite her earlier actions. I don't know if that's a commentary of some sort or if modern day Television writers just don't know how to write about characters facing the consequences of their actions. It's definitely something I saw on Arrow in the sixth season during that mid-season Team Arrow "Civil War" thing that made no sense and had no consequences for the stuff Wild Dog and Black Canary did or for what Oliver did either. Anyway, I'm hoping that the writers continue to write Burnham better in season 4, because they did a better job this season than they did in the previous two seasons. I do like how the finale ended, but I do wish they'd done more with the whole Tilly being promoted to First Officer while still an Ensign thing that they set up pretty well, but dropped pretty quickly in the final three episodes.

I think that's the big take away here. I wish they'd done more with the things they set up at the beginning of the season, like Tilly as First Officer, which was awesome btw, Adira and Gray, Adira's relationship with Stamets and Culber, which was pretty awesome, and whatever they were trying to set up with Detmer at the beginning of the season too. 

In season 4 I really hope they explore Stamets and how he feels in the wake of discovering that he's no longer as necessary to operate the Spore Drive, since they found a way for Book to do so if necessary. Something that was basically deemed impossible back in the first season, it being such an experimental piece of technology in the 23rd Century. I also hope they explore his relationship with Burnham going forward too after she shot him out of the ship to save him from Osyraa. The final thing that I hope we get alot more of is Adira and Gray, because they are awesome characters, but they really weren't used very well this season, again because there were too many storylines to try and fit into the season. 

Alright guys that's it for me for today. I'll be back on Monday with a review of The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin, the 1985 live action Teddy Ruxpin TV movie that predated the 1987 animated series. Though I might be back sometime this weekend depending on whether or not I finish reading The Tower Treasure this weekend or not. So until then have a wonderful weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care. 

Savage Garden (1997) Album Review

 Hey guys! How are all of you doing? I'm doing okay. It's been a scary few days with everything going on in the US but we keep going. Today I am back with another album review, which I haven't done since I talked about Planet Pop 2000 back in like April or May. But today I am going to be talking about an album that is near and dear to my heart as it's the first CD I ever got when I was a kid. So let's talk about Savage Garden from 1997.

 Between 1995 and 2000 so many iconic 90s bands and solo artists came to prominence. The Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Matchbox Twenty, Shania Twain, Faith Hill, Aqua, the Spice Girls, 'N Sync, Ricky Martin, Enrique Iglesias, Christina Aguilera, 98 Degrees, Wave, Alanis Morissette, and Shaggy all became popular during this period. However one band popped up in 1996 with their first single, "I Want You" but only had two studio albums and one Greatest Hits album before splitting up in 2001 so vocalist, Darren Hayes, could work on his solo career.

My experience with Savage Garden began when their third single, "Truly Madly Deeply" started playing on the radio here in Ottawa. They had released two other singles, "I Want You" and "To the Moon and Back", but I didn't actually hear "I Want You" on the radio until late 1999 or early 2000, when I was in grade 7 and I never heard "To the Moon and Back" on the radio at all. I only ever heard it on the album itself, the 2005 Greatest Hits album, Truly Madly Completely: The Best of Savage Garden, and as the final track on the 1999 compilation album, MuchDance 1999. So "Truly Madly Deeply" was my start with Savage Garden.

I got their 1997 debut album, Savage Garden, on CD for my 11th birthday in 1997. I loved it. Some songs I liked more than others, but I listened to it all the time. 23 years later, the CD still plays wonderfully despite the fact that I used to listen to it once a day, sometimes more than that. After all it was the first CD I ever got.

Before this I only ever got audio cassettes with child appropriate musicians like Sharon, Lois & Bram, Eric Nagler, Mr. Dressup, and the cast of Sesame Street. Of course I heard other musicians by listening to the radio, and of course my parents's vast collection of vinyl records and audiotapes. But Savage Garden was the first CD I ever got to go along with my first boom box that was a combination radio, CD player, and tape deck, much like the one I have now. I still listened to audiotapes because we didn't have cars that had CD players in them at the time, mp3 players didn't exist yet, and I still got a few albums on audiotape. Even well into the early 2000s. 

My favourite songs on this album are "Truly Madly Deeply", "Universe" and "I Want You". The other songs on the album are great, but these three are my favourites. As I said before, "Truly Madly Deeply" is the first Savage Garden song I ever heard when it started playing on the radio in 1997. "Universe" is a sweet song that is amazing to listen to. The reason I like "I Want You" so much is because it's a great song to dance to. That's the reason I still like Savage Garden as much as I do. All of their songs are pretty great to dance to. I don't know how many times I found myself dancing to a Savage Garden song in my bedroom whether it was a pop song, a rock n roll style song, or a ballad that I could slowly sway to. 

