#nmh post

And not only is this edition of Nick Mag Highlights spooky, it’s also… pretty chill. Y’know? Just takin’ it easy, reading a handful of comics and probably a crossword puzzle or something. As much as I love researching the kind of stuff Nickelodeon Magazine includes in its articles, sometimes it’s nice to sit back and take things at face value and just see what the state of Nickelodeon was like at any given time, and these short-and-sweet issues of Nick Mag Presents are the perfect venue for just that.

But why exactly am I tackling this purportedly Halloween-themed issue in August? Well, mainly it’s because that new Danny Phantom graphic novel just came out… two weeks ago (oops). And I really enjoyed it! So I’ve since been in a big Danny Phantom mood lately. I even ended up re-watching the whole first season and had a blast doing so. This show was a real obsession of mine as a kid, so maybe this blog post is also a way for me to give it its dues.

This issue can be found online here, read along… if you dare!

Another Nick Mag Presents, another humorously wordy introduction. If you’re unfamiliar, basically all these Presents-styled issues have a panel on the first page with a character essentially advertising the book to you and talking about all the comics and activities included inside. This one here features Danny and an understandably perturbed ghost, for example. 

Since these issues were usually sold in stores as opposed to through a mail subscription, I suppose this is the issue’s way of hooking you in and explaining to you why you should buy it. I think a kid would probably be more inclined to just flip through the book and arrive at the same conclusion, but I guess this approach doesn’t hurt anybody.

But anyway, let’s see here… aw, only two wholly new comics? The Fairly Oddparents-themed issue I took a look at previously had five original comics. That’s a bummer, but at least we’ve still got variety… SpongeBob, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and The Wild Thornberrys, oh my! Even Tak makes an appearance here, two years before the premiere of his actual Nickelodeon cartoon, meaning this was an attempt to interest readers in the then-recently released video game: Tak 3: The Great Juju Challenge. Not sure if that worked.

And if you’ll take a look at that yellow, spiky bubble with words on the right there, this September 2005 issue is meant to coincide with the then-upcoming two episode-long Danny Phantom special, “The Ultimate Enemy”, which featured Danny taking on a more powerful version of himself from the future. Seems like the included removable poster is even themed around that very episode! Let’s just hope that poster is still left intact, eh?

So first up, we’ve got a page to get you up to speed on the main cast if you’re new to the show. It’s even got some new factoids for the already familiar superfans! For example: Did you know Sam is into anime? I sure didn’t.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where series villain Vlad Masters is, don’t worry, they go over him later on in the book.

On the right you’ll find an easy if not slightly amusing word puzzle, which tasks you with solving questions where each answer contains the word boo. Simple enough for a kid while still being worth the time, methinks.

Although all the stock ghost art on the page gets me wondering, how come most of the ghosts in the show manifest as typical-looking cartoon ghosts while others manifest in a human form? I guess maybe it comes down to the strength of your spirit. Who’s to say?

You’ve met the characters, now it’s time to meet the voices behind them! I’ll always take a side of interviews with my Nickelodeon Magazine, and this is no exception. The questions are cute, and I had fun reading them. Not much to say.

So we’re finally here at the first comic of the issue, and… not really a fan of this one! Yeah, sorry to start this retrospective off on a sour note but this isn’t really doing it for me. The main villain of this one is Youngblood, who already isn’t exactly one of my favorite villains from the series. But here they’ve got him and all the other characters stuck in a pretty by-the-numbers plot where Danny and co. get stuck babysitting the brat while he tries to maim them, with them of course unable to fight back lest they face the wrath of his parents (who are humongous lizard monsters, for some reason). 

If you’re even a little familiar with cartoons you’ve probably already seen quite a few takes on this formula already. And even if you like Youngblood as a character they don’t have him doing his usual pirate shtick he’s remembered for, so I’m not sure what anyone is getting out of this, really. What's especially not helping is that this goes on for ten pages, further dragging out an already tired concept. 

So there you have it, I guess. Done-to-death story with accordingly done-to-death jokes, a lame villain, and about two pages of action. I will say though, Danny and Tucker’s babysitting poster on page 2 did get a smile out of me, at least.

You’ve met the characters, and you’ve also met the voices behind them, now it’s time to meet… the rest of the characters! The villain ones! These guys really made the show for me, cause the team behind the show really just seemed to understand the assignment and made all of them really unique and memorable.

So we can see they’ve been ranked in terms of how dangerous they all are, which is a fun idea. ‘Course you’ve got Vlad at the top of, but then there’s Technus just behind him? I can’t say I remember him being notably more dangerous than any of the other baddies, I’m fairly certain he gets swept up at the end of his specific episode just like all the rest. I’m pretty sure Valerie gave Danny a bigger run for his money, and she’s down at #3.

Woah now, I’m starting to scrutinize the power levels of cartoon characters. Cartoon characters from a show I haven’t even fully watched all the way through since I was a kid, no less. Better put a stop to that before it gets ugly.

Cool little cartoons on the left there, that one on the top right is properly devious and I’m all for it. All the art is quite lovely too.

The right is… well, it’s Mad Libs, there’s no other way around it. Y’know the Mad Libs website refers to itself as “the world’s greatest word game” but I seriously think they need to take that up with Scrabble, or hell, even Hangman. Yeah I was never a big fan of this kind of fill-in-the-blanks stuff, but I guess it’s a pretty inoffensive activity to include.

Check out Danny’s dad rocking that emo hair.

And now we’ve made it to the second and last new comic for the issue, and unfortunately it’s only a two-pager. But hey, if my thoughts on the previous ten-page comic said anything, it was that I prefer quality over quantity. And this one is… okay. It’s funny enough, does what all it needs to with the concept, and it definitely doesn’t overstay its welcome. I’m again surprised by the lack of action in both of these comics, considering Danny Phantom is an action show, after all, but it’s not like the show wasn’t a comedy either, so it’s not that weird.

I guess while we’re here I could nitpick it a bit. The lineart here courtesy of series creator Butch Hartman* is a bit wonky at times. There’s the aforementioned emo hair Danny’s dad is wearing, but my main gripe is that dog robot just doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the artstyle. It being the only new original character design for this comic as well doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me. I guess the team was fine with whatever Hartman drew because he made the show after all, so surely he knows what he’s doing, right?*

*Insert obligatory comment about how much of a loser Butch Hartman is here.

Just want to give a shoutout to this pretty creative puzzle here. It actually stumped me a little when I first read it! Those monster designs are pretty entertaining too. Solid activity overall.

Next up it’s an installment of Sam Shade, which was a short-lived recurring series in Nickelodeon Magazine. Apparently the series ran from 2002 to 2005, so this may be one of the last times a Sam Shade comic was ever printed in a Nick Magazine. 

These comics mainly consist of the titular Detective Sam Shade trying to solve some mystery, sleuthing around the area in a series of detailed, wordy scenes. Likewise, you as the reader are as well tasked with scouring the pages for clues to help deduce the culprit. Each panel here smoothly moves into the next, making for something like a Where’s Waldo puzzle but with an actual narrative. It’s a really good idea! A shame this series didn’t last longer.

Hey, is that Carl from Jimmy Neutron on the bottom right there?

Pretty nice My Life as a Teenage Robot comic here. Although that’s kind of unfortunate in a way, since that means I haven’t got much to talk about! It’s pretty much a 1-to-1 translation from animation to comic here. The artstyle and writing are both on point, it’s all just in a shorter, more paper-y format.

I wonder why the aliens’ speech bubble has flowers in it. Is that a theater reference, maybe?

The design of these fiery aliens are particularly awesome - simple but effective. I’m surprised they used such a cool design in a comic that was going to be seen by way less people as opposed to using it in the cartoon. Man, this show is so cool, even its supplementary media is stylish!

But anyway, do you want to know how this story ends? Read it yourself!

Ohh man, I distinctly remember this comic. I don’t remember what issue of Nickelodeon Magazine this one is sourced from, but whichever one it was, I had it. The story’s nothing to write home about really, It's another take on the age old tale of “Squidward yells at SpongeBob and Patrick for doing something annoying, so they inadvertently ruin his life”. Squidward must have a really good lawyer for him to be able to bounce back from all the crap SpongeBob and Pat get him into.

This version of the usual story has S. Bob and P. Rick making a cake in Squidward’s image. Mr. Krabs ends up mistaking it for the real Squidward, bringing it to the Krusty Krab, and having it run the cash register, obviously to disastrous results. It’s all pretty par for the course, and there’s some funny lines to be had.

Weirdly though, unless I’m blind, I can’t seem to find any credits for this one. Not in the comic itself or at the back of the book. I’m pretty sure the artist(s) behind this one did more SpongeBob SquarePants comics though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same writing team had a hand in them too. I distinctly remember one where all the characters turn into desserts. Or maybe it was an alternate universe where they’re all desserts? Something like that. Maybe I’ll find it and cover it on this blog someday!

And up next, it’s a Wild Thornberrys comic of all things (said with feigned surprise, having read the table of contents moments ago). And I’m just now realizing none of these comics have anything to do with ghosts, or horror, really. Quite the magazine you’ve got just in time for October, Nickelodeon!

But hey, it’s not right to judge a piece of art specifically by the context in which it is presented. Especially when it was originally published in a magazine that likely came out years earlier, probably not even around the month of October. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that, even when it comes to filling the pages of a magazine.

This comic is especially cool, anyway, as you can no doubt tell from its distinct shakeup in style!

The story has Eliza receiving some gifts from her Japanese friend, Mayumi (who was probably in the show, presumably), one of those gifts being a homemade manga. And while I’m not exactly an expert on the Japanese arts, I certainly find this art convincing and really appreciate the attention to detail. I bet any kids that were fans of manga around this time must have felt pretty seen to have one of their hobbies referenced in a rather unlikely place, and with such attention to detail no less.

One thing I can also appreciate is that this story really isn’t something they could have pulled off in the show itself (unless they studio really wanted to have an anime-themed episode and go through the undertaking of doing an episode in an entirely different, foreign animation style all on their usual budget), so overall this is a really fun idea done quite flawlessly. My only gripe is we don’t get to see a manga-styled Nigel Thornberry, but what can you do?

Oh boy, the Tak comic, cool. Now, I know these games have their fans, but I can’t say I’m one of them. I did watch the show a bit though, but I’ve heard it has nothing to do with the games, so I guess that makes me rather unprepared to tackle this two-page comic on an intellectual, researched level. I will say though that I think the Sam Shade comic from earlier pulled off this style of free-flowing, no-panel storytelling to a much greater effect. The amount of Taks they threw around the page makes it feel really busy and cramped, and they had to essentially remove the second character Tak is traveling with from the story since I guess they were strapped for page space.

But yeah, the colors are nice at least, and Tak media is especially hard to come by nowadays, so I suppose if I were more into the property, I might be more into this.

Last comic of the day, and it’s Jimmy Neutron. At least this one kinda fits the theme, I mean, aliens are almost in the same horror-league as vampires, zombies, ghosts, and all that. This is a pretty quality one to end off the book with, and in regards to Jimmy Neutron, this is one of the better ways these characters have been translated to 2D. Although the incredibly warm colors and harsh shadows throw me for a loop. Pretty good overall!

Before we wrap things up, I would like to mention that advert for The Nicktoons Film Festival on the right. I totally forgot these used to be a thing! From 2004 to 2009 Nickelodeon hosted a film festival and let viewers vote for their favorite animated short, along with letting proper animation people who know what they’re talking about vote on their favorites, too. Lots of great up-and-coming cartoonists took part in these festivals. This one in 2005 actually featured a short by J. G. Quintel that eventually was used as a basis for his own Cartoon Network show, Regular Show! You can check the short out below:

Neat bit of history there, yeah?

Even though I’m still a bit disappointed this issue didn’t include more original content, I still think this ended up being a fairly entertaining walk down memory lane. And hey, I hope you had a good time too. I’m doubly disappointed, however, that the archive of this issue didn’t come with that tear-out poster! Now we’ll never see it in its full hi-def glory.

For those unaware, Nick Mag Presents was a separate publication that ran alongside the usual Nickelodeon Magazine we all know and love. These books acted as a way for Nickelodeon to compile content from Nickelodeon Magazine that was based around a specific show or theme, and release it to stores. They would sometimes coincide with special episodes or Nickelodeon movies that were releasing around the same time. For example this issue we’re looking at today is based on a then-upcoming half hour The Fairly OddParents special, “The Big Superhero Wish!”.

Nick Mag Presents ran from 1999 to 2008, and presumably was a pretty successful venture for Nickelodeon. People I’ve talked to that didn’t have a Nickelodeon Magazine subscription still remember grabbing an issue or two of these compilations while they were out shopping with their parents. It was another way to deliver Nickelodeon Magazine goodness to people, and that’s quite alright by me!

