From September 1st to December 8th 1997, Ghostheads were treated to the first new Ghostbusters media since The Real Ghostbusters aired its last original episode in September 1991. Back in the '90s, everything was EXTREME! So, naturally, we'd get EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS!!! Yeah, the title was dumb even back then, but at least they weren't "super". The series saw a new crew of young 18- and 19-year-olds being mentored by an older Egon and Janine, who were the only original team members left after the city's influx of spiritual energy ran dry years ago.

A lot of Ghostheads disliked the show at the time, as they wanted to see Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston; not Eduardo, Kylie, Garrett, and Roland. Those who stuck with it - assuming they could find it, as Sony dropped it into the shittiest syndication deal possible at the time - found a show that was a lot more mature than the "kiddie" stuff ABC was peddling with The Real Ghostbusters in the latter years. I rewatched all 40 episodes last year, and was surprised by how well the show has held up 20+ years later. The writing is sharp, the acting in on point, and the character designs are fantastic. The only thing that sucks is the piss-poor animation. Sorry animators, but flickering back and forth between Photoshop filters is not how you animate proton streams.

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I've got a small, but significant, site update for all of you. Thanks to Matthew Jordan, you can now find all of the information from Don Shay's "Making Ghostbusters" book on the new Making Ghostbusters - Trivia & Image Captions page.

Also, all of the PDFs on Spook Central are now text searchable, with an invisible text layer over the scanned image pages. The OCR job is far from perfect (it absolutely sucks in some files), but it's better than not being there at all. It seems to be more complete and accurate for text documents, like the scripts and press kit documents, than for magazine and book scans. It will definitely make it MUCH easier to search for a snippet of text in one of Spook Central's many scripts and eBooks.

By adding the invisible text layer to the PDFs, the site search engine can even incorporate the text content from within the PDF into search results. I also added title and author metadata to all PDFs, though author is only available for scripts and books.

When it was announced back in March that Ghostbusters: Afterlife had been moved from July 10, 2020 to March 5, 2021 in light of the COVID-19 pandemic shuttering movie theaters, I thought that Sony's choice for a new date was rather strange. A big "Summer Blockbuster" opening in the Spring seems like a really dumb idea.

Even when the movie was set to be released in July 2020, I thought that it wasn't the ideal date. Unlike the 2016 film, Afterlife is meant to follow (and be a tribute to) the original movies, which opened on June 8th and 16th, respectively. Afterlife should have always had a release date centered around those films, and now it does!

Variety has just reported that Afterlife is now set to be released on June 11, 2021. Of course, that's the plan right now. Given the unpredictability of coronavirus and audiences' apprehension to go to the movies amid a global health crisis, there's no telling if the new release date will stick. Let's hope the world has its shit together by then. If not, let's just put it out on 4K and Blu-ray, and convert the overpriced and outdated movie theaters into affordable housing apartment buildings.

(Thanks to MrMichaelT for the tip on the release date announcement. Photo Credit: Aero Theater in Los Angeles, March 2020.)

This is one of an ongoing series of reviews that looks at the "Build The Ghostbusters Ecto-1" model subscription from Eaglemoss, through their Hero Collector imprint. Let's take a closer look at Issue #9...

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From September 1st to December 8th 1997, Ghostheads were treated to the first new Ghostbusters media since The Real Ghostbusters aired its last original episode in September 1991. Back in the '90s, everything was EXTREME! So, naturally, we'd get EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS!!! Yeah, the title was dumb even back then, but at least they weren't "super". The series saw a new crew of young 18- and 19-year-olds being mentored by an older Egon and Janine, who were the only original team members left after the city's influx of spiritual energy ran dry years ago.

A lot of Ghostheads disliked the show at the time, as they wanted to see Peter, Ray, Egon, and Winston; not Eduardo, Kylie, Garrett, and Roland. Those who stuck with it - assuming they could find it, as Sony dropped it into the shittiest syndication deal possible at the time - found a show that was a lot more mature than the "kiddie" stuff ABC was peddling with The Real Ghostbusters in the latter years. I rewatched all 40 episodes last year, and was surprised by how well the show has held up 20+ years later. The writing is sharp, the acting in on point, and the character designs are fantastic. The only thing that sucks is the piss-poor animation. Sorry animators, but flickering back and forth between Photoshop filters is not how you animate proton streams.

Spook Central is giving you the chance to learn more about this semi-forgotten piece of Ghostbusters lore all throughout the month of October. Every day leading up to Halloween, I will provide a little bit of commentary about one or two episodes. (2024 UPDATE: All month-long posts have been grouped into this one and repurposed into mini-reviews of all 40 episodes. Also, an official DVD release now exists.) So, sit back, relax, and let's get EXTREME!!!!!

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Hasbro held their live-streaming PulseCon convention yesterday and today on the Hasbro Pulse YouTube channel. The event, hosted by Jackie Jennings, featured product reveals and interviews with various people associated with the brands Hasbro makes toys for, as well as musical performances and special guests. The Ghostbusters panel was held on Saturday September 26, 2020 at roughly 1:50 PM Eastern. Let's go over what happened...

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The kind folks at Hasbro sent me the recently released Ghostbusters Plasma Series: Spengler's Neutrona Wand prop replica. Let's take a closer look at it...

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This is one of an ongoing series of reviews that looks at the "Build The Ghostbusters Ecto-1" model subscription from Eaglemoss, through their Hero Collector imprint. Let's take a closer look at the Special issue...

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This is one of an ongoing series of reviews that looks at the "Build The Ghostbusters Ecto-1" model subscription from Eaglemoss, through their Hero Collector imprint. Let's take a closer look at Issue #8...

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Most Ghostbusters references are short bits that can best be encapsulated with a small video clip, as evidenced by Spook Central's collection of Ghostbusters reference videos on Critical Commons. However, sometimes there's a reference for which a small clip won't do it justice. It is for these types of references that I have this reoccurring feature here at Spook Central, the Ghostbusters Reference Review... or in this case, the PRE-Ghostbusters Reference Review (since it occurred before 1984).

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