That's one of the reasons Savage Garden is still one of my favourite bands of all time. They have such a a variety in their songs. Savage Garden is more the upbeat album while their second album, Affirmation, is a slower album, though it still has a good variety of musical styles. I'll get into that when I talk about that album at a later time. 

"Truly Madly Deeply" is my childhood. It was still playing on the radio into the mid 2000s, though it didn't play as often as it did in 1998 and 1999. It actually felt like I heard the song on the radio more after I got the album than before I got it. The summer of 1998 was especially the time where I heard it every day, sometimes twice a day. That was the first summer that I went to Teens First Summer Camp, the day camp version of the Teens First group I'd gone to in February of that year, and I swear that for that entire week I heard "Truly Madly Deeply" in the morning while one of my parents drove me to OCTC for the day, and again in the afternoon on the way home. But it was only for that week because I wasn't up quite as early before or after that, so if they did play the song in the morning, it was before I was awake and listening to the radio. 

Savage Garden is still probably my favourite album of all time. There are plenty of other albums and bands that I love, but this one is probably my favourite. It's definitely in my Top 10. I might actually do a Top 10 Favourite Albums list at some point. Not sure when though. Anyways guys that's gonna be it for me for now. I'll be back shortly with my review of season 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. The season finale aired last night and I'd like to talk about the season for a bit. So I'll see you in a little bit. Later.  

Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing-Alongs; Ragtime Cowboy Joe (1994) VHS Review

 Hey guys! I know I said I'd be back on Friday for my review of Savage Garden's debut album, but I came across something on YouTube last night that I just had to talk to you guys about. Have you ever watched something on VHS when you were a kid, but you didn't know what the tape was and then you see it years later and as you're watching it, you realize it's the tape you saw when you were a kid? That's what happened to me last night. I was looking up some stuff on the 80s Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoon on YouTube and I discovered this video. Being curious about it, I started watching it, and as it was playing, I realized that I'd seen it way back in the 90s. Where did I see it? Well, let's get into it and find out shall we?

Alvin and the Chipmunks was one of my favourite cartoons when I was growing up. And of course "Witch Doctor" is one of their most famous songs. But I thought the show did a really good job of integrating music into it, before The Adventures of Teddy Ruxpin did four years later. However, twenty-two years before Alvin and the Chipmunks started airing, there was a series simply called The Alvin Show that ran from 1961 to 1962. Alvin and the Chipmunks Sing-Alongs: Ragtime Cowboy Joe is a VHS release that uses footage from The Alvin Show and compiles it into a Sing-Along Songs style format, much like the Disney Sing-Along Songs releases that ran from the late 80s through to the mid 2000s. 

So I saw this tape sometime in the summer of 1994 during one of my stays in the hospital. I don't remember why I was in the hospital that time, as it was somewhere between May and September of 1994, as September was when I started at Greely Elementary School. It could've been because of an asthma attack or something like that because I don't think it was for any major surgery and it definitely wasn't for a major illness because I was free to go to the playroom and visit my hospital friends in other rooms. And I know it was the summer of 1994 because the tape came out in 1994, in April, and the first season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was still airing on TV.

To be honest, at this point in my life, I was still spending quite a bit of time in the hospital and each stay kinda just blended into one another, so I don't remember why I was there this particular time. What I do remember is that I was free to roam around the unit and play with other kids. In fact, I don't even think I was hooked up to an IV at this point. So I was in my wheelchair and I went to see one of the kids that I'd become friends with during my stay, and one of the Child Life workers put the tape on for us. I enjoyed it, because it was a sing along, in the vein of the Disney ones, right down to using Alvin's head as the bouncing ball for some of the songs. They also just had a blue bouncing ball minus the Mickey Mouse ears for the other songs. Which is pretty cool.

What's even more interesting about this tape is that it was released by Buena Vista Home Video, owned by the Walt Disney Company because DIC Entertainment, which held the license for the 1983 cartoon at the time, was owned by Disney at that time, which means that the original English dub of Bishojo Senshi Sailor Moon, known simply as Sailor Moon here in North America, is a Disney show. So, because this tape was put out by Buena Vista Home Video, there's a preview for Fraggle Rock and for Muppets Sing-Alongs: Billy Bunny's Animal Songs, a Muppets sing-along songs VHS release, which I never saw when I was a kid. No other Disney VHS previews or anything, just the two Jim Henson ones. Which doesn't surprise me because Buena Vista Home Video acted as a separate entity from Walt Disney Home Video, and they tended to release things that didn't fall under the Disney banner.