But wait a minute, why am I covering a supposed compilation of old content, when I could just be covering the magazines the content came from? Well for one, someone requested it, and I’m a nice guy. Second, Nick Mag Presents was the way a lot of people experienced Nickelodeon Magazine and I think it’s fair to show it respect. And third, it’s not just a compilation of old content! Yes, there is new stuff to be found here, from comics that are way longer than the usual Nickelodeon Magazine fare, to exclusive articles and activities. There’s some particularly good stuff in this magazine, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Special Addendum

In my previous NMH post on Issue #150, I brought attention to a challenge Nickelodeon was hosting online and in-print to celebrate the 10th anniversary of SpongeBob SquarePants. Nickelodeon promised that if kids could triumph over each SpongeBob-themed puzzle they posted each month, they would earn the password to a “digital prize online”. Since I couldn’t find anything more regarding this contest and scans of 2009 Nickelodeon Magazine issues are scarce, I asked viewers for anything they knew about it, particularly that digital prize. 

And… apparently there was no prize! Yes, allegedly from a fan, Nickelodeon eventually stopped bringing up the prize in their issues, and presumably then the only reward for kids’ expertise over the SpongeBob puzzles would be a fleeting sense of accomplishment. Thanks a lot, Nickelodeon! I’m not sure what was a more disappointing celebration for SpongeBob’s 10th anniversary: this, or "Truth or Square".

Alrighty, are we good? Good. It’s super-hero time!

You can read the magazine here, if you’d like. I always recommend it!

So, The Fairly OddParents, huh? Not much to say about it, really. Anyone reading this certainly already knows what it is! It’s an iconic show, being one of Nickelodeon’s longest running series ever, among the likes of SpongeBob SquarePants and Rugrats. That’s a tremendous accomplishment, and it’s definitely earned its place in the hearts of many fans. Even if its name has been sullied a bit by its infamously lackluster later seasons, Drake Bell-starring movies, and ridiculously bad live action reboot.

But forget about all that! This is 2004, baby! The show was on its fourth season and still pumping out veritable hits. Alongside the aforementioned “The Big Superhero Wish!” half hour special, we received “The Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour” in 2004, too! That might give you a better frame of reference for the kind of “average kid that no one understands” content we can expect from this issue. 

…Oh, right, the issue! Let’s get back on track. As you can see the offerings are a bit slimmer than your usual Nickelodeon Magazine. That’s understandable, and besides, what these books lack in celebrity interviews they make up for in extra-large comics! Since these books made their money largely through in-store purchases, they’re able to forgo most of the ad space and give us more of the good stuff. 

One thing I really like about these Presents issues is that they always start with an admittedly wordy but well-meaning intro to the issue and its content. For example, the Summer 2003 issue of Nick Mag Presents (also based on The Fairly OddParents) contains a spiel from Mr. Crocker featuring his usual comedic ramblings on the existence of fairies. 

Taking a look here, this issue’s intro features … uh, sorry, who is this? Some sort of comic book nerd I don’t remember ever being in the show? Well, whoever he is, he’s got a point! Here I am, nearly 20 years later, pointing to these magazines as the pinnacle of magazine entertainment. Cheers to you, comic book nerd!

Hey, this is really cool! All this behind-the-scenes info and concept art is a welcome surprise. Not sure what it has to do with superheroes per se, but you won’t hear me complaining. I know Butch Hartman is a bit of a polarizing figure these days, but it doesn’t make me any less satisfied to finally hear why the main characters wore those stretchy shoe-pants combo clothes.

This is a fun activity, and I could definitely see it getting the creative juices flowing for any kid looking to play superheroes and supervillains during recess. It also doubles as a (debatably) subtle way to introduce readers to the main villains of “The Big Superhero Wish!” and hype them up for the special’s premiere. Hey, I guess that kind of self-promotion is what we’re here for, right? You saw the cover!

I really think a lot of the people at the Nick Magazine office had a soft spot for the golden age of comics, what with articles like these and how The Comic Book section in their regular editions often contained references to the same era. If I’m right, then it’s cool to see people revitalizing parts of their childhood for a new generation. That’s some proper upcycling!

Now, recurring readers may remember that in the last NMH post, I briefly mentioned another issue of Nick Mag Presents themed around Avatar: The Last Airbender. I brought up that apparently the team behind it was full of avid Avatar fans who were passionate about the series. I bring this up because what’s especially cool is that in a similar vein, the writer behind this article on superhero sidekicks, Frank Pittarese, is a former editor for both DC and Marvel Comics! It's always nice to see when Nickelodeon was able to put the right people in the right place when it came to their magazine content.

Ah, alright, alright, this is what you’re really here for, isn’t it? Comics were understandably the main selling point of these books, to the point that Nickelodeon even ran a couple of “All-Comic Special” versions of Nick Mag Presents that were completely made up of that sort of wonderful paneled content. I’m not really one for covering comics beat-by-beat on this blog. I think if they’re really worth reading, you’re better off reading them yourself! It’s not like they’re long, and I’m certain it’d be more entertaining than any summary I could throw at you. But hey, I’ll try my best! It’s not like I could just skip over more than half the book, could I?

Fun fact: There’s a coloring error on page 10. See if you can spot it!

This first one, understandably based on The Fairly OddParents, is a pretty straightforward affair. It’s still longer than anything you’d get in your usual Nickelodeon Magazine, though! Not to mention it’s also pretty authentic to the show’s heyday, which isn’t too surprising given that the team behind the comic has its fair share of The Fairly OddParents crewmembers in it. The writer, Jack Thomas, has 55 writing credits on the show to his name! That’s nearly as many episodes of the show as there are in the first four seasons combined. 

I’ve gotta be honest here when it comes to my critique of a nearly 20-year old comic based on an episode of a children’s television show, though: the story doesn’t make much sense! At least, in the context of “The Big Superhero Wish!” anyway. 

The episode has Timmy making a few ill-conceived wishes that end up creating a league of supervillains out of his greatest enemies, led by Nega-Chin, the arch enemy of his favorite comic book hero, the Crimson Chin. It’s a good episode with some pretty funny bits, but more importantly, it has an ending that wraps up everything and returns all of Timmy’s enemies back to their regular selves. In other words, it sounds like it’d be hard to make a promotional comic based on it! The story doesn't really have any downtime to insert a plot line that could’ve happened but the audience just didn’t see. And it’s not like they could have simply retold the episode, this whole book is for the sake of getting you to tune in! So, with all that in mind, I guess I can’t be too harsh on the odd premise, which now apparently has all the supervillains as sentient beings in a comic book? Did Timmy’s wishes mess with the fabric of reality so badly that it resulted in turning his teacher, babysitter, and school bully into canonical characters of The Crimson Chin storyline?

Anyway, hopefully you’ve been reading along! Basically the league of villains are trying to hunt down the Crimson Chin by going into different issues of his comic from throughout history. Each Chin represents a different era and are differently designed to pander to whatever was popular in the market at the time similar to the constant re-envisionings superheroes have had throughout the years, particularly Batman (I think, at least. I’m not really a comics guy).

These Crimson Chin from different eras actually first appeared in an episode of The Fairly OddParents, “The Crimson Chin Meets Mighty Mom and Dyno Dad”. I guess the comic crew really had to use everything they could to get an 8-page comic out of this.

One or two inconsequential gripes aside, I still think this comic is a solid start to the book! It’s got the humor down (I found the line about a lawsuit on page 14 here particularly funny), and the satisfying colorful art that made the show so recognizable. Nice work!

Not really a fan of this section. There’s giving kids drawing tips and then there’s just telling them arbitrary rules on what they can and can’t draw. I get that Hartman’s trying to hearken back to the comic heroes he read as a kid that all had the same chiseled body type (clearly he has fun drawing them) but the way this is all framed is a bit too opinionated for me.

I just noticed this now as I’m uploading the image: Check out the cool designs they gave to all the panel borders! That’s a neat detail.

Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is one of my all-time Nickelodeon favorites, so you could imagine I was pretty happy to see a comic based on the show make an appearance here! It has a fun concept and does stuff the show most likely couldn’t have, like shifting the artstyle to make it look like an old comic book when Sheen transports himself into one. 

My only criticism is that the art just looks the slightest bit… off. Alright, more specifically: Sheen looks off. Jimmy looks fine enough, but Sheen just looks weird! For some reason this show didn't seem to have any standardized 2D designs for its characters, which led to every Jimmy Neutron comic in Nick Magazine looking vastly different. And it looks like Sheen drew the short end of the stick here. Don't see what I mean? Here's a collage of my favorite Sheen faces from this comic:

Ultra Lord. Not even once.

Hey, look at the bottom corners! You can see the comic pages actually overlapping the magazine’s page numbers and casting a shadow, as if the comic book is open and lying on your magazine! Lots of cool details in this one.

I'd recommend fans just read this one themselves. It's ten pages long, pretty funny, and does a lot of cool stuff with the idea that Sheen knows he's in a comic, like grabbing onto his own speech bubbles and jumping between the different panels. 

Also, this could just be a "me" thing, but am I the only one who thought Ultra Lord was supposed to be a parody of Japanese kids' shows like Ultraman and Power Rangers? If they were trying to go for a "Space Age"-look for his design then they went a little too far with the intricate outfit and bright color, cause it really just gives me Super Sentai vibes more than anything. I bring this up because here Ultra Lord is portrayed as a '60s American comic book superhero, which I find odd. Again, maybe it’s just me.

Next up, it’s a comic based on the Rugrats sequel series, All Grown Up. I never really watched the show as a kid, I always wish they’d just put on Rugrats instead. Regardless, this comic’s alright, it’s about Tommy’s brother Dil becoming popular for doing dares, which leads to him realizing that fame isn’t worth risking your wellbeing over. A fine enough premise for a fine enough comic. One question does come to mind, though: What does this have to do with superheroes? Or comics, for that matter. I guess Dil does wear a cape and starts going by the nickname “Dil-Devil”, but that's like calling Evel Knievel a superhero. 

But yeah, if All Grown Up is your thing, you can check out the comic if it sounds like it’s worth your while.

This ad here shows how Nick Mag Presents fit into the Nickelodeon Magazine subscription system. Essentially, they acted as bonuses to entice potential subscribers (without mentioning that these issues reused a lot of content originally from Nickelodeon Magazine, of course). I don’t think you could specifically get a Nick Mag Presents subscription, so getting them as bonuses for your subscription or buying them at the store were your only ways of procuring them. 

I really wish more of these had scans, particularly the “official movie magazines” for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius. Not to get preachy, but if you think you’ve got any issues of Nick Mag Presents or Nickelodeon Magazine not already available (there’s a spreadsheet to check, courtesy of @NickMagProject on Twitter), I implore you to scan and upload them. Come to think of it, I guess that goes for any old magazine you have really, if it’s convenient for you. You might just be saving a copy of somebody’s cherished childhood memory. 

Back to The FairlyOddParents, with another tale all about comic books and superheroes. Go figure. Similar to the Jimmy Neutron comic from earlier, this one has Timmy going into the world of one of his new comic books to find out how the story ends. I like the art here, with the lineart done by C.H. Greenblatt (creator of Chowder and Harvey Beaks). It’s very similar to the show, but still stylized, looking a little more sharp and exaggerated than usual. 

Oh hey! There’s that comic book nerd from earlier! Guess that explains that.

And when Timmy enters the comic world, the style switches over to art done by Sergio Aragones, a longtime artist for MAD Magazine. I only went through about two or three issues of MAD from my local library as a kid, and I still recognized this guy’s art when I saw it here. I think that definitely speaks to how distinct his style is and how often his work appeared in those issues. 

Alright, back to business! The comic itself is fine, there’s a few good jokes. Greenblatt and Aragones’s art really picks up the slack while the entertainment value wanes a bit. Eh, maybe I’m just experiencing comic fatigue. Oh well, you read it and be the judge.

Now this is properly historic! I didn’t imagine there’d be an ad for a whole new channel in here, and it’s pretty funny, too. 

Nicktoons had only been around for nine months or so when this ad was printed, which is pretty interesting to see as someone who can hardly remember a time without the channel’s existence. Anyone fortunate enough to have both channels was treated to two times the Nickelodeon, meaning there was usually always something good to watch. 

It’s funny though how in hindsight this is more like Nickelodeon advertising their new funeral parlor, considering how often they used Nicktoons as a dumping ground for their lesser-performing shows to make room for more SpongeBob SquarePants. It’s happened to My Life as a Teenage Robot, El Tigre, Catscratch, and even more recent shows like Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to name a few. 

It’d be cool if Nickelodeon used Nicktoons more like how Cartoon Network used their spinoff channel Boomerang: As a way to rerun their older shows for new generations to see. I always wished as a kid I could’ve watched some of Nick’s older stuff like Rocko’s Modern Life or Hey Arnold!. I always heard they were great, but unless I was willing to go out on a limb and buy a VHS of a show I had never seen, I was out of luck. Oh well.

