I've never read a single Berenstain book, I've never seen Moonraker, i'm not too jumbled up over common misspellings, disproportionately printed world maps, and movie misquotes that became heavily paraphrased over the years. etc etc etc.
But this one bums me out.
I thought i was a big BTTF fan before I learned about this...ugh, I won't get into it.
When i discovered this blue and white VW van scene I didn't freak out at all. I was initially excited, because I naturally assumed it was just another alternate version of the film version I grew up with, and that there was a soon-to-be-Googled reasonable explanation for why they had to re-shoot the scene with a VW van instead, similiar to how the studios had originally filmed scenes of the movie with the actor Eric Stoltz in the role of Marty McFly, before they decided to go with Michael J. Fox instead.
Checked my digital copy. VW van. Hmm. ok. Guess I never...noticed that?
I had a friend with me at the time to witness the moment I decided to check my LASERDISC copy... Again, the VW van. No Toyota van. . Jaws were dropped.
Now I can't find evidence of the Toyota van version anywhere other than in personal accounts of other people remembering the same ugly tan/beige van I had now apparently imagined as well all this time.
For the record, I'm not talking about Doc Brown's white van, JCPenney has always been JCPenney for me, and I've noticed from day one that the Twin to Lone Pine Mall detail is meant to be an intentional joke within the film.
But I swear I grew up with a dirty brownish Toyota van version.
If this is just a "faulty memory" why are there a number of others that remember exactly what I apparently imagined I saw too? Hang out with me for 10 minutes in a car and i'm ALWAYS commenting about car design details (Hey, that 02 Altima was a real game changer. wasn't it? look at how that back window looks just like the VW Passat and other higher-end luxury cars... that rounded back of the new Accord still takes off from that original blah blah blah....) So whenever I watched BTTF, I always noted the ugly boxy, wannabe-futuristic look of the Toyota van...that ugly slanted front windshield, and how the guy with the gun was sticking out of the extended sun roof, and there was a weighted lag in the way the van drove as it careened through that parking lot ...and then all of a sudden its a blue and white iconic VW van, and it's only ever been a VW van?--a van that I, for completely unrelated reasons, have been a long-time fan of as well? (I have a small die cast metal model of the VW van that I bought around 2008, for no other reason but that I've always appreciated its classic design.) Surely, I would have noticed that one of my favorite car designs was right smack dab in the middle of one of my all-time favorite film franchises....right?
But sure. Faulty memory. Only reasonable explanation. If someone with a more science-minded brain can look into that whole quantum theory thing, and how observation affects reality yadi yadi yadi...maybe someday there will be a bigger, yet perfectly reasonable explanation for all this crappy discrepancy.....oh who cares.
The part that makes me feel kind of sick is when I read other BTTF fans who have also watched this film since it first came out (just as I have) but claim that it has ONLY ever been the VW van, and that anyone else who thinks otherwise is clearly not a fan.
Well, I'm a fan. At least I thought I was. And I'm missing that ugly beige Toyota van.
Yeah, this one bums me out.