The songs on this tape are your standard songs that the Chipmunks sang in the 50s and 60s. However, there are two that stand out. "Witch Doctor" obviously because I feel like that aside from "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", "Witch Doctor" is probably their most iconic song. I know I heard it on the radio before I watched this tape back in the day. The other song that stood out on this tape is "Polly Wolly Doodle". Yeah, they're old songs, but they're good ones and this was my first time hearing "Polly Wolly Doodle" that I can remember. I probably heard it when I was a really little kid, but I don't remember it. 

That's it for today. Just something that will hopefully make people smile today after the insanity of the last few hours. Like I said at the end of my post about the Star Trek: The Next Generation toyline from Playmates Toys, this is the kind of thing that I want to be doing on this blog. Talking about VHS, books, comics, TV shows, movies, and video games and having fun with it. I mean I've had alot of fun writing this post and I had fun writing the TNG toys post too. And that's what I'm here to do. Have fun writing about the stuff I enjoy. So join me on Friday as I talk about Savage Garden's 1997, self-titled, debut album and then next week for more nostalgic goodness. So until then have a good evening, stay safe out there, and I will talk to you on Friday. Take care. 

Star Trek: The Next Generation 90s Toyline

 Hey guys! Josh here, welcome back to the Review Basement. I know I said I was going to review the 2020 live action remake of Mulan, but after watching it last night on Disney+ I realized that I don't have enough to say about it for a full review. I will talk about it when I review the 1998 animated Mulan but there isn't enough of the 90s movie in it to talk about outside of a mention in the review of the original 1998 animated movie. Instead we are going to talk about toys. Specifically the Star Trek: The Next Generation toyline released by Playmates Toys in the 90s. So let's get right into it.

My 90s TNG Toy Collection

When Star Trek: The Next Generation first aired in 1987, Galoob, the makers of Micro Machines line of vehicles, ships and playsets, launched a failed line of toys based on the series, riddled with inaccuracies. I have five things from this line, so I'll probably talk about them at another time. However, it wouldn't be until 1992 that Playmates Toys, the company behind the hugely popular toyline based on the 1987 animated series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, would pick up the Star Trek license from Paramount Pictures and begin their own line of toys based on The Next Generation which would run well beyond the show's ending in 1994. As you can see from the picture above, that's the remains of my collection with the majority of the figures being the ones I had when I was a kid.

An ad for the toyline that I remember from the back of a magazine

If you've been following my blog for a good amount of time, whether it's my old Wordpress blog or the current Blogger version, you know that I am a huge Star Trek fan. I grew up watching TNG on TV as well as on VHS as I had most of the first season of the show on that format as well as select volumes from the rest of the first five seasons. I also played with the toys. My grandparents would find them at stores like K-Mart, Toys 'r' Us, and pretty much anywhere else toys were sold here in Ottawa at the time. And so I would get them for my birthday and Christmas for two or three years, and then occasionally I would get one when I was in the hospital. So I actually had most of the first wave of the toyline, which included Picard, Riker, Data, Geordi, Worf, Deanna, a Klingon (Gowron), a Romulan, a Borg and a Ferengi. The only two I was missing was the Borg and Ferengi figures. I had everyone else. I also had the Shuttlecraft that had the light-up engine nacelles and made sounds when you pressed two buttons along the top and the electronic USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D that made noise and had light-up warp nacelles when you pressed four buttons on the back between the two smaller shuttlebays.

To this day I still have most of the first wave of figures, aside from the Klingon, Romulan, Borg and Ferengi figures. I also still have the Enterprise and the Shuttlecraft, though the shuttle is put away, and I also obtained the Type-2 phaser role playing accessory from Brad as he found two of them like eleven or ten years ago, kept one for himself, and gave the other to me.

