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Are you a Gladiator?


HarmonicGenerator

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I saw this Buzzfeed article of 34 Facts You Probably Didn't Know About Gladiators the other day, and it got me all nostalgic. So nostalgic, in fact, I decided I needed to start a thread to reminisce about Gladiators.

 

 

I fucking loved Gladiators in the 90s. It was a Saturday night fixture. Watched every episode, even when it started to go a bit shit and all the best Gladiators had gone.

 

This lot (plus the great referee John Anderson and his whistle) were the best group of Gladiators. Every one of them a fucking megastar in my eyes, even Trojan who was definitely a bit shitter than the rest of them:

 

o-GLADIATORS-facebook.jpg

 

I could still name you every one of this bunch. Warrior was my favourite, then probably Cobra. Wolf was the greatest antagonist of the decade, and Shadow was frightening even without knowing what was going on to make him suddenly disappear from the line-up. Once you started getting the likes of Rhino and Ace and whatever Eunice's Gladiator name was, it just wasn't the same.

 

 

Anyway, it wasn't just the programme. I had the toys - they replaced the Hasbro shaped space in my heart - and the backpack for school, and the annual (which I expect I still have somewhere), and the soundtrack cassette ('When the Going Gets Tough' and 'Unbelievable' still automatically make me think of this tape). They had some good merchandise. Well, it probably wasn't all that good but nostalgia tells me otherwise.

 

My sister and I would enact the events in our hallway. Gauntlet was the easiest to do, grab a couple of sofa cushions as weapons and stop the other person from getting past. I think cushions also doubled as pugil sticks. I'd have loved - would still love - to have a go at the events. If there was Kickstarter talk of doing a Gladiators thing like there was for the Crystal Maze a while ago, I'd chip in. I'd be awful at all of them, the Travelators would destroy me, but I'd at least like a go, even if the only appeal of the high-climbing ones was to get to jump/fall back a really long way and land on the massive crash mats. 

 

We even got to go to a taping once. It was an 'International Gladiators' so it wasn't the proper thing, really, and we were in the very very back row of the arena, and TV tapings are bloody boring because it's 90% setup, but we got those foam hands so it wasn't all bad.

 

 

The 2000s remake was shit. The most notable thing about it was that it launched Magnus' career (sort of), and he'd have probably got to TNA at some stage anyway. I think what I didn't like about it was that the new bunch of Gladiators were just too good. The contenders never fucking won anything, I swear there were episodes where they all scored zero. At least the classic bunch did the job sometimes. Fuck you, Spartan, and your Randy Orton pose ripoff. At uni, we rejected the new version and just watched the classic episodes on Challenge instead. 

 

 

Saracen was visiting my work with a charity group last year. I was totally starstruck but nobody of my generation was working that day so I had nobody with which to share the fact that "it's bloody SARACEN OFF GLADIATORS". I had to get a photo with him. He still wears his Gladiators fleece out and about. He's very tall.

 

 

All that said, anyone else a Gladiators fan? Favourite events, Gladiators, moments, merchandise? How many of those 34 facts did you already know? Who was better, Fashanu or Guscott? Most importantly, who did you prefer: Jet or Lightning? 

 

 

(The correct answer's Jet, obviously)

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Loved the Gladiators. I did this thread a few years back, so I'll just re-post my initial post.

I've been sorting out a load of shite old videos tonight and I came across (literally in the case of Jet) a episode of Gladiators with "DONT TAPE OVER" on it, which I taped years ago when I was just a kid. Watching it, just reminded me how big the show was. Was anyone into this show as much as I was? It debuted in about 92/93, so it might have piggy backed on the WWF fad that was going on over here at the time. WWF seemed to die out in about 93, and Gladiators became massive. There were some cracking characters on it. Wolf was always a laugh. Shadow was the Goldberg of the duel round. You had Ulrika and Fash, and a bunch of dopey jacked up perm headed Glads.

 

You couldnt get moved for the shit in the town as well. There was figures, annuals, videos and all the stuff that the WWF had hoped on in the early 90s when that hit big. When we were in Junior school, we'd play on the big blue gym apparatus and pick our favourites. Since there was no fat Gladiators with basin haircuts, I had to use my imagination somewhat. They brought it back as well, but it was shite. It gave us Magnus and Mason Ryan though.


Oh, and a funny thing happened years ago as well: when doing panto, during the height of the shows popularity, Shadow bought a fridge from my brothers work in Sunderland and asked if they could deliver it to his house in the South somewhere (I forget the location). Even as a kid, I wondered why he was so desperate to buy a fridge at the other end of the country.

 

Here's a link to the old thread. If anyone wants to see the old posts.

https://ukff.com/topic/128944-gladiators-it-was-alright-wasnt-it/

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I was in the fan club back in it's heyday. I never remember asking to join so i think i was bought in as a gift. It was by far my favorite thing on TV at the time, they were real life superheroes.

 

The thing that sticks out in my mind the most about it though is the night Shadow lost on Duel, it hit me hard, i was devastated. I genuinely thought he unbeatable and i loved him for it.

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I had The Wall playset you hooked the figures in (still got a few knocking about) and cranked them up and they'd stick on with magnets. It was brilliant. I was in the Wolf fan club as well. Yeah, the revival was quite hit and miss. I reckon they acted too quickly given how soon it was after the American Gladiators reboot started. Though I enjoyed the Legends Specials where the old Gladiators took on the new ones. I thought that was great. I met Inferno from the revamp a few years ago after it got axed so Sky could fund some rubbish sitcoms. Got her autograph on the DVD they did of Season 1 highlights.

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I had loads of the American Gladiator toys but my favourite memory was the fizzy drinks they used to make.  I used to go to a football club at the local community centre on a Friday night and afterwards I'd get a lukewarm pie or sausage roll and one of the drinks.  I think they had a couple of flavours one with Wolf and one with Jet.

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I had loads of the American Gladiator toys but my favourite memory was the fizzy drinks they used to make. I used to go to a football club at the local community centre on a Friday night and afterwards I'd get a lukewarm pie or sausage roll and one of the drinks. I think they had a couple of flavours one with Wolf and one with Jet

I like how you denote the different flavours by there being different Gladiators on the bottle. Were there different flavours, or was it just Wolf Flavour and Jet Flavour?

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Wolf and Jet flavour fizzy drinks available here (sorry, sold out of Jet)

 

I'm seriously worried that the implication here is that lads were buying loads of soft drink specifically to spaff over a can.

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Wolf and Jet flavour fizzy drinks available here (sorry, sold out of Jet)

 

 

I'm seriously worried that the implication here is that lads were buying loads of soft drink specifically to spaff over a can.

The much more disgusting implication was if the drinks literally tasted like the two gladiators Wolf might not be very popular.

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