Treasures of the Printed Page

As a child, toys were a large part of my life. Occupying a portion of the rest of my free time was reading, and based on some of the treasures I have unearthed I had some interesting choices in terms of literary material. Especially the first item.



That's right folks! I've got the Disney Adventures issue from March of 1993, and boy are there some interesting articles in here. First, we've got an interview with the cover boy, Tim Allen, who at the time had one of the most popular shows on television, Home Improvement. Surprisingly, there is no mention of his drug induced run in with the law.



The interview consists of the editors lobbing softball questions at him. Not exactly hard hitting journalism, but hey, this magazine was targeted at the 7-13(?) year old crowd, not subscribers to The New Yorker.

Another portion of the magazine is devoted to the history of Vikings. To my shock there are some rather creepy images, that I could never imagine Disney printing in a kid's mag. Like this...



Yep, that's Loki the Trickster God, with his mouth sewn up

Or...



A random Viking with a look of utter fear on his face

And finally...



Viking hero Balder getting killed with an arrow

Good job Disney! Three images that will be forever burned into the retinas of vulerable, developing children.

The rest of the magazine is devoted to classic children's magazine filler, done Disney style. We have a section on how volcano's are made. Three seperate comic sections devoted to Tailspin, the Dinosaurs(good lord I can't escape them), and Darkwing Duck(images below).







Another staple of the kid's magazine market; the video game review section.




Unfortunately, for one of the tips for Sewer Shark, they forgot to include:"Don't buy this game."

There are also these cool Lego trading cards, higlighting some of the coolest sets at the time, including Ice Station Odyssey, Aerial Intruder, Solar Snooper, and one of the coolest spaceship sets, Deep Freeze Defender.



And finally we have the puzzle section of the mag. One game has kids figuring out words that begin with the letters BUN. One of the clues is small cottage. It took me a second to figure out that it's bungalow. Seriously Disney? You expect third graders to know the word bungalow?




I was going to highlight some other books, but I found way too much good stuff in this Disney mag. I'm working on the next piece as we speak. Stay Tuned!