Wave 2 Ad from another Star Trek magazine

 I also had quite a few of the second wave that came out in 1993. Though the only first/second season variant figure that I had when I was a kid was Data. The other figures that I had in the line were Doctor Crusher, Cadet Wesley Crusher, Guinan, Q, Captain Dathon (from the season 5 episode, "Darmok"), Locutus of Borg (assimilated Picard from "The Best of Both Worlds"), Klingon Warrior Worf (Worf in his Klingon officer's uniform from "Redemption"), Mordock the Benzite (from the season 1 episode, "Coming of Age"), K'Ehleyr (Worf's girlfriend from the second season episode "The Emissary"), and then I had the Transporter playset. And then I had the Tasha Yar figure that came out in 1995 as part of the 4th wave, and that was the last TNG figure that I got when I was a kid. More recently I got the Ensign Ro figure that came out in 1994 as part of the 3rd wave, as well as the Picard, Riker, and Worf first season/second season variant figures from the second wave. 

Example of the packaging

 The packaging was pretty cool. The early figures didn't come with anything but their accessories. I think the Worf figure is my favourite because not only did it come with his communicator stand, a phaser and tricorder, but also with all of his Klingon weapons too like the Bat'leth, which I loved when I was a kid, and the D'k tahg knife that Worf didn't actually have on the show, but was used by other Klingons on TNG as well as by the Klingons in the original series movies from the 80s, particularly Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

Wave 2 Packaging (Worf)

The second wave figures came with a character bio card. While the first season Worf variant figure is a more recent acquisition, it's still a favourite of mine, because he came with the same accessories as the original Worf figure, the Klingon weapons were painted silver instead of red, and so they looked closer to their TV counterparts than the Klingon weapon accessories from the earlier Worf figure. The third and fourth wave figures also came with bio cards and I still have my Tasha Yar one somewhere too.

I used to play with these toys all the freaking time. Like it was insane how often I played with them. And this was around the time that Mighty Morphin Power Rangers was starting to air. I didn't have any Power Rangers toys for the first year that they were coming out, and I didn't have any Batman toys yet either, so this is how I spent my time when I wasn't watching Disney movies, Star Trek, or Teddy Ruxpin tapes. Apart from cutting or ripping the phaser beams off the phaser accessories, all of my figures remain intact to this day. 

The bane of my collecting existence...the Bridge Playset

The one TNG Playmates toy I did not have, but really REALLY wanted was the Bridge playset. It is the holy grail of my TNG collection. The one thing that I have not been able to get to this day. I've seen it at Toys On Fire and I've seen it at Ottawa Comiccon, but I've never been able to buy it. My mom even told me that she and my dad tried to get it for me when I was a kid and they even had a line on one, but it sold before they got to it, and it sold out everywhere else pretty quickly. Which is probably why they jumped on the Transporter set ASAP when that came out. Trust me though, if I ever find this set for a reasonable price, I am going to jump on it immediately, because I would love to have this in my collection.

There's plenty of room for the entire crew

The idea of this playset was to have somewhere to put your figures when you weren't playing with them or if you wanted to play out a scene that took place on the Bridge. Older collectors also use it as a diorama for their figures. So like they would set up an iconic Bridge scene, like Q accosting the crew in the first season episode "Hide and Q" or the Borg boarding the ship in order to capture Picard at the end of "The Best of Both Worlds Part I" and leave it displayed that way.

This came in handy when I had enough figures to put in it

While I didn't have the Bridge playset, I did have the Collector's Case that housed the figures and their accessories. Not only did I use it to hold my figures in, but I also used it as my own Bridge playset when I was playing with just the figures of the bridge crew by taking out the trays and placing the figures inside it, either sitting down or standing up depending on their position on the Bridge. And that's what I used because I didn't have the actual Bridge playset. 

Playmates expanded the toyline to The Original Series, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager but I didn't have any TOS or Voyager figures. In fact I didn't even know the Voyager figures even existed because I never saw them in stores and never saw the ads for them in any magazines or comic books. I do remember seeing the ad for the TOS figure in one of my Star Trek: The Next Generation magazines. It just goes to show how popular DS9 and Voyager were in comparison to TOS and TNG. I mean I even saw an ad for Playmates's Star Trek: First Contact toyline in the second issue of Marvel's Star Trek: Voyager comic book series. And that was two years after TNG had ended it's broadcast run on TV, though the show was still on in reruns pretty much five days a week. While the DS9 and Voyager toylines weren't marketed very well at all in comparison.

Alright guys, that's gonna be it for me for today. This is the kind of thing I wanna be talking about on this blog. The toys, books, movies, TV shows, comic books and video games that I grew up with from the 80s, 90s and 2000s. I'll be back on Friday when I'll be taking a look at Savage Garden's 1997 debut album, Savage Garden, the first CD I ever got. Until then have a great week and I will talk to you later. Take care.