My animorphs collection

This blog documents everything I can find regarding Animorphs merch, books, advertisements, contests, promotional materials, and web presence produced when the series was published from 1996-2001. About half is stuff I collected as a kid in the 90s and stuff I've more recently acquired ( /tagged/mine) and the rest are images from others (most from ebay or archive.org). If you have any pictures of merch/advertisements I haven't posted (minus the games and transformers) submit them to me and I'll post it!

[myanimorphscollection]

Form letter from K.A. Applegate that fans would receive after writing to her, circa 2000 (source)

The letter has the Animorphs logo in a blue gradient at the top and a light-colored background of the A logo on clouds.

The content of the letter makes it clear that at that time it was written, the Animorphs series had started its ending “arc” (starting with book 45) and fans knew that the series had a definitive end date because of info on the official site and fan sites.

In 1998, the letter to fans looked like this. There is also evidence of the existence of yet another fan letter, part of which can be seen here.

The letter reads: 

Dear Animorphs Fan:

Thank you so much for writing. It means a lot to me that you are such a big fan of Animorphs! Your support for the series is what keeps me going. Many of the questions I am asked are so detailed that I find it hard to answer them. Truth be told, I write Animorphs on the fly sometimes. I’ve definitely had a vision of the series and how it will end, but the story line is not set in stone. I take my surroundings and current events and imagine what it might be like for the Animorphs in those situations. I write about what’s important to me and what I think kids are interested in.

Inspiration for the books comes in many forms. I think humor is such an important part of life that I try to inject it into my characters. But the important thing to remember is that the Animorphs still deal with their problems head on. They take responsibility for their actions and accept responsibility when no one else wants it. That’s really important.

As you have probably guess from the official Web site on www.scholastic.com (as well as my buddies at morphz.com), Animorphs is ending. This series has been incredibly satisfying to me, and my fans have been so great. But I felt that the Animorphs series needed to come to a conclusion. I’m not going to tell you anything about the ending though (at least not right now). Surprises are another favorite of mine!

Thanks again for reading Animorphs and for writing. And I hope that you won’t be disappointed with the final book in the series. Remember, every ending is a chance for a new beginning.

Sincerely, 

K.A. Applegate

[myanimorphscollection]

Animorphs Know the Secret handprint beach towel, ©1998  (source)

According to the seller, it measures 30″x55″. I’m not certain, but I think this is the same towel that one could win in the ‘Animorphs Beach Sweeps’ advertised in the back of book #19. According to hirac delest, this towel is a “contest winner”. Also, the ad says “Actual design may vary” but the design on the towel is close to what is depicted in the ad. Apparently the first 1000 eligible entries would win a towel.

[myanimorphscollection]

Animorphs 1998 orange backpack with cheetah print inside (source)

The backpack exterior is orange with an Animorphs ‘A’ logo on the top, a zipper pull with ‘Animorphs’ written in the book logo font is attached to the zipper of the smaller pocket, and the inside of the backpack is a fuzzy cheetah print.

The tag says “Distributed Internationally by Nickelodeon” and “©1998 Viacom International Inc.” so this backpack could be considered promotional merchandise for the TV show, and the use of the word ‘International’ suggests this item was originally sold in countries other than the US, even though that is the location of the ebay seller.

[myanimorphscollection]

Hey I just wanted to say I love your blog! Quick Question, do you happen to have this cute selfie of the Animorphs cast (like the pic itself not with any of the magazine stuff around it), thank you so much for your time if you are able to respond!

The source of that pic is from my scan of that issue of Disney Adventures Magazine, and I've never seen the picture elsewhere. Disney Adventures had staff photographers who would photograph subjects like this for articles, so they would be the original source of the image. So, that's the best quality I have for now, although I actually own a better scanner now than I did when I first posted that so I could hypothetically get a slightly better quality image if I rescanned.

