So it's the weekend. Your mom has made you go to the grocery with her again, and you've put up with hours of walking up and down the aisles buying healthy, nutritious food you just wish was McDonald's or Pizza Hut instead. You trudge along, hoping that maybe she'll get you a Lunchables so you won't have to eat the disgusting school cafeteria food, when you see the glimmer of hope that is the checkout line.

You're standing there, being made to unload the shopping cart, when you spy the magazine section. Sitting there, sandwiched in between the Soap Opera Digest and latest issue of Ebony is your reward for putting up with that lame grocery trip...




This tiny magazine was great for all the hip, happening, totally tubular news for kids. Unfortunately, that tiny magazine overstayed its welcome by about ten years, but let's talk about the heydey, or mainly, my personal memories of it.

I always hated grocery shopping. It was either the "big" trip to the giant Kroger store about 20 minutes away in town or a smaller trip to the tiny store out in the country. These places were always a pain, and the only times I remember tolerating them were when I got to pick out a movie or a video game at the rental area. Most of the time I would rent a video game, but sometimes I'd get a wild hair and pick out a VHS that I hadn't seen before, often with mixed results.




It probably wasn't until trip 1,013 to the grocery with my mom that I started wanting magazines. To this day I have no idea why, but I'm sure it had to do with my bad video game and movie experiences...all of which sucked out my soul a little bit at a time. But which magazine to get? This was a little before my subscription to Guitar World and Rolling Stone, but I wanted something that didn't hold my hand like my old Highlights subscription. I think that's probably what drew me to Disney Adventures in the first place. I was not a raving Disney fanboy by any means, but I can remember the early 90's being a pretty golden era for the Mouse and Co.




The covers are definitely something to...well, cover. They were bright and colorful, usually having a Disney cartoon character next to whichever suitable-for-children cultural icon that was popular at the time. Everyone from Bart Simpson, Robin Williams, Macauley Culkin and er, Michael Jackson were on these things, and it seemed that Disney's far-reaching tentacles could reach beyond their own pantheon of characters, too. In fact, it's pretty damn amusing to go through these and see just how much of your beloved childhood memories Disney had its' hooks into.

The articles are really anything that was going on in your tiny kid-sized world at the time; what new movies were coming out, TV shows that you watched, video games you played, and cool new toys your bratty ass whined about getting. In addition to the articles were contests, and the one I remember the best was the 1994 superhero contest.




I was really into the X-Men and comic books at this time so I'm sure I mailed in some rip-off they felt like they could get sued to publish, so much to my chagrin my entry didn't show up. But I mean, come ON. Look at some of this bullshit. And I don't want to hear the "oh, well these are little kids" excuse. Really I was just jealous that I couldn't draw hands like those of "Gravityman." And by the way, what 14 year-old would be reading this magazine? At 14 I was into girls and wanting to get a car at this point, not sending in drawings to a Disney publication. Maybe he wanted to get a job at Disney and he thought this was his ticket?

Anyway, another feature every issue had were comics starring, of course, beloved Disney characters. Scrooge McDuck, Darkwing Duck, the Rescue Rangers, and the Gargoyles (which I never liked) all made appearances frequently, though strangely I don't remember the classic Disney lineup ever making an appearance. I guess they just weren't as hip as statues that come to life and fight crimes.

Old issues of DA (see I'm still hip, I called it "DA) are fairly inexpensive and easily obtainable on eBay, but to be honest, what real reason would we have to go back and look at these now? As far as I know, no one gives a shit about what JTT's favorite food was in 1994. Hell no, it's all about those big, in your face, to the extreme, too legit to quit, totally krossed out ADS!




Let's face it, this is the case with any old magazine. I love looking through old issues of Nintendo Power and seeing those horribly awesome advertisements for upcoming games that you know in retrospect suck horribly. And if you really are into reading a fake interview with Earl, the patriarch of the "Dinosaurs" household, then there's something deep within you that can never be cured, especially not from twenty year-old issues of DA (still hip, dudes!).

Holy shit, I'm getting old.