Yeesh, this got bitter fast, didn't it? It's friggin' Invader Zim wearing a clown wig. I must still not be over what happened to Making Fiends…

The last few comics coming up are of the smaller, 2-page spread variety. So if any of them are originally from Nickelodeon Magazine, I’d bet on these last three. It’s a cute story, and I kinda love these little day-in-the life moments these comics tend to depict. The art of SpongeBob and Patrick here was done by longtime cartoon artist Shern Cohen (who actually did the cover art of the last Nickelodeon Magazine issue I checked out, #150!). The art for Mermaid Man’s comic was done by Ramona Fradon, a comic artist most well known for her art on Aquaman! Go figure, right? That is so cool.

So, what is ChalkZone considered nowadays? Cult classic or just a regular classic? Yeah, we probably won’t be seeing a reboot anytime soon but I’m pretty sure it was decently popular. I definitely remember watching it, but I’m hard-pressed to remember much about it outside of its surprisingly epic theme song. It’s definitely one of, if not the most relevant chalk-centric production in recent history. 

Last comic of the evening, everyone! Good thing too, I think my eyes are starting to turn square from all the panels. Fittingly enough we’re rounding things off with another Fairly OddParents adventure, albeit one that’s very clearly not a superhero-related affair. But hey, who’s counting?

I still really like the dynamic Cosmo and Wanda used to have back in these earlier parts of the series’s history. Cosmo has always been the more carefree of the two, but Wanda wasn’t above a bit of goofing off and playing with her magic powers either. Seeing them have fun together as a pair made their relationship really cute and believable.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this comic was originally an episode concept they couldn’t flesh out to a full 11 minutes. Not the worst idea for getting the most you can out of your work!

And that just about wraps up this issue of Nick Mag Presents! I may have kind of sort of skipped over a crossword puzzle after that last comic but… if you’re really so inclined, be my guest.

Anyway, I’d like to thank one of my readers for suggesting that I check out Nick Mag Presents. It means a lot to me, and I hope I delivered! If anyone reading wants to recommend an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, Nick Mag Presents, or even a completely unrelated magazine for me to cover on NMH Side Issues, be my guest! I am currently limited to what magazines are available online via The Internet Archive or otherwise, but if I can do it, I’ll check it out if I’ve got something to say on it.

But for now, I’d say it’s back to the ‘ole grind. With great magazines comes great responsibility after all, and these magazines don’t highlight themselves!

Have a good day, and as always, keep on reading!

Now, I understand you might be slightly surprised we went from Issue #1 to Issue #114, but I say take the whiplash in stride! Variety is the spice of life after all, and this cover exudes variety. We went from a roster of just one measly Nicktoon to a whole overload of shows spilling out from the top of the page!

But of course, front and center we have Drake & Josh, which was entering its third season at the time after facing massive success. Unsurprising too, since it really had everything going for it. Boys wanted to be Drake, girls wanted to be near Drake, and Josh was there to carry the show. How times change… now Drake Bell doesn’t even want to be Drake Bell.

But I digress, let’s dive into Issue #114! You can read it on the Internet Archive here.

Is a franchise really a “thing” if it doesn’t have a fast food toy line? Think about it. 

I remember that online game they’re advertising on the left, I’m pretty sure you never get to see your created ghost stand back-to-back with Danny Phantom himself, pretty disappointing if that was the prize you were after. 

Okay, after looking at some footage, it seems like you never get to see your created ghost even move! Explains why my memories of this game are pretty vapid.

There’s nothing else to incite fear into the heart of a child quite like the phrase “Back to School”. Except for maybe dentist’s appointments, needles, large bugs, and the Easter Bunny.

To tie into this most horrifying occasion, the overarching theme of this issue is stupidity. Let’s keep reading and find out if that was a dumb idea.

At this point Nick Magazine had dropped Ooze News, instead opting to advertise the biggest Nickelodeon headlines (Oooh, Tak 3!) near the beginning, with a special section later on for showcasing any upcoming episodes of their regulars. Stay tuned for that!

I’m not a Barbie expert. Are these based on outfits the doll wore at some point? ‘Cause otherwise these are just regular clothes that say “Barbie” on them.

First speech bubble from Zelda in the blog’s history!

Anyway, did you know Frankie Muniz (Malcolm in The Middle) is a NASCAR driver now? Crazy.

Lovely illustration work from Roger Langridge, who still posts comics on Twitter! Check him out after you’ve finished reading this post, liked it, reblogged, left a comment, followed, and bookmarked my blog.

I know what some of you may be wondering, just what exactly was the hot-ticket item kids were asking for Christmas in a pre-iPhone world? Well, I guess a Firefly might be a possible answer? I don’t recall ever seeing one of these back in the day, and apparently they don’t even make them anymore. 

What this ad conveniently doesn’t tell you is the amount of parental controls stuffed into one of these things, which makes them a fantastic safety tool, but maybe not that cool of a toy. 

Take note, this was back when having “animations” was a selling point.

Here we can the see the aftermath of Nickelodeon teaming up with Baby Bottle Pop for a bit of cross-promotion, which culminated with the crowning of the first (and probably only) “Baby Bottle Popstar”.

Indeed, kids across America were urged to send in their own rendition of the iconic “Baby Bottle Pop jingle” (which no doubt most of you are humming right now). Those performances were left to the mercy of the online populace, voted upon with the utmost scrutiny. Few died, but many were injured, and a young Alyssa of California was crowned Baby Bottle champion.

So it says in the history books, anyway. If you’d like to see the Baby Bottle ballad that shook the world, I recorded a video of the Nick.com link included in this ad, courtesy of the Internet Archive.

Sorry, got a little intense back there. Anyway this is a fun section! And anything reminding me about Jack Black and School of Rock is a positive in my book. Little odd lumping in The Dukes of Hazzard next to Finding Nemo and Spongebob, but I guess they might have wanted to throw a bone to the preteens in the audience.

Pretty cool full page spread advertisement for a Nicktoon, and for Catscratch no less!

Ah Catscratch, one of Nick’s oft-neglected 2000’s ‘toons, right next to The X’s and Making Fiends. Obviously I’m biased a bit, being a 2000’s kid, but it really sucks these shows fail to even get a passing reference nowadays. Oh well, if My Life as a Teenage Robot can escape Nick’s 2000’s dungeon, maybe there’s hope for the others.

A pretty funny comedy section here, depicting the daily newspaper of the fictional town of Moronia. I’d recommend checking out the full section if you’re not already reading along, it’s pretty funny!

Y’know I really wouldn’t have thought such generic phrases like “Feel Brand New” and “Make it Your Style” would be trademarkable. I would think at most you could get away with holding the rights to “The Lisa Frank Brand is for Every Happy, Cute Girl”. Although since they left that last one open, I bet the trademark is still available if anyone wants to snag it.

Additionally I’d like to give props to this company for being so bold as to have one of their mascot characters thank the Lord himself for their brand’s existence. You hardly see such tenacity nowadays.

Weird short fascination I had as a kid: I really liked the style of these ads that Pop-Tart was running at the time. I’m sure a lot of you remember the commercials in particular. I guess the black-and-white scribbly style just tickled my brain! Weirdest thing was they never actually inspired me to buy Pop-Tarts myself, it was only last year or so I had my first ‘Tart. Suppose that makes me a fake fan.

We’ve made it to The Comic Book, rejoice! 

Initially, I was particularly excited about this being the opportunity to introduce some of the regular comic series featured in this section, since I thought they’d have already started appearing by now, seeing as how we’ve jumped ahead much later into the magazine’s run.

But, uh, no, actually! This issue is completely lacking in strips from any of the notable ongoing comic series from the mag’s lifespan. Not even a Scene But Not Heard, which I guess disproves my memory of each issue having one!

Oh well, we’ll get to them when we get to them, the one-offs were usually just as entertaining. And we do at least have one recurring strip to talk about, Impy & Wormer!

Impy & Wormer was a regularly published strip for this section, created by James Kochalka. The strips were so small, you could find one of them at the bottom of each page of The Comic Book. It’s a pretty cute idea! I often found myself doodling Impy in the margins of my notebooks when the magazine was around. 

Say what you will regarding how Web 2.0 and the modern internet has affected society’s mental health and the overall cultural zeitgeist, but it did lead to this funny one-panel comic :)

Holy moly. Does anyone else remember Postopia? I swear for the last couple years I tried my damned hardest to find out what website it was that I played some weird Flintstones flash games on as a kid. I recently found out that it was indeed Postopia. Man, between this and Pop-Tarts it really seems like I would just buy into whatever weird viral marketing these fast food brands were pumping out as a kid.

I remember these being a fairly common activity in the mag: gag product labels. Cut ‘em out and tape them on to their intended packaging and you’ve got an instant barrel of laughs! Problem is they never seemed to be the right size for the products I tried them on. 

Come to think of it, my parents were really the only ones who got to see them finished, and they didn't really find them that amusing either. Was I really supposed to show my friends some dental floss I had taped a fake label onto?

“Nostalgia” is a term I honestly hate throwing around, what with how common it is, but this page in particular is really inciting some wistful childhood memories. Doesn’t seem like the worst deal in the world either, at least if you’re into membership cards, special edition issues, and stickers.

Sidenote, Step 4 isn’t really a surprise if you tell everyone it’s a Spongebob hat, guys!

Man, these guys hate teachers! I did not know a single kid in school who hated their teachers as much as the Nick Mag writers seemed to. A lot of my teachers were pretty nice, actually.

Yeah, in terms of replacing the Cartoon Calendar section (which we saw an example of in the previous NMH post), this leaves a lot to be desired. Still, I like when the magazine tried to give out fun factoids, it made me feel like my intelligence was being respected. Those puns are Zelda Van Gutters-tier writing though.

Now now, I’m not going to keep going on about Drake Bell. There’s only so many times you can shoot the elephant in the room before you start looking like the weird one. Drake & Josh was such a favorite of mine around the time this magazine came out, and it was really fun getting at least a little insight into what the behind-the-scenes view was like.

Small extra detail I find interesting is that almost every blurb below summarizing the new episodes for each show mentions romance and crushes (baring All That, but that’s a sketch show anyway*). Even the interview brings up that Josh had gotten a new girlfriend in Season 3. Guess Nick was really going all in on the love aspect to keep their preteen audience’s attention in the midst of puberty, which feels kind of manipulative in hindsight? Oh well.

*They were still making All That in 2005?

TurboNick, huh? I… think I remember this? Barely. Looking it up on Google gives me a faint sense of remembrance. Although I don’t remember Pick Boy. Sorry, Pick Boy. 

I guess the idea was you could check out clips from all your favorite Nick shows and eventually be graced with a full-on episode thanks to Pick Boy, and given his name I’m sure voting was involved to decide the full episode that was released. Not the worst idea! I certainly don’t remember Cartoon Network posting full episodes online. They probably didn’t even have their own Pick Boy.

I’m willing to give credit where credit is due. In the last NMH post I accused a lot of kids’ for being very fart-centric. I’m still sure in the Gnarly 90’s that was true, given all the stuff Ren & Stimpy were getting up to on prime-time television. But here in the Techno 2000’s we reference Spock and take Grandma to prom. A much more sophisticated fare.

Man, this must have been so cool for any Sly Cooper fans picking up this book. It’s a triple threat: questions, concept art, and a quick-look at Sly 3! I may not be a fan myself, but I can always appreciate some concept art and creative insight for a largely beloved character and series.

And rounding us off it's... Hey, it’s Bill Trinen! He was a sort of meme for a while, wasn't he? Back when they let him be in Nintendo Directs, anyway. Well, I say meme, but I guess he was more like an oyster stuck on the underside of a much larger meme named Reggie Fils-Aimé.

Yeah, definitely more like an oyster… What were we talking about? Oh yeah, NintenDogs! Never played it. Apparently they poop! Cool, I guess!

Well, well! That wraps up another addition of Nick Mag Highlights! I think getting the 2000's side of the timeline after the first issue was good for giving a bit more context on how the magazine looked and grew throughout its time on the market. I’m excited to see what’s next, and I hope you enjoyed it too. There’s tons more content and memories to read through. 

Also, one last thing. While looking up that one Danny Phantom flash game from the start of the issue I found that there’s apparently a new Danny Phantom graphic novel coming out this Summer? I’m surprised I haven’t heard anything about this! The art looks really pretty. If this seems like your thing, keep an eye on it!

So yeah, sorry for the wait on this one. A couple of IRL setbacks plus taking on a volley of different big personal projects at once resulted in quite a hit towards my motivation. But hey, we’re here now, and I’m happy to get back into it.

Little sneak preview while I’m here: One of the things I’ve been working on is a new NMH Side Issue post! One that’s covering a mag that’s ostensibly part of Nickelodeon history thanks to its connection to a very prolific creative figure at the studio. Very wordy book though, so naturally both reading it and my analysis of it is gonna take longer than normal. And then I gotta do the research and fact-checking and yadda yadda, it’ll be ready when it's ready. In the meantime I’ve always got Nickelodeon Magazine to come back to.

Read along if you’d like, I think it’s the cool thing to do!

Neopets was still Viacom (parent company of Nickelodeon)’s latest big purchase at the time of this mag’s release, with them having bought it eight months earlier back in June of 2005, so it’s not surprising seeing the new blockbuster Neopets thing getting a big ‘ole two page spread right at the beginning of the magazine.