However, if you look closely at the article, you can see the photographer credited for all the photoshoot images in the article is Joe Pugliese. It's a bit of a crapshoot, but you could try contacting him and tell him you're a fan, and you never know, maybe he'd send you a better quality picture. From googling his name there are a few sites/accounts that could be him, and sometimes messaging people like this can work. The reddit animorphs mod got a few people to do AMAs that way. So, good luck if you decide to try that!

[ihatetrashcans]

Hey y’all. I’m currently reading book 43. I came across this website, so of course I’m going to look it up. It is currently just an empty page occupied by one of those domain-buying companies.

Do any of you know if that site used to be anything?

[myanimorphscollection]

www.EarthIsOurs.com didn’t used to be anything official, but a fan did put content on the site once: 

https://web.archive.org/web/20010721153000/http://www.earthisours.com/

This was made by the same fan that created the fan site Monster’s Animorphs site (MAS), which at one point could be found at the url animorphs.org. That site was very helpful to me in finding old pics/info about the Animorphs franchise, merch and anything else.

[myanimorphscollection]

@bluebraviarygirl (about)

I submitted requests to tumblr regarding these posts:

https://myanimorphscollection.tumblr.com/post/162093619940/the-back-cover-of-the-us-edition-of-the-hork-bajir

https://myanimorphscollection.tumblr.com/post/161322359137/marco-character-card-found-in-the-uk-edition-of

Weirdly, I can’t see these posts in my browser on my desktop, but I was able to see them in tumblr app and make the requests to de-mark them nsfw. This is confusing to me because my understanding is that when tumblr marks a post nsfw, the blog author is supposed to be able to see the post even if followers can’t. Maybe I’m missing something. 

The following post I can’t seem to find:

https://myanimorphscollection.tumblr.com/post/156984728809/high-res-pictures-of-a-particular-style-of-stock

I actually can’t remember what this post was about, so I’m not sure what to search for, and any searches I do conduct don’t turn up anything. Do you have a link to a reblog on someone else’s tumblr? At least being able to see the text I’ll know what to search for.

Regarding the Rachel character card, I own it as well as the MM#1 card which I haven’t yet posted, maybe I’ll get around to scanning and posting those cards.

And, if anyone else has links to any other of my posts incorrectly marked nsfw (since absolutely nothing on this blog is nsfw, on purpose, unless naked fictional aliens are too nsfw for tumblr but not too nsfw for scholastic to publish on the covers of children’s books!), please send me the links and let me know and I’ll try to request that tumblr unmark it as such.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Bookbinder here: The official Animorphs fonts are called 1979 and Euristile. I have uploaded them to the Animorphs Facebook group.

You are a gift to us all!  Thank you.

[sarifel-corrisafid-ilxhel]

I just looked these up. 1979 is the Chapter Title font, I think, and Euristile (Eurostile?) is used for where it’s like “THE CONCEPT K.A. Applegate” on the cover. I think the text itself is usually in Arial. The Title Font looks very similar to 1979 but there are differences in both the character widths and the embellishments on the letters, e.g. the Title includes the middle bar of the capital R pushing through the vertical stroke, but the font 1979 doesn’t include that feature.

Compare:

So yeah. 1979 is used in the books, and it’s the clear inspiration for the title font, but it’s *not* the title font. Numerous fans have come up with a font based on the book titles that does a better job of recreating them. My favorite is called Escafil.

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Waaaaaiiiitt. Euristile is Eurostile? That’s the font I use for 100% of my slides, and I picked it for no other reason than “this looks nice to me.”

[lilacnothlit]

Ooh! Ooh! I got this. First post got buried, trying this again.

Logo, Chapter Initials: Ramiz, by Greg Samata. Same guy and same font family as 1979. It’s been artificially condensed, which is why the horizontal lines are thicker in the logo.

Titles and headers: Eurostile Bold Extended, Aldo Novarese. Normal Eurostile is too square. (Fun fact, it’s actually supposedly pronounced “Euro-STEE-lay.” Those wacky Italians.)

