DEAR ADAM,
WATCH OUT FOR GHOSTS.
LOVE, IAN
-Letter from one 5-year-old to another Most mornings, the minute he awakes, 5-year-old Adam Minear becomes a Ghostbuster, right in his Evanston bedroom, strapping on his ghost-zapping Proton Pack-his school backpack-over his pajamas.
”I`m not afraid of anything because I`m a Ghostbuster,” he declares.
Adam`s friend Matthew Yemma prefers the Ghostbuster stories he makes up at night to his favorite books these days, the most recent story being a complicated tale about President Reagan calling on the Ghostbusters to get rid of ghosts in the White House. Matthew set the locale after his dad returned from a business trip to Washington.
Last Sunday, Adam Minear`s friends were initiated as ”official”
Ghostbusters at his birthday party after a spirited playground ghost hunt. Creative Parties, in Northbrook, which provided the entertainment, is averaging five Ghostbuster-oriented parties a weekend since the parties were introduced at a parent`s request a few months ago.
”Absolutely, the phone is ringing off the hook (about the partiesl,”
owner Laurie Cohen said.
In Maplewood, N.J., Christopher Cariello, 5, uses the toy sword he got at the circus to bust the ghosts in his house.
”In our area, you`d be pretty out of it on the playground if you didn`t know who the Ghostbusters were,” said his mother, Marjorie.
Across the country, pint-sized, mostly male Ghostbusters are busy from morning until night hunting for ghosts and zapping them, in their bedroom closets, on the playground, even in school. Their play is inspired by a Saturday morning cartoon show, prompted by the hit film ”Ghostbusters.”
”It has captured (young children`s) imaginations,” said Ellen Wartella, a University of Illinois communications professor who studies the impact of television on children and has a young ghostbuster in her home in Champaign-Urbana.
”It`s really hot.”
The idea of ”good guys” getting rid of monsterlike characters appeals to young children, who harbor all kinds of fears and are struggling to overcome them, child-development experts say.
”The Ghostbusters get the monsters in my room at night, Matthew Yemma explains matter-of-factly.
”That`s why I like them.”
Ghostbusting began with the comedy ”Ghostbusters” in 1984, one of the top money-making films ever, which grossed more than $230 million at the box office. In it, a group of zanies, led by out-of-work parapsychology professors, battled ghosts and spirits that threatened New York, among them a skyscraper-sized Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. The group started the ghostbusting business after losing a research grant.
There were wise guy Peter Venkman, played by Bill Murray, the ad hoc leader; Egon Spengler, a cool scientific genius portrayed by Harold Ramis; Ray Stantz, the most enthusiastic member of the group, played by Dan Akroyd;
Winston Zeddmore, the practical one who joined later, played by Ernie Hudson; and Janine Melnitz, the wise-cracking office manager, played by Annie Potts.
Using sophisticated equipment to detect and capture the ghosts, the Ghostbusters also battled federal bureaucrats and emerged as folk heroes to the citizens of New York.
Following the success of the film, Columbia Pictures, which held the rights to the concept, commissioned an animated version. Produced by DIC, an animation company, the cartoon series went on the air in fall, 1986. A tie-in toy deal was negotiated with Kenner Products while the program was being developed. Both have been stupendously successful.
”The Real Ghostbusters” is ABC`s top-rated Saturday morning cartoon (it airs at 9 a.m. on Channel 7 in Chicago), and Real Ghostbusters toys are among the best-selling toys in the nation, with stores such as Toys R Us selling them out as fast as they are put on the shelves, a spokesman for the toy chain reported.
”The rate of sales has far exceeded any expectations,” said Jim Block, Kenner`s marketing vice president. He declined to give specific dollar figures, but industry analysts say that the toy line has generated sales in the $50 million range, and they expect that figure to increase.
The television show also is syndicated and sold to local stations throughout the country, which show it in the afternoon. It is the second-highest rated syndicated cartoon, according to a Columbia Pictures
spokesman. (”Duck Tales,” about Donald Duck`s nephews, ranks first, he said.)
The cartoon rather than the film has led to the craze, according to those who monitor such trends. The craze has become so pervasive that many children are introduced to Ghostbusters on the playground, not on television, parents say.
Only after they have been playing the game have many children discovered the cartoon and the toys.
The Saturday morning version is so popular-3 million children watch it-that ABC recently expanded the cartoon to an hour from 30 minutes.
A spinoff series is in the works for fall, featuring the popular Slimer character created for the cartoon. He is the lovable green ghost who has become the Ghostbusters` pet.
