When I was a kid, I loved to read. In fact, my mother has always said I learned to read at a very young age, and I'm incredibly proud to say that my own child can read several words and phrases at only three and a half. It's hard to say if she'll sit and read books for hours on her own like I did, especially with all of the distractions of the modern age. But as a kid, I could kill an afternoon reading nearly anything that interested me.
My parents were eager to push me into reading and would rarely say no if there was something I wanted that involved books in any form. Goosebumps, Calvin and Hobbes, how-to-draw guides, kid's encyclopedias, and all sorts of other books cluttered my room back then.
I also had several magazine subscriptions, but two were read through so much that I'd beg Mom or Dad to staple and tape them back together so I could keep reading them. Those two would be Nickelodeon Magazine and Disney Adventures.
Disney Adventures Magazine was first published in October of 1990 (with the first edition being the November 12, 1990 edition), featuring a wide assortment of educational material, Disney-centric and various other entertainment news items, sports coverage, celebrity profiles, puzzles, games, and reader contributions. The "DA" magazines would also have regular features I looked forward to each month. They would include guides to television, movies, music, and books or notable little facts about unusual "Weird But True" things.
Seeing the cover of each issue was always exciting for me, as I looked forward to guessing what celebrity would be on the front. The first-ever issue featured "Honey I Shrunk the Kids" actor Rick Moranis and Baloo from TaleSpin. The cover pages were always so colorful and eye-catching.
In the early years, the comics included in each edition were standard Disney comics like DuckTales, Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers, Darkwing Duck, Mickey Mouse, Goof Troop, Gargoyles, Bonkers, or other adaptations of Disney movies.
As magazine sales fell as a whole and several different magazines went out of business, on August 21, 2007, The Walt Disney Company announced that Disney Adventures would be discontinued in November after 17 years. The final issue was released in October, and Disney converted subscriptions to Sports Illustrated for Kids, Family Fun, or Boys' Life magazine for the remainder of each individual subscription.
The edition I've scanned in for today highlights the new Disney Afternoon cartoon, The Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series. Growing up a huge hockey fan and hockey player, I was all in on this cartoon adaptation of one of my favorite movies (of the time) and an exciting new professional hockey franchise.
Unfortunately, I quickly learned that this cartoon had little to do with the movie I watched over and over as a kid. It was very loosely inspired by the real-life team and film and centered on a team of hockey-playing ducks from outer space.
The cartoon was still entertaining, and as a hockey fan, I began to tune in to watch the hockey scenes but got sucked into the action and story. Mighty Ducks: The Animated Series lasted only 6 months on air, with 26 episodes from September 1996 to January 1997.
This magazine also covered several other great shows. Some of them are long forgotten, and some of them are dearly missed. There's a neat advertisement for Gargoyles, which made the news a month or so back when Disney created controversy by announcing a live-action remake of the classic 90s cartoon. You'll also find Doug, my favorite Nicktoon of all time, featured in the pages scanned below. In Disney Adventures, it's being advertised as launching on Saturday mornings on ABC. I can go on about Disney's Doug, but I'll save that for another article.
Other shows featured in the pages below are shows that I don't remember. Some of them, for good reason, too, like Bone Chillers. Bone Chillers only lasted 13 episodes. Even worse, a new FOX sitcom, Come Fly With Me, was removed from the lineup after only 3 episodes. It wasn't even called Come Fly With Me when it aired, having undergone several changes before being titled Love and Marriage.
I hope you enjoy these pages from this 1996 magazine that I read multiple times as a kid and utterly enjoyed taking the trip back in time while reading again. I apologize about the quality of some of these scans since the magazine has seen some love over the years. The pages don't exactly sit flat on the scanner, and I wasn't interested in ripping pages out for the perfect scan.
As always, you can click on an image for a bigger, more detailed version.
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