While Neopets is famous for originally being financially supported by scientology, it was Viacom's stint with the brand that actually got me to give the site a try for a short time (thanks to a Burger King promotion of all things, if memory serves me correctly). If they don't delete old, inactive accounts then I hope my T-Rex Neopet has been doing well for itself. They can’t die, right?

I love this ad. I’m not sure what kind of vibe they were going for here but it almost feels kind of dystopian with the polluted-looking air and all the TV screens weirdly protruding out every which way. Adding to that feeling for me was that I initially thought all that shrubbery down below was a huge audience of adoring viewers. Feels like something out of The Running Man. Super cool.

Always important to check out what Nickelodeon itself was doing around the time. I remember being really excited for Drake & Josh Go Hollywood, and seeing how it went on to gross more than 5 million viewers, I guess I wasn’t alone. Really bothers me to find out it’s just called Go Hollywood and not Go To Hollywood like I thought it was all these years, but I guess I’ll live.

And speaking of millions of viewers, this section also mentions the then-upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants special “Dunces & Dragons” (oddly not actually referred to here with an actual title), which grossed more than 8 million viewers.

Oh, and it’s Black History Month. Y’know just kind of a footnote slotted in the middle there. You'd think that'd get an article or interview, I don’t know. I’m sure Kyra appreciates the shoutout at least.

Woah. Imagine living in a pre-High School Musical world. Nowadays High School Musical is the made-for-TV-movie that baby made-for-TV-movies want to grow up to be. Now we’ve got two sequels, a TV spinoff (a TV spinoff that won five Kids’ Choice Awards apparently, funnily enough), and a mountain of films that tried to cash in on that success. Mostly from Disney Channel themselves. Camp Rock, anyone?

Funny to see the not-Jumanji family classic Zathura listed as Josh Hutcherson’s big recognizable role when he’d end up co-starring in the critically lauded cultural touchstone The Hunger Games just a few years later. And now he’s starring in that Five Nights at Freddy’s movie coming out this year. What a career.

There’s gotta be some irony to me sitting here and enjoying what I probably called the “boring parts” of the magazine back when I was a kid. C’mon though, this is pretty neat! I’ll run through all the topics real quick if you’d like to learn more.

Notes From Underground - The Great Stalacpipe Organ

Still standing to this day, the instrument has been refurbished a couple times since it was featured in this magazine. In 2012 a band by the name of Pepe Deluxé composed and played the first ever song exclusively for the Stalacpipe Organ, called “In The Cave” and featured it in their album Queen of the Wave. Give it a listen, it’s a creepy kind of beautiful. Must’ve been hard to record, too!

Playing With Their Food - The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra

The orchestra is still active and has even done a couple of performances this year! I doubt they still make soup from their instruments though. But to be honest even without having to worry about viral diseases I’m not too interested in soup made exclusively of vegetables that have been blown into for several hours.

Talk About Slow Jamz! - Organ²/ASLSP

Miraculously the performance is still on track. They didn’t play a note this year but the next one is scheduled for February 5th. The second slowest performance of the piece lasted 16 hours and took place last year.

World’s Hottest Tunes - Fire Organs

I can’t really find much about this one online, but I guess it speaks for itself, doesn’t it?

Take a look at a performance and try not to think about how hot it must be in that auditorium whenever he plays that thing.

Alright, it’s time for a confession. You ready to hear the horrible truth? …Okay, here goes:

I don’t know very much about music.

I guess it was probably a bad choice for me to write about a magazine themed around music. I got pretty far without having to disclose my lack of knowledge though, right? And in my defense, Nickelodeon lured me in with that Jimmy Timmy Power Hour cover. 

And I mean, don’t get me wrong, I like music. I love a bit of jazz now and then*. But still, none of the names here really ring a bell, so I don't know if any of these answers are ironic or out-of-character or so in-character it’s adorable or whatever. At least I can appreciate they spared no expense, they never usually have this many interviews. There’s even a third page with even more of them if you want to check it out. 

*My top jazz favorites are Kim Scott (Spotify) and Pieces Of A Dream (Spotify). If you were curious.

It’s really cool to see something encouraging kids to make their own mix CDs. I do kinda wish there was more than one cover though. Not everybody wants to chill.

Aw man, come to think of it, is Gen-Z the last generation to do personal mixtapes and CDs? Or is that still a thing? Regardless I kind of wish I had gotten into doing that when I was younger, it seems like a fun thing to do between friends. Plus my knowledge of music would probably be way stronger than it is now. What do kids do nowadays, send each other Spotify playlists? I guess that's a bit more convenient.

I think I've talked about these Pop-Tart ads before. They were in these magazines all the time so they must’ve come up already. I think I even gave them some credit. But as attention grabbing as they were I really still don't understand the intention. What's so appetizing about seeing these little guys just get absolutely destroyed all the time? Are kids supposed to think about how they’re snuffing the life out of their morning Pop-Tarts?

A very awesome and adorable cover we have here, courtesy of Vera Brosgol (author and illustrator of the award-winning Anya’s Ghost, plus Head of Story on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio). You can check out her website to see more of her work here.

Nice little comic by Greg Cook. And wouldn’t you know that guy’s Wikipedia article has Nickelodeon Magazine mentioned in its first sentence? That’s cool. Also I feel like the man himself might’ve written his own Wikipedia article. The lack of citations and the way it’s written like the “About Me” page for a blog gives me that kind of vibe. If so, thanks for remembering us, Greg!

Now here’s some of that Jimmy-Timmy content I was promised! I was starting to get worried.

I find it interesting how well Jimmy and Timmy bounce off of each other, but I guess now that I think about it their shows weren’t that different really, at least in terms of subject matter, were they? In broad strokes they’re both kids with big egos whose imaginations tend to get them into trouble. And seeing those big egos clash is naturally gonna lend itself to some good comedy.

In regards to the art, I love the warm colors utilized here, it’s very cozy. The art throws me off just a smidge though. Absolutely no disrespect to Scott Roberts of course, writer and penciler behind this comic (and also creator of Patty Cake, a recurring comic for Nickelodeon Magazine that we… haven’t actually encountered yet on this blog unfortunately), he’s got some great work under his belt, and Timmy and his fairies look as to be expected here. But I do think it was a weird choice making Jimmy look like a Rugrat though. That’s not just me, right? The second page in particular has him pulling off some serious Rugrats-faces. Maybe Roberts was just doing what he knows, because he actually did tons of work on a Rugrats newspaper comic strip just a couple years before this.

Aside from that, Jimmy’s lab is a bit weird. It’s not the usual cave, instead being a regular room with windows and a checkerboard floor? And the exterior shows it to be a wooden cabin? Maybe it’s supposed to be the shack that’s built above the lab Jimmy uses as a secret entrance. Doesn’t really matter, I certainly didn’t notice as a kid, but it does make me wonder if the artist wasn’t provided that much reference material.

I love that snail comic so much like you wouldn’t believe.

Throughout the years I always managed to miss out on LEGO’s constant edgier reinventions of itself, y’know like Bionicle or that one about the ninjas. I guess it helps that I was never really into the toy itself. Unlike those previous examples though, Exo-Force here isn’t ringing any bells for me, but I do find it noteworthy how they were trying to go for a more anime/gundam vibe with this one, what with the Japanese affixed to the bottom of the logo and the faux-anime designs of all the main characters. Surprised to see this one didn’t even warrant its own cartoon, instead having its epic storyline played out through a series of commercials. And while I may like an overarching commercial narrative as much as the next guy (anyone remember those Goldfish Cracker commercials that did the same thing?), I bet you any fans of this line were sore it never got the whole TV show package like Bionicle did.

Oh right, Valentine’s Day is in February, isn’t that right? How many more years do you think that holiday has, you reckon? Nobody likes it. It’s just a reason to buy more greeting cards and do nice things for people that you probably should just be doing anyway and not need a holiday to tell you to do. Eh, still though I guess if you were in a small class at school this would be a pretty useful sheet of cards.

Skyland, huh? Can’t say it rings a bell, but it certainly looks cool. How did this slip by me? I even had this issue as a kid and watched Nicktoons, so I must have just completely tuned it out. I wonder why?

Oh, that’s interesting, it seems like it's all done with motion captured 3D animation. That’s fine, I guess, but that illustration in the magazine had me thinking it’d look a bit more like The Last Airbender. I’m impressed that they spared no expense on the story at least. This intro here can barely keep down its exposition to forty seconds!

So, does anyone remember this one? Apparently it was a French production that was licensed to different channels across the world, airing on Teletoon in Canada and CITV in the UK. I’d love to know if it was any good!

Pretty good smorgasbord of facts in this month’s calendar. And I guess a blanket theme is good as any other theme. Ooh, National Pancake Day! What a great month.

The Jimmy-Timmy quiz is fun, but I wish we could’ve gotten an interview with someone a part of the production of the episode or something. Obviously they’re not going to just interview some random part of the staff (although I’d find that interesting personally), but a voice actor would’ve been cool. I like how Jimmy’s answer considers Sheen a responsibility. Maybe all of Jimmy’s town-threatening inventions were just to distract Sheen from causing any real damage. We all know what kind of terror he’s capable of.

Wow, Bill Clinton! BC himself! Pretty impressive guest for an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, I must say. ‘Course they got him talking about eating vegetables and exercising instead of something cool, though. It is good to know that being on the receiving end of the most widely-reported-on gobbling in the United States wasn’t enough to get you disqualified from having a spot in Nick Mag.

Another neato guest in theory, Tommy Tallarico is a pretty big name in the video game music space. He’s known for having a hand in loads of different soundtracks over the years and also allegedly being a pathological liar and taking credits for lots of other peoples’ work, which isn’t as nice as the former thing I listed. If you’re interested you can check out more info on the topic in this video here by hbomberguy, which basically runs through a lot of the lies Tallarico has told throughout the years, made as a response to him using legal pressure to get a sound effect he claims to have made removed from the online game Roblox. Oof.

But yeah, to give him some credit, this interview is better than ‘ole Clint’s was. At least Tallarico’s talking about the thing he gets paid for instead of vegetables and dieting. And that “What’s on Mario’s iPod” section is pretty good, but considering Tallirco’s track record it makes me question the legitimacy of his answers… I always thought Crash Bandicoot was more of a Dead Or Alive fan.

Oh god, not QZ again. I did not miss seeing this freak, I’ll tell you that. Why was anyone encouraging this guy with any more questions? He was getting kids names and addresses and we all sat idly by! I like how he sidesteps half the questions too, only giving a direct answer when it concerns protecting a kid from bullies. Maybe he’s not such a bad guy after all…

…Nah. Screw him.

If you remember these guys, you qualify for an Apple Jack’s discount!

I’m willing to admit as a kid I was more than willing to buy into whatever brands wound up on my TV as long as they had a funky mascot and even funkier commercials (and having a website that sported a suite of Flash games and cartoons certainly helped), but the hijinx of this Rastafarian cinnamon stick and goblin-looking apple particularly stick out to me as some rather memorable marketing. I’d say chalk it up to the distinct claymation style the commercials sported (which I’m pretty sure got replaced with 3D animation at some point, which kinda stinks). I found it funny how the character known as “Bad Apple” here eventually got redeemed and just became a friendly competitor that races Cinnamon to the bowl as opposed to the villain he’s presented as here. Did the marketing team really not see from the get-go that people might have a problem with a commercial depicting cinnamon and sugar as the good guy and apples as, well, “bad”?

Still, as much as I loved the commercials, I never actually had a single bowl of Apple Jacks as a kid. Shocking, I know, but my friends told me they sucked and I remember reading one particularly nasty long-winded online review that basically said the cereal is garbage, so I stayed away. I eventually did have a bowl or two of the stuff many years later, and… they’re alright. I will agree with this comic on one thing, Apple Jacks definitely do not “taste like apples”. In fact, they don’t really taste like anything.

And that’ll do it for this edition of Nick Mag HIghlights! Thanks for sticking around, and I hope you had a fun time going through this issue with me. It had tons of fun stuff (that article on the strange and interesting instruments and that Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour comic were my personal highlights) and hopefully some of you can get more entertainment out of all those musical interviews than I did. We even got a Billy C cameo! It doesn’t get more engaging than an old president, does it?

As well, I’d like to reiterate my apology for the time it took to bring this to you all, and I’m hopeful I can pick the pace back up and rebuild my motivation now that I’ve gotten this finished. I’m looking forward to finalizing my aforementioned new Nick Mag Side Issues post, I think that’ll be pretty interesting and add a little spice of variety to the page. Guess we’ll see!

Man, that cover is a blast from the past for me, and it might just be the same for some of you. I haven't seen the film adaptation of James and The Giant Peach ever since I was a kid. I forget how I even first experienced it, since I couldn’t have seen it in theaters and I never owned a physical copy. I think a babysitter put it on for me once. 