Among some members of the playground set, ghostbusting has become an immediately understood language. One recent afternoon, two 4-year-olds met for the first time on a playground in Evanston. One mentioned Ghostbusters, and without so much as a hello, the two launched into a spirited search for ghosts.
”When a child says, `Do you want to play Ghostbusters?` everybody knows what they`re talking about,” said Vivian Paley, a teacher at the University of Chicago Laboratory Nursery School and the author of several books on young children`s play.
”It`s a theme that can organize a group instantly.”
Many young children are not interested in Ghostbusters-some are afraid of the idea, parents say-but the dedicated ones ”call headquarters” on their toy telephones for ghost-hunting assignments and ask parents and neighbors to let them know if they happen to see any ghosts around.
These young ghostbusters may race around the playground shrieking,
”We`re the Ghostbusters! Get the ghosts!” or they may quietly stalk their homes, enlisting siblings in the search.
Adam Minear may be one of the Chicago area`s most committed Ghostbusters. He is always chasing ghosts. In the middle of his bedroom he has at least two dozen Ghostbuster toys, from small plastic figures of the original characters, to their converted firehouse headquarters to ECTO-1 (the vehicle in which they chase ghosts), to models of the ghosts themselves, to a ghost zapper, which projects on walls ghostly images that then can be zapped.
Adam says he would rather play Ghostbusters than eat ice cream or even play baseball. He is learning to write and so far can write his name and ECTO- 1.
”Ghostbusters never get hurt,” he explains seriously. ”They only get slimed (by the ghosts).”
Harold Ramis, who starred in the film, is not surprised by the phenomenon.
”We really thought if the film worked, it would become a cultural phenomenon,” he said from his office in California.
”There`s a message in it: Kids are afraid of ghosts, and this reduces ghosts to the mundane level, like exterminators getting bugs. I thought maybe kids could come away from it not feeling as helpless or as intimidated as before.”
Ramis noted that when he was a child, he and his friends played out Westerns and war movies on the playground.
”I`m glad they`re not playing war games,” he said.
Paley and other experts explain that children always have adapted characters from television and before that, radio, films and books for their play. There were the Lone Ranger, Zorro, Superman and Batman, ”Star Wars”
and most recently, He-Man and the other characters from the cartoon ”Masters of the Universe.”
He-Man, parents and teachers said, largely has been shoved aside by the Ghostbusters.
”Nothing could eclipse He-Man until Ghostbusters,” said Wartella, of the University of Illinois.
”My son has a basket full of He-Man things he never touches,”
Christopher Cariello`s mother noted.
”He has three little Ghostbuster guys and the vehicle, and he and his friends play with them nonstop.”
Regardless of the character-of-the-moment, young boys in particular are attracted to superheroes.
”It gives them a sense of power over their environment,” explained Althea Huston, a University of Kansas professor who is codirector of the Center for Research on the Influence of Television on Children.
Research indicates that boys are more likely to be more captivated by cartoon programs than girls, but the researchers have not determined why, she said.
”I don`t think it`s necessarily bad,” she said, referring to the way children embrace these characters. ”The real question is whether they are using their imaginations.”
The issue that does trouble researchers and children`s advocates is how Saturday morning cartoons sell toys. ”Masters of the Universe” has been a particularly successful example of this genre, in which a cartoon is created solely to sell a toy line, Wartella said.
Legislation to curb this practice by limiting the advertising on children`s shows was introduced recently in Congress.
But while the Ghostbusters cartoon clearly is fueling toy sales-Kenner is doubling the line this year to almost 40 different toys-it is not considered
”toy-driven” programming by some who monitor the field.
”We don`t knock Ghostbusters,” said Peggy Charren, who heads the Action for Children`s Television advocacy group.
”It started as a movie, and that`s different than something starting as a toy concept, where the whole point of the program is to pitch the product.” Nursery school teachers and parents also find Ghostbusters less objectionable than some of the other characters that generated enormous popularity, among them, He-Man, the cartoon character who used his superpowers to battle other creatures with evil powers.
”There`s nowhere near the same aggressiveness as in He-Man,” said Sue Mullen, who teaches at Covenant Nursery School, in Evanston. She explained that at times she would have to stop the He-Man play because the boys were getting too wild and hitting each other.
That kind of overly aggressive play does not seem to happen with Ghostbusters. Nor is it a case in which the class nerd is designated by the others to play the bad guy. In Ghostbusters play, everyone can fight the invisible ghosts.
”I don`t see a lot of hurt feelings with Ghostbusters,” Mullen said.
”I see this as lighter, more enjoyable, more fun.”
Said Adam Minear`s mother, Sharel, ”In a year they`ll be into something else.”
