November 3rd marks the 60th anniversary of Godzilla, so I thought I would take a look back at how I became such a big fan of the King of the Monster.
It’s kind of funny to think that the first time I ever became interested in Godzilla was when the horrible 1998 remake came out. I was only 5 years old at the time, so I didn’t really care that it was bad, because it had a giant lizard roaming around New York City! There was also the fact that Godzilla (1998) was heavily marketed.

(I had the jet shooter)
I remember getting toys at Taco Bell, the many commercials on TV and I even vaguely remember the Hanna/Barbara Godzilla cartoon being shown on Cartoon Network at this time. I even got a Godzilla action figure.

When I was about 8 years old I had gotten my first library card, and one of the first books I checked out was one of the Crestwood Monsters Series books on Godzilla.

This is where I started to learn about the classic Godzilla movies. The movies that were featured in the book included the original Godzilla, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Ghidorah the Three Headed Monster and Destroy All Monsters just to name a few. This book even talked about dual-ending myth in King Kong vs. Godzilla. Where in the American version of the film Kong win and in the Japanese version Godzilla wins. I had believed this myth for a long time until I saw Cinemassacre’s Godzillathon.

Shortly after reading this book I checked out my first classic Godzilla film on VHS, Godzilla vs. The Sea Monster.

Even though today I don’t really care for this movie after seeing the other Godzilla films, I did enjoy it very much as a kid. This is probably due to the fact that I was also a huge Power Rangers fan as well and that guys dressed up in monster suits fighting each other was not something new to me.

To Be Continued in Part 2...