Its another week for the League of Extraordinary Bloggers. If I didn’t miss anything last week while in the hospital (not my best work but I made it) then I’m definitely going to post something while I’m at home. Granted, with a newborn but still home. So what is this week’s assignment?
Bootlegs, knockoffs, and third-party products.
Its the second and third options there that throw me off. I read a lot of other sites and I’m seeing some great action figure knock offs plus so many other products. However, I don’t have any personal stories in that world. Not for lack of trying, but there just aren’t shops in my area with such items.
However, I can be all over the Bootlegs if I expand the definition and idea behind this article a little.
In the infant (always on my mind) days of the internet I became obsessed with finding out wrestling news. Results, spoilers, backstage news — all of it. There were quite a lot of sites that were gone for a day then abandoned, or full of pop ups and spyware. Through it all though there would eventually be some ads that demanded attention.
See not only was this the early days of the internet, but so early there was no YouTube. No streaming services, hell it was entirely possible you wouldn’t be able to find pictures of your favorite celebrities’ crotches.
But here were ads for tape traders. Offer a video tape that you have, or if you’re lucky send some cash and the videos would be sent your way.
I fell in love with so much wrestling thanks to this.
For real, this is what my room looked like. Plus two VCRs attached to the TV. Anyone, anyone who was into wrestling at school became my friend. I had to build up a collection. WWF, NWA and soon ECW were easy to get. But that one transfer student who may have had something from Calgary, or Memphis — he would be a gold mine.
Now technically these are all bootlegs but I make the argument that they are also all legal. Bootleg would imply I am taking money away from the copyright holder. If WWF/WWE doesn’t release an episode of Tuesday Night Titans nor WCW putting Clash of the Champions out on monthly VHS its not my fault to copy copies of copies so I have them in my own private collection.
This obsession went on for nearly 20 years. I have notebooks stacked up at my Mom’s house full of what takes place on every single video tape. I gave up naming them and relied on numbers. Just too damn many.
It wasn’t until getting married, paying rent and all that other adult stuff before I agreed that things may have gotten out of hand. Really, the thing that pushed it over was fellow site UnderScoopFire. One of their podcasts opened up with the audio of Demolition members Ax and Smash entering the WWF Royal Rumble as entrants 1 and 2, then beating the hell out of each other. Just hearing the audio was enough to get me excited. I wanted to watch this match.
So I went to YouTube.
I had the video, I knew where it was. Yet I couldn’t bother to get up and dig it out. That was all the reason I needed to get rid of that collection. The only ones I saved were the ones bought from stores. Yup, all the bootlegs are gone.
There really was nothing like it, but in 2013 and beyond digital is the way to go.
So what is the rest of the League saying?