Whatever the case, despite the time it's been I can still envision a smattering of visuals and emotions from the experience. So it must’ve been good if it’s managed to still stick with me positively all these years later. I guess a grade-a art style and memorable visuals will do that for a film. So as shallow as these behind-the-scenes “previews” tend to be when it comes to Nick Magazine, I’m still excited to go down memory lane and hopefully gleam one or two cool bits of trivia. 

Beyond my nostalgia bias though I’ve gotta say I’m surprised by the lack of promises this cover is making. A preview of James and The Giant Peach and a “Special Flip Book” is all you’ve got to wow the proverbial audience here, Nick? Even issue #1 promised more content on its cover to grab your attention if Ren & Stimpy weren’t enough for you. Let’s hope 20 issues in they weren’t starting to struggle for content.

You can read along too, if that’s what you wanna do. The issue’s right here.

Alright, go ahead and roll your eyes, but I’ve got a thing or two to say about this Cheetos ad. Or rather, “Chee●tos”, as it's called here and would be titled as such until Frito-Lays dropped the hyphen from the name in 1998. Not the worst name change, if I’m being honest.

First off, let’s just bask in the moment for a second. This is a wacky snack from the 90’s, even a “spinoff snack”, if you will, of a still very popular snack brand… that hasn’t been brought back to capitalize on nostalgia! 

Yes, Cheesy Checkers have yet to return to shelves since their discontinuation in ‘98. Suffice to say, I’m stunned. In a world where Ecto-Cooler returned from the grave, Trix Yogurt is still readily available, Boo Berry, Count Chocula and all those other monster-themed cereals manifest themselves every Halloween, and the McRib seems to come back whenever the heck it feels like, Cheetos Cheesy Checkers of all things is barred from re-entry into the mainstream to take advantage of your sorely missed childhood. 

Guess they really just weren’t popular enough? You can’t capitalize on nostalgia if there’s no nostalgia to capitalize on, after all. And yet it seems like a foolproof idea for a snack if you ask me. Waffles and waffle fries have already proven that checkerboard patterns are naturally delicious. And on top of that it even had a rad commercial featuring an awesome Chester Cheetah puppet. What’s not to like? I guess 33% more cheese is crossing the line of “Dangerously Cheesy” into something more like… “Hazardously Cheesy”.

Oh, and by the way. I may have never had a bag of Cheesy Checkers, but I sincerely doubt the snack pieces were that big. You really want me to believe one checker is nearly 1/3rd the size of this magazine page? They don’t even look that big in the commercial.

Just like the cover said, this is indeed a movie-themed issue. And I’ve got good news regarding this: I actually know about movies! Well, I like movies, anyway. Okay, I know more about movies than I do about music, which should mean my dissection of the content at hand will be a little more thoughtful than my retrospective of the music-based issue from last time. Hopefully, anyway.

Can’t help but feel these jokes are trying a little too hard. I guess when you’ve got to come up with twenty and base them all off of movies and TV shows, it can’t be easy. It probably doesn’t help either that there’s only like, three or four good puns in the whole world to begin with.

Anyway, look. Bugs Bunny in Nickelodeon Magazine. Woah.

Well, it’s a little less surprising for those, ahem, in the know. 

Nickelodeon actually aired Looney Tunes shorts for more than ten years, from 1988 to 1999. Once Warner Bros. established their new kids’ entertainment channel, Cartoon Network, they were pretty quick to take back their old school cartoons to bolster their numbers a bit. Although even following the departure of the classic Looney Tunes, Nickelodeon would go on to license other Warner Bros. content for their channel in the following years, airing shows such as Animaniacs and Tiny Toon Adventures in the early 2000s.

Oh, how convenient! Now I can prove my film expertise by trouncing this quiz and- 

Hey! Some kid already answered two of the questions. Well now there’s no point in doing the quiz now. Its sanctity has been compromised.

But yeah, this book’s been written in just a bit. Sorry if that bothers you, but it’s not like I can clean the pages off. I do kinda wish the scan was totally clean just for the sake of archival purposes, but as long as the marks stay minor I’m not too picky. If anything I guess it helps make things a little more interesting. Kinda adds to the whole “time capsule” aspect of it, doesn’t it?

Shouldn’t be an issue so long as it’s not-

Ah, criminy! The kid got me again! Now this is stepping over the line. Answering a quiz question or two is one thing, but completely solving the hidden pictures puzzle promoting the home video release of Babe? That sours my mood. I don’t even feel like watching Babe now.

This a neat activity: a screenplay for two kids to act out and potentially film like a home movie. It actually caught me off guard with its originality, and in hindsight it seems like a no-brainer. Kids love to play pretend after all, and I know I certainly loved shooting little movies with my family’s cheap digital camera. Well, here kids, we came up with the story for you. Go nuts. Not to mention it's a good excuse to whip up a plate of grilled cheese sandwiches.

Here’s a nifty fun fact for you: The writer of this screenplay activity, David Lewman, has basically been on Nickelodeon’s speed dial since the 90’s. He’s written tons of Nickelodeon tie-in books, spanning a bunch of different franchises including SpongeBob SquarePants, Jimmy Neutron, Rugrats, among many others. If you’ve read a SpongeBob book before, I say look him up. There’s a good chance you were reading something of his. 

Kind of nice of them to make a whole game out of their adspace, eh? I mean, I’m guessing the amount of people who played isn’t particularly high, but… uh… The art is cool!

Speaking of the art, you never see these mascots in 2D anymore. Which I find unfortunate because I think they look a lot cuter and tolerable here.  

Also wow, you can see the orange and brown candies before their designs were finalized. Or before their transitions, either or. Very proud of them regardless!

Pretty awesome article here about some of the gimmicks that filmmakers tried out during the black-and-white days of cinema. Love a bit of history alongside my Nickelodeon.

While we’re here, I’d like to contribute my own similar black-and-white movie gimmick factoid that I find amusing:

In 1961, a film called Mr. Sardonicus featured a gimmick called the “Punishment Poll”, where each audience member was given a card to decide the fate of the titular villain, Mr. Sardonicus, by either showing the side of their card with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on it right before the end of the film. Once the total was tallied, the theater was supposed to show the ending with the most votes.

The funny part is that the movie only has one ending. The gimmick was just a total lie and the only ending filmed was the one with the negative outcome for Mr. Sardonicus, so I guess the director was pretty confident that potential audiences would mostly be comprised of sadists that want to see a bad guy get his comeuppance. 

Speaking of the director, Mr. Sardonicus just so happened to be directed by a mister William Castle, who also directed four out of the six films listed in the magazine article here. Guess those gimmicks really were good for profits.

Imagine watching a whole movie while sitting in a pool. Now stop imagining! I don’t like that very much. Your eyelids would prune shut before you could even see the ending. 

Man, all these movie gimmicks and funky types of theaters is making me wish I was around when movies were more of an event. Y’know? The movie theater experience has pretty much been ironed out at this point, so the idea of watching the big screen outside or with the looming possibility of a big plastic skeleton popping out and waving around is particularly alluring. Take note, modern movie theaters, this may be your way of competing with streaming!

What? No, it doesn’t bother me at all that whoever owned this magazine already filled out this Sanrio quiz advertisement. Why would I be ENRAGED and UPSET about that!?!? IT'S NOT EVEN A BIG DEAL!!

… Anyway this ad is weird. I guess they didn't know how to market Sanrio in the west yet*. Cause I'm not exactly the most familiar but I'm pretty confident blaring red and yellow colors and funky multicolor Wow! text isn't exactly befitting of the Sanrio spirit. Also there's not really any point to the quiz. It's not like you can mail in your answers and get a free Hello Kitty lunchbox or something. I guess they just figured that kids love quizzes and will always jump at the opportunity to do them, circling the correct responses in permanent pen ink, and causing them to not consider the possibility that someoNE MIGHT WANT TO READ THE MAGAZINE AD AFTER THEM AND WOULD WANT IT MAINTAINED IN PEAK CLEANLINESS FOR THE SAKE OF THE SANCTITY OF THEIR ONLINE BLOG i must calm myself.

*Which is weird to me, because Hello Kitty feels like one of those characters who’s always been popular. Like Mickey Mouse or Steven Spielburg.

Don’t mind me, just gonna insert this contest page here so that if I ever do the issue that contains the actual responses, I can link back to here and go full circle. Pretty excited to someday see the responses! I wonder what they could be. I also wonder why you had to include a phone number with your response. Maybe Tommy Pickles congratulated you on the phone? 

Okay, so I think this issue might be missing pages. I can’t prove that exactly, considering I don’t have the real thing sitting in front of me, but the way this ad has text that’s oddly cut off on the right side leads me to believe this was a two page spread originally. Maybe not, maybe the magazine was really like this and it's a printing error, maybe they spilled juice on the design document for page two and couldn’t fix it in time for publishing. 

Whatever the case, I really wish I had that Aaahh!!! Real Monsters hat.

A rather understated cover for this edition of The Comic Book, and I can appreciate it. Simple and effective bit of zaniness with a spin on the old “fake-can-with-a-scary-thing-that-pops-out-when-you-open-it” gag. This comes to us from award-winning illustrator Jim Woodring, who’s got probably one of the nicest websites of any artist I’ve mentioned on this blog so far, so kudos. I took a look through his gallery, and it’s a lovely trip, so go take a look if you want some eye candy.

Been a while since we’ve last seen the Southern Fried Fugitives on this blog, one of Nick Magazine’s earliest recurring comic series. Unfortunately they’re not exactly in top form here, I’d say, even as someone who’s not the biggest fan of the comic to begin with. This is essentially a bit of filler so they could make their deadline and finish up the next “all new real adventure” that this episode tells you of at the end. I mean, I get it, this comic usually spanned a full three or four pages, I’m sure they took quite a bit of time. I just don’t really appreciate being shown a gross naked stitched up chicken. 

A great hidden picture puzzle here, I could see kids having a lot of fun with this one and just looking through all the art. I guess my only issue would be that none of the answers are exactly hidden, since almost every figure in the page is related to one of the film titles below. But that’s a small nitpick considering that for just one activity of a much larger publication, it’s still pretty entertaining and eye-catching.

And here we’ve got ourselves what the powers at be call Smudgy and Scribbly. A comic about two inventive robots that I thought were supposed to be pencil erasers at first considering their names. I’m not sure if these abstract little guys ever had more than one or a couple of comics, but I know they didn’t stick around forever, since this is the first time I’m hearing of them. They’re cute! They’re fun! They don’t have a lot of personality per se, but that’s okay, because they eat fruit cocktails. And that’s a lesson for the kids.

I’ve been really impressed with this issue so far! They’ve really been making the most of the movie theme, what with aforementioned stuff like the quality movie gimmick article and the nice hidden picture puzzle. And to top it all off now we’ve even got an interview with Siskel & Ebert, two of the most famous film critics of all time. I’m not even sure how many kids at the time would appreciate this sort of thing, but whoever did must’ve been pretty happy. Said interview was conducted about three years before Siskel’s incredibly unfortunate passing, and three years after being parodied in an episode of Doug.

Anyway, yeah the interview questions are really silly, but that’s pretty par for the course by now. I just think it’s just cool they’re even in an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine at all.

Talking about the calendar included with each issue has become a bit of a tradition for this blog by now, hasn’t it? Although I’m sure I probably forgot to mention it one time. Overall this one’s not bad, it’s chock-full of facts and the little set-up & punchline at the Charlie Chaplin section is a ‘lil funny. And I think it’s sort of themed around artisans, maybe? Well worth being pinned on your bedroom door if you ask me, the only problem is that you’d also be ripping out a page of the Siskel & Ebert interview that’s printed on the back of this. At least the kid who wrote all over the magazine showed some restraint there.

Oh come on… I spoke too soon about showing restraint. The kid ripped out the flip book! What a trick… now I’ll never know what it looks like. At least we have the instructions here, which also could be doubly used for instructions on how to make your own flipbook by following the format, which is cool. Sorry for anyone who clicked on this post because you wanted to see the flipbook specifically. Sorry to you.

Moving past a five page article about the history of movies and movie effects (which is solid but doesn’t have much for me to say about), we now come across the cover story: James and the Giant Peach. And this is an alright interview, but it’s especially good  for Nickelodeon Magazine! The questions for the film’s director, Henry Selick (director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline, among others), actually allow for some pretty nice informative detail regarding the process of stop-motion animation and how aspects of it work. For an interview intended for kids, this is great, especially for ones with an interest in the medium.

Interviews, interviews, and more interviews! If you’ve ever wanted to learn all that you could ever want to know Kenan & Kel, these are the pages for you. It’s nice to hear that apparently these guys were good friends off set, I guess. But y’know it’s never really bothered me finding out that seemingly inseparable co-stars actually aren’t best friends in real life like it does for a lot of people, I can still watch MythBusters perfectly fine even if I know Adam and Jamie aren’t going to go get drinks together after they finish dropping a car off a mountain for science. Acting’s still a job and I’m not expecting people to become friends just because they both stand in front of the same camera. 