Body is NOT Arial narrow! That would be too easy.

They look so similar, but look at the upper and lowercase G, the Q, the leg of the uppercase R and the 7, the subtle thrust of the shoulders, the C curve in the bowl of the lowercase a, and the angle of the S.

It’s News Gothic, by Morris Fuller Benton.

And the others:

The Andalite Chronicles font - Citizen Light, Zuzana Licko.

The Hork Bajir Chronicles font - Totally Gothic, Zuzana Licko again.

Visser - Flexure, Stephen Farrell. I can’t tell who distressed this font, but you can probably make it yourself - this is clearly the base, though, and was used on a lot of merchandise.

Ellimist Chronicles font - Tema Cantante, Eric Lin

Various bits of Merchandise - Arbitrary, Barry Deck

And this one, that’s Gill Sans on the left, by Eric Gill (YSh), and Template Gothic, the ninetiesiest font of all, by Barry Deck for the list.

But for the life of me, I can’t figure out what that distressed Gothic “Know Your Threat” typeface is. I welcome anyone who has a better idea.

City, Triplex, Platelet and Lunatix are some other 1990s typefaces that may have the vibe you want. Happy hunting!

[jenroses]

If I was on my Windows 98 computer at work 23 years ago I could tell you the know your threat font in about 20 seconds but that font set has been out of my life for a couple decades. It was popular for X-files stuff.

[lilacnothlit]

Update! Thanks to @kindigo we have the Know Your Threat font.

A shame it’s not an ad for book 27, because it’s literally called Crackhouse.

Go now in peace, to love and serve the type.

[myanimorphscollection]

To add to this, here is the Font page from the Animorphs Style Guide: 

This list is obviously incomplete, but it includes the info that both Eurostile Extended Two Regular Bold and Eurostile Regular Bold were used. Also, Template Gothic as mentioned above. The other fonts on this page are Reactor FB (Derelict and Degrading), Graham - Regular Bold, Escalido - Streak Gothic, Franquadrat - Medium, Acid - Sans, and Acid-Serif.

[myanimorphscollection]

@bluebraviarygirl​ can you send me what posts are tagged as adult? I’m not sure how to find that out myself and I haven’t noticed this so far.

[wizardjpeg]

on my way to TARGET

[funnycommercial]

This painting is “The Subway Wizard” by David Burroughs Mattingly, for the cover of the September 1991 edition of Amazing Stories

[myanimorphscollection]

I love that this painting was done by the Animorphs cover artist, but most people reblogging probably don’t know that.

[myanimorphscollection]

Not to say anything terrible but are you still running this blog?

I’m around but I’m focusing on other things at the moment. I do want to get back to updating this blog, but I’m not sure when that will happen. I do have a lot of things I could post. If anyone has a question or specific request for a photo of something, I can answer that.

[myanimorphscollection]

1999 Animorphs T-shirt made by Winterland (source)

[myanimorphscollection]

Animorphs Puzzle original artwork (source|archive)

Original Art for Animorphs puzzle and package cover. Acrylic on 2 ply Strathmore archival paper. Double thickness acid free white matt. Image size is 12.5" x 17". 

This listing reveals that the artist who drew the puzzle artwork is Rick Grayson, who I haven’t seen credited for this anywhere else. Grayson also drew the artwork for this Goosebumps game. My scans and pictures of the four animorphs puzzles can be found here. 

[chlorentine]

andalites most of the time: no disrespect but literally fuck all species other than us

andalites when they meet a sexy alien: oh fuck *nothlits*

[andaliteful]

I didn’t know I needed this in my life until now.

[myanimorphscollection]

Ad for the UK Animorphs books series, found in the inside back cover of Goosebumps UK edition #57, circa 1998.

[myanimorphscollection]

UK Animorphs bookmark, with quote from author K.A. Applegate on the back (source)

[myanimorphscollection]

Animorphs ‘Everything Changes’ Post-It notepad, 1998 (source)