I started collecting movie posters in the late 1990s, but even years before as a little kid was interested in them. Back then, I used to cut the ads for movies out of the newspaper and collected them in a scrapbook. And on Sundays these were ads printed in COLOR too. Bonus! In the mid-1990s I started going to comic book conventions where I was first exposed to actual movie posters where dealers were hawking them. I think, though I could be wrong, that the first poster I ever bought was the poster for Starship Troopers. (In my memory the first poster I ever bought was for Saving Private Ryan, though that movie came after Starship Troopers, so my memory is probably a liar.) I do still sometimes buy movie posters but not like I used to.
Last weekend I was surfing the net and came across The Pat Cave that had loads of photos from comic book conventions in the late 1990s to early 00s. A few photos in this collection were movie poster booths that caught my eye since they show almost exactly what I remember being sold at the first few comic conventions I went to.* It’s also interesting to see just what was “in” pop-culture-wise back then too.
In the first photo The Matrix and Austin Powers have prominent spots high on the seller’s wall. Funny how big Austin Powers was at the turn of the last century but is mostly a footnote today. It’s interesting too how there’s an Iron Giant poster for sale too for a great movie that almost no one saw on release.
The second photo shows a bit more of a hodgepodge collection of posters. There’s the full Saving Private Ryan poster here — the one I have is the much better teaser poster with no heads in the clouds that’s still one of my all-time favorite movie posters — along with a few Buffy the Vampire Slayer posters too. The X-Files, another gigantic pop-culture phenomena back then also gets a few posters too, though I’m surprised that they’re also not selling The X-Files movie poster as well since that would have been out at the same time with Ryan, Blade and There’s Something About Mary.
*The very first movie posters I remember seeing at the first ComiCon I went to were of the teaser for Apollo 13 and, oddly enough, Doctor Who and the Daleks.