But hey, if K&K really were as good of friends as this magazine says, that’s really cool for them. Pretty lucky too, since this was just mere months away from the premiere of their own All That spinoff show, Kenan & Kel, which ran for four years, and less than a year before the premiere of their own movie, Good Burger*, so being friendly must’ve helped when they were spending that much time together. Not to mention they’re getting back together for Good Burger 2, so I guess when your legacies are so intrinsically tied together, I guess you’re bound to find some things to like about each other.

*One of my favorite comedies by the way, and no I’m not sorry. There’s very few films that match its vibes.

Feels like I should mention the 9th annual Kids’ Choice Awards was just around the corner, which featured such notable moments like Jim Carrey taking home two awards for Ace Ventura and his performance in Batman Forever, alongside Free Willy winning “Favorite Animal Star” for his(?) performance (?) in Free Willy 2: Willy Goes to Chile*. That category in particular got pretty heated, considering he was up against fierce competition in the form of Babe from… Babe. “Gangsta’s Paradise” by Coolio won best song. Although Brandy would beat out both Coolio and Michael Jackson for winner of “Favorite Singer”, so it wasn’t exactly a Coolio sweep, per se.

But of course, the real big winner of that night was Tim Allen, for winning “Favorite TV Actor” and being enacted into the Nickelodeon Hall of Fame (yes, for real). All while Home Improvement won ”Favorite TV Show”, which I find is an outright snubbing of the also nominated Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Again, just my opinion.

*(Okay, it was actually called Free Willy 2: The Adventure Home, but I like my idea more).

Before we go, I’d just like to draw attention to this winner of a parade float idea contest held in a previous issue, finally presented in all its glory here. No offense to the kid who designed it but I can only imagine the type of child nightmares that could spawn from a giant Elvis making its way down the street, pulled along by his Elvis impersonating minions. Just a thought.

This was a really good issue, I’m actually pretty shocked with how much of it I found interesting and entertaining, even now as an adult. They really put their all into this one and I think the movie theme really paid off.

Some parts I didn’t get to were the aforementioned article on the history of film and film effects, which isn’t a bad read, especially if you’re into the good old days of practical effects. 

There was an interview with at-the-time child star Michelle Trachtenberg, to promote the upcoming release of the Nickelodeon film Harriet the Spy, which featured her in the starring role. I partly didn’t talk about it because I didn’t think there was much to say, and partly out of spite because that movie was pretty bad. Also because I’m running out of available image slots on this post. But mainly the first two reasons! Sort of.

Oh, yeah, and that alien mongrel QZ made another appearance, answering kids’ questions and just looking gross as usual. Avoid page 52 at all costs!

So yeah, that’ll do it! I’m glad I got to tackle another 90’s issue. I’ve also been thinking about branching out a bit, maybe talking about other Nickelodeon books, or heck, maybe even doing retrospectives of some of their shows! If anybody’s interested or has any requests (Nickelodeon Magazine related or otherwise), feel free to let me know. Otherwise I’ll just keep using my little spinner board that I use to make all decisions related to this blog. 

Until next time, have a good one, and keep on reading!

(For the record, I’d watch Barnyard over Cars any day. Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is better than both of them, though.)

Excuse the lack of pretense, but I’m ready to just dive right into this one! I think whatever I’ve got to say about the movie Barnyard is best left for when we get to the actual section about it. Most I can say for now is I certainly have more experience with its sequel series, Back at the Barnyard, which I remember Nicktoons had a downright obsession with playing at all hours of the day. Guess it was popular!

Feeling like Wild Mike tonight? You can read the full magazine here.

So the theme of the issue is print, huh? I guess they’re right: if it weren’t for print, we’d never have Nickelodeon Magazine! Not to mention I would be out of a blog!

If the war on drugs is ever revitalized and you are ever in charge of marketing material similar to this, I recommend keeping any fill-in-the blanks on your ads to a minimum. I’m certain that this box was met with more phallic doodles and Cool S’s than it was heartfelt proclamations against drugs. But since I’m a little more mature than that, I’ll play along.

There. I don’t drink because I know if the Aaahh!!! Real Monsters characters were real they’d be disappointed in me for it. Krumm told me that in a dream once.

Man, big things were happening in the world of Nickelodeon this year! Avatar: The Last Airbender was still riding high, Barnyard and Nacho Libre were in theaters, and we saw the premiere of Mr. Meaty (plus The Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour 2 and 3, but those aren’t in this issue)! All equally powerful stuff, and no, that’s not up for debate. 

Feel free to also note the fanmail, featuring all of the grave errors Nickelodeon Magazine got caught perpetuating in their previous issues, just like every other issue’s fanmail. Yep, nothing gets by these kids! I appreciate the crew was always willing to own up to their mistakes, but did they never get, y’know, drawings in the mail instead? Something like that? Younger me would’ve preferred those instead of reminding me the team behind Nickelodeon Magazine was only human, susceptible to making errors like anyone else. These guys made SpongeBob*! How could they ever be wrong!?

*Incorrect.

A nice surprise to see Yin Yang Yo!. I remember being obsessed with this show for a short time back when it was new on Toon Disney. Couldn’t tell you why since I don’t remember a lick of it now. I’m only mentioning it because of that little leaflet you might have noticed that’s very obviously obscuring the page…

Yeah! Turns out there’s a whole 6 page comic in here, just for this ad. That’s genuinely a really cool idea, and I can’t imagine it was cheap to print something like this. Still doesn’t exactly remind me why I like the show, per se (this writing is not for me), but I can respect some cool marketing when I see it.

Pretty star-studded Celeb Page this time around, I actually recognize everyone here! And the rather delicately generic questions being asked have just reminded me that this is a back-to-school issue. It was September after all, so I guess the “print” theme is a little more appropriate than I thought. 

If summer vacation is still relevant to the life of anyone reading this, do take a second to appreciate that the season has only just begun. Because, truly, there is no greater feeling I know than experiencing the advent of a breathtakingly liberating summer vacatio- hey! Bruce Willis is wearing an Over The Hedge hat in that picture! Cool!

Confusing little bit of cross-promotion here, if only due to the fact this Avatar: The Last Airbender-themed ad doesn’t actually use any Avatar terminology, or mention anything from the show really. Not willing to catch flying french fries with your mouth? Then sorry, you’re definitely a fire… kind of… guy. Legally we cannot call you a bender.

Other notable points about this Burger King ad: - Isn’t the name “The Extinguisher” way more fitting for a water-user than a fire-user? I think they may have mixed up the arrows there. - For some reason this 2006 ad is using a pristine hand puppet of their King mascot from the 1970’s. - Doesn’t have any picture of the advertised toys. Wonder if they were any good.

Bet you’ve never seen a full-page ad for one flash game before, huh? And neither have I, I think! I’m pretty sure this was still while Nickelodeon was trying to sell games through their “Nick Cash” system, where you could purchase computer games and digital items (for games like Neopets, when Viacom still owned it) via their online storefront Nick Arcade (not to be confused with the ‘90s game show of the same name). So yeah, if they were planning on making sales off of this, I guess I understand the big-time marketing.

I really like that you’re supposed to clip out the three tips they give you. Do the editors really think it’s that cumbersome to open up a magazine when you want to read something?

Awesome two-page spread of art from James “Jimmy” Yamasaki, who’s done tons of great freelance art for a wide variety of different magazines. If you want to take a look, he’s posted lots of his work on his Instagram.

Even if the activity is a little shallow, it’s nice to see something here that’s giving books a shoutout. With all the aggressive marketing these issues had for all the latest movies and TV shows, it’s still good to remind kids that literature is worth your time too.

Am I reading a little too deep into this? Maybe, but I think that means the activity is working.

Hey, this is pretty cool! And fairly educational at that. I could see this genuinely being useful for any kid looking to make their own comics, and font choice is a pretty important aspect you may not think about at first, especially when you’re younger. A fair bit of kids probably skipped this section, but hopefully it was helpful for someone. 

For some reason, Disney’s best idea for advertising their upcoming DVD releases was door hangers. I distinctly remember there being Lilo & Stitch 2 and Tarzan II-themed ads with the same gimmick, and I don’t get it. I guess it’s a way to increase the ad’s lifespan? Kids get to cut it out, and keep it hanging on their door knob for a couple days before their parents throw it away, so I guess everyone wins right? Well sorry Disney, my childhood bedroom didn’t even have a door knob. And guess who didn’t watch Brother Bear 2 either?

Another issue, another Comic Book. This time with an awesomely done cover by artist Souther Salazar (they’ve got tons of other colorful and creative work on their official website). Nice to see Impy make the front page in the top left there, too.

Alright before we get into it, I quickly want to talk about this. Did you know that some of the style guides (official documents that outline how a design should be represented) for different pieces of SpongeBob merchandise are available on the Internet Archive? 

I’ll give an example: see that yellow shirt on the top right, with the punk-looking SpongeBob and electric guitars? That shirt was just one part of a series of punk-themed SpongeBob SquarePants merch, and the people designing that series had to refer back to this style guide to make sure everything in the series looked consistent. It’s really cool because those guides often include all of the official illustrations that were used in the merchandise in high quality, alongside stuff like official logos and fonts.

Here’s a list of all the SpongeBob-themed style guides I could find on the archive:

Punk Art Guide

Icon Art Guide (Has anyone seen this art used for any merch? I haven’t and I’m really curious.)

SketchBob Art Guide

St. Patrick’s Day Art Supplement

Fall 2004 Apparel Guide

Bedtime Style Guide

The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie Style Guide

10th Anniversary Style Guide (The longest one, containing tons of official art, designs, and backgrounds)

The SpongeBob SquarePants Toolkit 2002

Bonus:

The SpongeBob SquarePants Sculpting Guide (contains 2D and 3D turnarounds of most of the main characters)

The Ren & Stimpy Show Style Guide

The Fairly OddParents Illustrator Guidelines

I could totally be alone in finding these so interesting, but hey, if you’re a fan of these characters, they might be nice to hold onto.

I may not have been much of an Avatar: The Last Airbender fan growing up, but I’ll be the first one to admit it’s one of Nickelodeon’s best-looking and well-animated shows. Seriously, some of those action scenes in particular were near movie-quality. 

This comic definitely keeps up the trend of great visuals, which shouldn’t come as a surprise considering the team behind it. Pencils and inks were done by Joaquim Dos Santos, who did storyboards and directing duties for seasons two and three of the show, and is currently co-directing Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and its sequel(!). Similarly, the colors were done by a long-time crewmember of the show, Hye-Jung Kim. Great stuff all around.

Well, this is unexpected! I know the Moomin series is popular with a lot of people, so it’s really cool to see it featured in the magazine here. I’m not really familiar myself, but I might have to check out more! This is as pleasant as it is funny.

Now, I don’t usually bring up the “Gag Station” pages in these retrospectives. It’s not on purpose, I just haven’t usually got much to say, but this time I actually wanted to point out the… oh… uh, what is that down there, is that another…?

Oh, it’s another one of these pull-out mini comics, like the YinYangYo! thing from earlier. Except this time with, y’know, Walmart mascots. Yeah, it’s a little less impressive when it’s done a second time, and with Walmart mascots I’ve never heard of before, and when it’s mostly just made up of pictures of clothes.

Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah.

The guy who made this, Johnny Ryan, went on to co-create Pig Goat Banana Cricket for Nickelodeon in 2015. Do with that what you will.

Here’s an odd piece of early 2000’s trivia: the ESRB had ads for itself! And not just in print either, but full on TV commercials. Those black-and-white letters were no longer content to sit idly by on the bottom left corners of the game cases; they were ready to make themselves known. In regards to print ads, there’s way more than just this one, and they all had their own characters and stories informing you why content ratings are just the bee’s knees. What I find most interesting about them is that they were made in collaboration with the artists behind Penny Arcade, a video game-themed webcomic that’s been running since 1998. Apparently in 2018, the ESRB and the Penny Arcade team worked together again to update the ads, but I’ve never seen one of these new ones in the wild. Hopefully we can get these revitalized before the next Mortal Kombat game. Don't want to risk another fiasco.

I think this section on unique books is pretty cool, I only wish the magazine team felt the same! Seriously, are we filling the story’s extra space with ads, or the other way around?

But yeah, pretty cool seeing both the smallest and largest books on Earth, even if those titles have probably been usurped by now. I was also quite curious about Shelley Jackson’s “Skin” project mentioned in the bottom right, and if you're just as curious, it was indeed finished in 2011 with a video featuring the full story and all its participants here.

Oh, and if you get a chance, that Voynich Manuscript thing they mention is available on Yale’s website. Those historians dudes are still looking for someone to make heads or tails of that thing. I think they might just be lazy, if you ask me.

Yep, I still love these calendars. I have to ask though, what’s so “pear” about September? I thought August was the start of pear season.

Also, wow, there’s a whole Wizard of Oz-themed festival in Chesterton, Indiana? I wonder what that’s like…

…

Only took us the whole issue, but we’re finally here at Barnyard! Or, what I’m just now realizing it should have been called, Funny Farm. Interestingly, the film had already been out for a month by the time they did this promotion, but maybe Kevin James was sick last month, I dunno. They’re really stretching for the questions here too, I mean c’mon, who cares if Kevin James likes the sounds of cowbells? I want to hear more about his… udder?

