Ghostbusters Collectables Book Review

This month sees the largest collection of Ghostbusters books ever released since...well, probably EVER! In addition to those we've already covered (or will cover soon) here on Spook Central, today (June 15th) you can get your hands on one more. Amberley Books is releasing Ghostbusters Collectables, written by Matt MacNabb (webmaster of the Ghostbusters Collector website), with brief foreword by Dan Aykroyd (maybe you heard of him). The 96-page paperback is a pictorial look at the various Ghostbusters merchandise released over the past 30+ years, including Filmation's. You can order/pre-order your copy at Amazon or where ever books are sold.

Fellow Spook Central staff member Matt Jordan is tackling review duties on this one. As the person responsible for the overwhelming majority of the Ghostbusters merchandise articles at the Ghostbusters Wiki, he's far more suitable for reviewing the book than I am. So, without further ado, here's Matt's review...

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Where to begin... This book seems to have a bit of a identity crisis. "Ghostbusters Collectables" sounds like it would be a collectors magazine type thing, or so I would have gathered. I was expecting average sales prices on the market for items and noted problems and variants. Well, none of that was found here. This book overall is more like a snapshot of a collection with some text explaining what things are. The book was promoted with the Dan Aykroyd foreword, which felt short and general in nature. Also, it took up less than half a page of the book, leaving half a page of blank white space.

If there is one positive to be noted, it is that the pictures are of decent size and quality in most parts of the book. However, text wise, get ready for three or four lines per picture noting only the most obvious things; trivia and facts are really far and few. Towards the end of a given section, the pictures begin to get a bit random and are placed in the book without much logic or thought.

Some item product lines feel ignored while others get a lot more focus. One clearly neglected line being Mattel/Matty Collector, which got two pages, with one page worth of the section being the Retro-Action Real Ghostbusters dolls. There was photo of two 6-inch toys, and only a summary of the line. Funko on the other hand, got two pages and noted pretty much all of the normal Funko toys and included promo images for each. To me as a reader, this suggests that Funko's line was more significant than the Matty Collector line. Also, the book doesn't mention the prop toys Matty made.

Ultimately, this book has some inconstancy, lacks organization, and feels thrown together. It would be okay for a new fan or someone that wanted a taste of what the Ghostbusters merchandise looks like. But this book is not really good for folks that are collecting.

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Since this book is more image-heavy than text-heavy, it seems only fitting to show you a small sampling of preview page images.