Good lord, they showed this to children…

Anyway, I personally didn’t see the movie when it came out, but like I said, they played Back at the Barnyard damn near constantly. I thought that show must’ve had a million episodes with how often Nickelodeon showed it off. 

I did eventually get around to watching the film, and I’m at least glad to know I wasn’t missing out on much. It’s not a particularly good film, and while it may have come from many of the same people that brought us Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius (including having the same creator, Steve Oedekerk), Barnyard lacks much of the imagination and charm that made that film so compelling. I wanted all of Jimmy’s inventions as a kid, but I can’t say I ever wanted to be a cow. 

Honestly, the most value Barnyard holds for me now is that it comes from that era of 3D animation I hold a fair bit of nostalgia for, where it was competent, but still ugly. Right next to films like Jimmy Neutron and Ice Age.

Lego Star Wars II! Clear off your calendars everyone, because I guarantee there’s nothing more important going on the day this game releases in the US. Nope, nothing. C’mon, you can make a sexy slave Yoda!

Well that sure was a Mother’s Day Edition of Nick Mag Highlights, was it not? Maybe I’ll think of a way to connect the holiday and Barnyard while I’m writing this outro*.

Thank you all for joining me, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Until next time, keep on reading.

First off, I’d like to apologize for the time since my last NMH post. I'm still trying to work out a proper schedule for this blog that makes sure I’m able to get these posts out at a consistent but manageable rate. Anyway, on with the show!

This cover is resoundingly familiar to me (yes, I dare even say nostalgic). 

It’s a classic bit of SpongeBob fare, which was indeed a largely familiar sight for Nickelodeon Magazine covers following SpongeBob SquarePants’ release and subsequent generation-defining popularity. For reference, 2009 saw the release of the show’s sixth season. Man, time flies!

Speaking of 2009, that was also the year that saw the unfortunate end of Nickelodeon Magazine in November. Being honest, that does sort of add a sad twinge to these issues for me, but I’ll set that aside for the sake of unbiased, uh, retrospecting! (Is that a word?) 

You can find the full issue here. Feel free to read along with me, if you’re so inclined!

Let’s see what’s on the menu today… Y’know I always get excited whenever the theme of the issue is something more on the oddly-specific side, like “Friends and Enemies”. You wouldn’t expect a whole magazine of content could be squeezed out of something like that, but that’s what makes it so interesting.

I’m most interested to see how stoic, harpoon-wielding Mr. Krabs ties into all this, especially with the theming. What do you think: friend or foe?

Holy moly, these credits couldn’t be more 2009 if they tried! Ah man, as fun as it was to make fun of Facebook moms back in the day (or, more specifically, watch Smosh make fun of Facebook moms back in the day), but funnily enough I think I now envy that sort of online innocence.

But forget about that! The Kids’ Choice Awards is nearly here! Actually, forget about that. There’s a new iCarly special coming out! Wait, no no no, forget about all of that! There’s a new episode of… uh, The Naked Brothers Band… coming out. Yay? On second thought, never mind, forget about that instead. The first two were way more exciting.

Woah, hey now! Aren’t we getting a bit ahead of ourselves here? The calendar was never this early on in any of the previous issues I’ve covered on this blog so far. I wonder what prompted the format change?

Speaking of change, I see they changed the instructions, too. I’m supposed to put this in a binder now? Who keeps a calendar in a binder? Besides, whenever I’ve had to use a binder for school or what-have-you, I’ve always had to use multiple binders. So I’d need a calendar for each binder, lest I be caught without a way to tell what day I’m even living in! This is madness!

Er, anyway, I can’t help but feel they might have been stretching for stuff to put in the March calendar this year. I mean, nothing against vitamins of course. Or even vitamin facts, for that matter! But I’m not sure they make the best calendar theme.

I would like to give a shoutout to this absolute fashionista on page 7 here. Sorry for all the 3D-printed BFF bling you’d have to make to properly steal her style.

Well isn’t this cute? But don’t let your guard down! It’s still just as much of a puzzle as any other puzzle… And when it comes to Nick that means it’s pretty easy, and this quest to spot the fake story is no different. 

Now I know I sound arrogant, but I will admit I wasn’t always such a whiz-kid! I’m pretty sure when I read this section back in the day I didn’t even notice it was supposed to be a puzzle, so I just took all these stories at face-value. Now, I’m smarter. Now, I can recognize a suspiciously flat, edited-in emu and can compare it to all the other dynamic and much harder to fake photos.

Now, I haven’t even actually checked the answer by the time of writing this, so maybe the fake story is actually the hamster and snake, who knows. I’d sure have egg on my face, wouldn’t I?

Call me crazy, but is that Homer Simpson and Bart in the bottom left near the trash can?

You know what I say, two pages spent on some Where’s Waldo?-style picture puzzle action is nary two pages wasted (I always say that). And this one’s a fun concept! I actually got distracted while writing this trying to find all the different situations that fit the BFF acronym. 

Now, I usually try to shed some light on the wonderful people responsible for Nick Magazine’s distinct art, but I’m actually hard-pressed to find much on Andrew Brisman, the artist behind these pages. Searching him online seems to just unearth a couple of gambling guide books written under the same name. And, regardless of whether or not that’s the same Brisman, I’m more interested in finding credits that are more relevant to what we’re talking about today.

So in that regard, the most I could find was that an Andrew Brisman did work as an editor on Dark Horse Comics’ Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Lost Adventures series. I’m inclined to believe that’s our guy, since a DeviantArt post from a former Nickelodeon Magazine editor indicates Brisman as previously working as a co-editor for an issue of Nickelodeon Magazine centered around the same show.

So yeah! Not every one of these artists is going to be so easy to find, but it’s nice to give credit where credit is due. I wish the best for Brisman, maybe he's doing something for those three new Avatar: The Last Airbender movies in development, eh?

I suppose this is a good way for kids to get the lowdown on all the famous media rivalries they probably already know about. I suppose the real engaging part is trying to figure out what the numbers on the Fight-o-Meter mean. 

Also, is it really necessary to spoil The Empire Strikes Back’s twist like that? I get it’s an old movie, but c’mon, there’s presumably kids reading who didn’t know yet.

I can’t be too critical though, since according to the website of the writer behind this section, she wrote this during an internship at Nick Magazine. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere!

Time for some pull-out pranks! Well, one prank and two small inspirational posters. It’s always weird for me whenever I’m reminded that old meme format in the top left used to just be a poster format people used regularly. 

And here we come across a beautiful cover done by the artist Theo Ellsworth to start off this issue’s Comic Book. If you’d like to check out more of his stuff, it seems your best venue is his Blogger site and Tumblr blog, although they’re seemingly no longer active.

Got to shed some spotlight on Scene but Not Heard once again. I may have brushed it off to the side in the last post but I think that’s a habit I picked up from childhood. Since this comic was so consistent I ended up glossing over it back in the day since I knew it was always going to be there. But in hindsight, that’s really not giving this comic and its creator Sam Henderson enough credit. It must not have been easy coming up with such entertaining, imaginative illustrations consecutively for more than fifteen years! Or maybe it was, I dunno. They’re funny either way.

(Also hello down there, Impy! Man, I love that little guy!)

Oh boy, time for another introduction! Grampa and Julie: Shark Hunters was a serialized comic created for Nickelodeon Magazine by Jef Czekaj, which ran from 1999 all the way to the magazine’s cancellation. It follows a young girl named Julie and her scientist Grampa as they do the, y’know, eponymous shark hunting. Mischief also ensues, I’m pretty sure. 

This comic wasn’t really one of my favorites growing up, and this incredibly wordy two-pager that’s really just setting up for a presumably much more action-packed installment next month isn’t really doing much to change my mind on that. But hey, maybe this is just a bad example. Shark Hunters still had (has?) its fans! The Letters to the Editors section of this issue actually includes a message from a reader begging for the return of this comic, as it apparently had gone on a short hiatus. I hope it was everything they wanted!

Now, that would be all, but there’s a bit more history to go over. In 2006, Klasky Csupo (the company behind Rugrats, The Wild Thornberrys, and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, among others) produced a ten-minute pilot based on Grampa and Julie: Shark Hunters, and pitched it to Nickelodeon as a potential series. As we know now, the pilot wasn’t picked up. But you can check it out here:

It definitely surprises me how much of a departure in art style and tone this is from the majority of Klasky Csupo's other projects, but I do appreciate them replicating the comic's memorable look. What also surprises me is the casting of Academy Award-winning actor Dustin Hoffman (Kramer vs. Kramer, Rain Man, Kung Fu Panda) as the voice of Grampa! It's definitely an unexpected choice, and it makes me wonder if he would've stayed on the project had the series actually gotten picked up. 

Coming up next is a nice little SpongeBob Squarepants comic. It’s fun to see Sandy and SpongeBob get competitive and the colors are quite nice. Not much to say, but hey, it's nice.

Eventually, due to the rising popularity of video games in the mainstream, Nickelodeon Magazine saw fit to start incorporating a video game-themed section in their issues to give the gaming populace what they wanted. From my memory, these usually consisted of cheat codes and tips, or sometimes a rundown on whatever new Nickelodeon games were coming out at the time. Here we’ve got ourselves a comedic writeup on how some video game characters feel about their best and worst players. It's a funny idea and the illustrations are nice, but I particularly can't get over the absolute verbal thrashing Mario gives to an 8-year old girl in the bottom left section. 

Also this just came to mind, but aren't all these characters essentially doxxing their players here? Let this be a lesson on why you should always read the Terms & Conditions.

See, I told you that we’d be seeing more SpongeBob in this issue! (Don’t fact check that). 

But yeah, 2009 minus 1999 is indeed 10, and Nickelodeon was all-in on capitalizing on their mascot’s milestone anniversary. This celebration eventually culminated in the premiere of an hour-long special episode titled Truth or Square, but on these pages here we can see an example of one of the off-shoot promotions also coinciding with the celebration.

Starting in March (for some reason) and ending at an unspecified month, Nickelodeon challenged fans with various SpongeBob-themed puzzles, available both in-print and online. The answers to these puzzles would then be utilized to unlock the password to a special “digital prize”. Now, I am having difficulty finding out just how long this promotion lasted for or what the digital prize even was, but I’m willing to guess it was a funky desktop wallpaper. If anyone knows anything about this challenge or the digital prize, I’d love to hear it! Feel free to send a message and I’d be happy to include an update on the blog.

And hey, even if this promotion is close to reaching its 15-year anniversary now, we can still appreciate the art for this issue’s puzzle, which depicts a scene similar to an episode from the show’s third season, “Clams”.

Pretty funny designs for this batch of contest submissions. Readers must have been drowning in anticipation during the seven month-long period between the opening of this contest in August of 2008 and the actual results here in March of 2009. I appreciate giving the kids all the time they need to hone their craft.

Got a favorite? I personally am quite fond of the Spikesicle, it definitely stands out amongst its slimy contemporaries. The Man-wich Sundae is pretty good too. I think it have wings?

Holy moly, Spectacular! And not just Spectacular!, but a tear-out poster and a backside that features everything you need to know about the members of the band and their real-life actors! This is so cool! 

…Wait, what the heck is Spectacular!?

Yeah, sorry, but this really is not ringing any bells. And let me remind you, I had this issue as a kid, so I must have read this at some point! I guess my young eyes must’ve just inherently glazed over when it happened upon teen bands. Sorry to any Spectacular! fans who may be reading.

Uh, hm… In regards to anything else to say on the subject… Let's see… 

That’s the girl from Victorious, isn’t it? Victoria Justice? She seems familiar, yeah… 

Ooh, look on the right! They’re making a show about the penguins from that Madagascar movie! Cool!

Holy moly, the Disrepectoids. Such a strange marketing stunt from the likes of a juice box brand ended up giving way to a very short-lived but incredibly memorable childhood fascination for me. Essentially the whole thing was based around these live-action commercials that each showcased a scenario of a kid beating up, destroying, or otherwise causing grief to their helpless Capri Sun juice pouch. Said kid would then pay the price by being turned into a freak called a Disrepectoid, with each kid sporting a different affliction based on the disrespect they gave their pouch. Here’s one of the first commercials, showcasing the origin of the Disrepectoid featured at the forefront of this page, Bobblehead Fred:

Never really understood how hitting a pouch with a baseball bat links with getting turned into a bobblehead. Shouldn’t he get a baseball bat head instead, or something?

This promotion also included a plethora of Flash games and online cartoons hosted on a dedicated website, featuring stylized renderings of the kids from the commercials. Capri Sun obviously wanted this to be a big deal, seeing as how this was a whole magazine page advertising the airing of a commercial. But hey, I bought into it, and to be honest I couldn't really tell you why nowadays. Maybe I just liked the artstyle? 

If you want an idea on how big I was into this, I could genuinely make a whole post just on these guys. Too bad they’re not a magazine!

Anyway, the whole thing lasted about two or three years I’m pretty sure, before Capri Sun shelved the concept and went back to being a drink for kids who play sports or something, I dunno. Still, for the short time it was around I found the Disrespectoids brand incredibly imaginative and engaging.

Another issue in the bag! It was fun doing another Nick Mag from my childhood. Hopefully it was fun to read, too! As might be able to tell, this was definitely a trip down memory lane. 

Anyway, in regards to my schedule. I was thinking of shifting to something bi-weekly (of the every two weeks variety, not twice a week). Take a look:

So yeah! Hopefully this will allow me to stay refreshed and still keep making stuff people want to see. This blog is already growing bigger than I would've expected and I've gotten nice feedback from people who appreciate Nickelodeon Magazine just like I do. I'm excited to see where this blog goes, and thank you to everyone who's here to see it! 

First let me say, I love this cover! It really surprises me that they didn’t feature more Nicktoons crossovers for cover art, it’s a fun idea. Dare I say it might be the only Nickelodeon Magazine cover featuring a crossover between different Nick shows? With original art, I mean. (The Jimmy-Timmy Power Hour and its sequels got their own dedicated issue covers but that's different, it doesn't count.)

Before we begin, just letting you know you can read the magazine along with me here.

Well, can you find which flavors are fake and which are real? 

Yep, the ones that sound fake… are fake! 

It’s a bit obvious isn’t it? If Gatorade had played their cards right they could have tripped everyone up and taken this as an opportunity to announce a new “Trout” flavor. Missed opportunity indeed.

I’d say we’ve got the makings of another winner issue here. There’s nothing like the excitement of an impending summer vacation! Although, if you were alive when this magazine was released, chances are summer vacation stopped being a thing for you a while ago. But hey, I say you're never too old to have fun! So grab your sunscreen, beach towels, and feel free to take any notes for when you’re making your summer plans. Let’s dive in!

A three foot long poster? Well I’ll be, I’m surprised there’s any space left in the box to fit the cereal! 

Little history lesson here for those unfamiliar: If you check the bottom right of the page, you’ll find mention of nickelOzone. nickelOzone was a short-lived hour-long programming block that ran on Nickelodeon from 1998 to 2000. Suppose this little cereal stunt was a means of promoting their new block? That might be even easier to figure out than the Gatorade puzzle.

Online sources say that nickelOzone played from Sunday to Friday (sorry, Saturday fans) from 8 PM to 9 PM, and was aimed towards an older, preteen audience. I’m not really sure about that though, since it seemed to just play shows from Nick’s usual lineup anyway, like Hey Arnold! for example.

Maybe checking out the bumper that would play to start off the block will shed some light on things.

… Nope, guess not.

Also no, I'm not going to say anything about the three-legged freak boy in the ad. Stop asking.

Gotta say, they’re already really selling me on the summer vibes. I appreciate using stuff like kayaking and carnivals to represent summer fun as opposed to the usual beach iconography. I don’t appreciate the closeup dog mouth picture as much.

That one question about the interviews Nick Magazine conducts is a bit interesting though, because I’ve also wondered how they get all their short responses, like for these kinds of sections:

Kudos to R.L. Stine for looking exactly like you expect he would.

Did they just send out questions en masse via email or letters, and publish whatever responses they got in time? I wonder if some of the actors’ agents or PR people ever answered on behalf of their client with on-brand responses because the actors themselves were busy. I know they’re just one or two sentences, but I wouldn’t be surprised if big actors have people to take care of little promotional stuff like this, even if they’re about answering personal questions. What do you think?

Alright, here’s a better question: Am I overthinking this?

I would really love to speak to someone who won or went to the same school as someone who won one of these kinds of giveaways. Y’know, one of these types where you win a party for your class or have a popular band come and do a concert in the gymnasium. That kind of thing. I wonder how they go about planning and executing that sort of operation. What if the school just says no? Maybe they just dump the prizes at your house.

I can’t say I expected something quite so pleasant out of a Nickelodeon Magazine, but I like it! I’d also like to give some appreciation to the late Joan Steiner and her series of Look-Alikes books for giving me my next aesthetic to obsess over. Oh, to be a little guy living in a world made of snacks and knick-knacks without a care in the world…

If you find the world of Look-Alikes as lovely as I do and want to see more, you can borrow it from the Internet Archive.

Now even if it is just a s’more turned green, this still is a cute way to personalize a famous summer snack. I mean, just take a look at these satisfied customers! 

(Ask your doctor if you think soggy green marshmallows are the right choice for your summer camping trips.)

Some of you might be familiar with this ad’s TV commercial counterpart, but Nick Mag readers were also obliged to find Banjo-Kazooie’s magic puzzle piece hiding in their grocery store’s usual Keebler goods. I find the choice to portray Banjo & Kazooie as mute, 3D freaks in a 2D world a little odd. Did they think kids wouldn’t understand the game was 3D if Banjo was illustrated, or something?

If you were even thinking about becoming your school’s #1 cool kid, you better do your research in amassing the components necessary to complete the Rugrats style. This is so crucial, Nickelodeon was even kind enough to give 500 kids the chance to snag chic baby merchandise to secure their high-end societal status. Oh yeah, the $10,000 grand prize is neat too, I guess. 

Excuse the weird aspect ratio, I had to edit the page slightly to make everything look neat for the picture.

In addition to gag product labels, Nick Magazine also used to be in the business of gag postcards. Ain’t that just the bee’s knees? I don’t recall Nick printing many of these back when I started reading in the 2000’s (I mean c’mon, postcards? Instant message me when they start printing gag emails, grandpa), which is unfortunate. I might’ve gotten more use out of these than a fake label for dental floss. There were very few times as a child where my friends were in close vicinity to dental floss, but they definitely all had mailboxes!

Jeez, what is this, the giveaway issue? Sorry Arnold, but I already just spent hours convincing my Mom to search for Banjo-Kazooie's magic puzzle piece and apply for a lifetime's supply of Rugrats pencils. Just be happy I bought your 3-foot long poster and move along!

Ah, is there any other activity more tried-and-true than the ever-popular maze? Between activity books and restaurant kids’ menus I think they may be more common than the word search at this point.

Interestingly, when also considering the Look-Alikes pages, I’m surprised by how straightforward this magazine is when it comes to crediting the artists of these activities (and with big, bold, differently-colored text, no less). Back when I was checking out issue #115 I had to head to the back of the book just to find some proper attributions! I wonder what changed between 1998 and 2005?

Speaking of which, Rodica Prato is still active in the industry to this day! You can find a lot of her works on her Instagram. She does tons of large, natural landscapes in a style very similar to this page here, give her a look!

Another Comic Book, coming up! I’ve actually got a lot to say about this one cause-

Oh, uh, I’m sorry! It seems I accidentally skipped an interview. Usually they don't make 'em as small as this… Hm, this is awkward…

Seriously, what's with the shortchange? Did they want to get Chevy Chase and when that fell through interviewing Beverly D'Angelo was Plan B? Sorry you weren't deemed full page material, Mrs. Griswold.

Alright, sorry, where were we? Right, let’s take a look at the Comic Book for this issue.

Starting us off, I actually got a lot of laughs out of the “Prankvertisement” on the left page, maybe the most I’ve laughed at any Nick Mag content since starting this blog! Convincing someone they mathematically don’t exist and having them immediately fade away, unable to even find a hole in the formula is so funny in such a ridiculous way to me. 

Also, I tried the activity on the right page. It’s kind of a fun idea, but it made me dizzy. I recommend it to anyone reading who might be deserving of such a fate.

Finally, another history lesson opportunity! The Southern Fried Fugitives was one of Nick Magazine’s first ongoing comics, and was pretty synonymous with the mag’s brand during their publication. It had been canceled sometime before the 2000’s, and while it's personally not the most appealing to me, I can see how its art and wacky premise factored into its longevity.

Eagle-eyed readers might have already spotted these strips underneath some of the pages. Like the similarly formatted Impy & Wormer, these are short gags slotted in the bottom of each page of the Comic Book in what’s probably the most effective use of empty space since that ship that got stuck in the Suez Canal. There’s more than what’s in my picture, but they all also follow the “[Thing] who is always stuck 10 seconds in the future” setup, so take a look if you’re really dying for more of those. 

These strips come from famous American illustrator Tony Millionaire, who’s probably most well-known for his Sock Monkey series of children’s books and the comic strip Maakies. He’s worked with DC & Marvel, done art for a They Might Be Giants album, and has produced a veritable mountain of independent work. On the Nickelodeon side of things, he recently did work on Boom! Studios’ Rocko’s Modern Life series of comic books. You can find him and his stunning work on Instagram.

So, after passing another edition of Scene but Not Heard and a short n’ sweet CatDog comic I haven’t got much to say on, we come across… Hey, I remember these guys! Funky & Miriam’s House of Random Words was a sort of comic/activity hybrid where readers were challenged to guess the right definition of the word the characters were using. These are fun! And they make a vocabulary virtuoso such as myself feel smart, in spite of the fact I’m reading a magazine for children.

Odd thing to end off the Comic Book with, don’t you think? Unless it ended earlier? I can never tell since they don’t actually say when the Comic Book is over, exactly. Anyway, I know how this sounds, but I would really appreciate some citations here! How can we be so sure that “monster obstacles” in minigolf only really started in the 1950s? 

Hm?

Really making kids put the work in here, huh? I feel like this might be one too many mazes above the average reader’s paygrade. Good thing kids can just turn the page or you would've severely handicapped your marketing.

Pages edited to show both the back and front.

This is a pretty fun idea for a prank, and I know as a kid I would’ve appreciated some way to liven up the road trip experience. A gag newspaper would’ve done the trick! Well, it sounds good on paper, but maybe not magazine paper. Yeah I feel like the crinkly texture of plastic-y paper might give away this one-page periodical as a phony before the prankee gets the chance to read it. Unfortunate, but what can you do? Statistically this prank must’ve worked at least one time.

Alright, I can usually handle Nickelodeon’s slime-based image and all the drippings that have come with it, but this actually makes me want to gag. The idea of cracking through the cold, hard exterior of a popsicle and unearthing a filling of thick, syrupy slop underneath is not really my idea of a good time. A quick look-up shows that these things do indeed have their fans, so maybe I’m missing grout- er, uh, missing out.

We’ve got our calendar for the issue here, and while I’m still not impressed by the calendar’s comedy, I do appreciate the wide variety of fun facts and celebrity birthdays. This is just another way for kids to gain little random pieces of knowledge, and I’m all for it! Kids love finding out random facts, it's like the fun version of learning.

This is a pretty good tutorial, and it actually teaches some important drawing tips, like breaking down figures into shapes and making outlines and temporary lines for guidance. Yeah it’s basic, but for a young audience, I give it a thumbs-up. Just like Arnold.

Oh, wow. This is genuinely some history in the making! It’s interesting to see the likes of The Fairly Oddparents and ChalkZone being mentioned before they and their creators became such hot topics. For those unfamiliar or forgetful, Oh Yeah! Cartoons was a Nickelodeon show that premiered in 1998. It was an anthology of sorts, with each episode featuring a couple of short cartoons created by various filmmakers in the industry. It ran for three years, spanning a total of 34 episodes, and like those other two shows I mentioned, it was where My Life as a Teenage Robot got its start. Cartoon Network had tried a similar format a couple years before Oh Yeah! Cartoons, with its own anthology show What a Cartoon!. That show gave us Dexter’s Laboratory, The Powerpuff Girls, Johnny Bravo, among others. Both shows were fantastic means of creating tons of new, varied content and spawning shows that are still beloved to this day. 

So yeah, needless to say, can we get another one of these kinds of shows, please? There’s only so many more reboots you can make, right? Right?

Time to wrap things up, and we’ve got the usual last-minute ads and gags, but I do want to talk about Hey, Herb!. This was a section where readers could write in to then-Nickelodeon president Herb Scannell and ask their burning questions. As you can probably tell though, the audience of elementary school kids reading Nickelodeon Magazine usually weren’t very sure on what to ask. So these sections tend to be pretty small. As Nickelodeon’s fourth president, Scannell oversaw the release of some of Nick’s most popular shows, including Spongebob Squarepants, Danny Phantom, and Avatar: The Last Airbender during his ten-year long stint. I’d love to ask him what that was like, but seeing as how this was before all that, I guess these are pretty good questions too. (He does kind of look like Jimmy Smits).

And with that, we put a lid on another rip-roaring edition of Nickelodeon Magazine. As per usual, I didn’t get to everything in the issue, just the stuff I had things to say about. Honorable mentions for this issue include some gag flyers for fake tourists traps (to go along with the gag truckstop newspaper), and the previously mentioned CatDog and Scene but Not Heard comics. KABLAM! fans might also be interested in checking out page #58 which includes an interview with Stephen Holman, the creator of the show’s recurring Life with Loopy segment.

In other news, Nickelodeon just celebrated its 44th anniversary two days ago! So, why didn’t I post this NMH then instead of today? Well… it was April Fool’s Day too, wasn’t it? Uh, April Fool’s?