Shura Bogacheva
All Stars are alive. We remember why we fell in love with them and figure out why people continue to buy them

V–A–C Sreda online magazine presents its final three-month programme on significant cultural phenomena of the past that are now almost forgotten or considered extinct, but nevertheless continue to exist.

In this issue, we publish an article by journalist Shura Bogacheva that explores why the All Stars magazine, popular in the 2000s and 2010s, continues to attract readers’ interest and how nostalgia, fan culture, and love for posters and the band Tokio Hotel keep the project afloat thirty years after its inception.

Over the New Year’s holidays at Magnit, I caught sight of the long-forgotten All Stars magazine—still with the same eye-catching cover and announcement for 12 posters. Only the heroes were new: the actor Finn Woodard from the series Stranger Things (2016–2025), the singer Klava Kola, the South Korean boyband Stray Kids, and characters from the FNaF and Tiny Bunny games. Tokio Hotel, Evanescence, Linkin Park, Britney Spears, and Kurt Cobain were also on the cover.

I was very surprised—why does this publication continue to be sold, who chose these particular celebrities, why has the cover design not changed with the years? I photographed my discovery and published it on Twitter. The post garnered over 70,000 views—people, it seems, also didn’t expect to see All Stars in 2026. Reactions were polar: from “Aren’t they tired of churning out thousands of posters of Tokio Hotel, Kurt, and Britney?” and “This is very sad” to “If this magazine still exists, the world can still be saved” and “They haven’t evolved because they are already the pinnacle of evolution.”

The All Stars magazine first came out in March of 1995. Igor Chernyshkov, the owner of the Rovesnik publishing house, came up with its concept. Chernyshkov had noticed that teenagers liked to hang photographs of their idols on their walls. A couple of years later, the heads of the publication carried out a rebranding and bought up aggressive marketing slots on the MTV channel. The magazine’s popularity peaked in the 2000s, then I too bought it a couple times, studying at elementary school. I remember one thing: I had a tense All Stars Edward Cullen hanging in the toilet. My recollections alone are clearly not enough, which is why I spoke with others who were more serious about the magazine.

Erna, a twenty-five-year-old journalist, bought All Stars primarily for the posters, which she now keeps at the dacha. Erna valued the publication for not being as polished and “girly” as Elle Girl. Erna compared All Stars to a “niche Telegram” account: issues printed amusing news stories about all the people she loved in her teenage years.

At twenty-nine, Albina, a blogger, is a little older than Erna. She considered Bravo the coolest and most daring magazine of the 2000s (many of my interviewees said the same). It was more punk and varied than All Stars. However, Albina also bought All Stars issues regularly from 2007, because she wanted to follow Tokio Hotel, Nevada Tan, Cinema Bizarre, and other rockers. She didn’t have a good internet connection, and she greedily read any mention of her idols. Today, it seems unreal to Albina that the only place she could see the new looks and hairstyles of celebrities was All Stars—back then, TV, “ran the same old clips.” Albina cut out selected articles and pasted them into a special album, and covered the walls in her room with posters. Albina studied every newsstand in her Volgograd neighbourhood and knew exactly where the latest issues appeared fastest. It happened that she would run up to the delivery itself, when the seller still hadn’t managed to open the box.

If, instead of her idols, the All Stars cover featured heroes from, say, Twilight, Albina would be upset and wait the whole week for the next issue. Albina liked reading gossip about her favourite musicians and actors. With age, however, she began to compare information with material on forums and VK, and understood that the facts were constantly distorted in All Stars. Then, the blogger was overcome with a feeling of unfairness: she could not believe that outright fakes were being published in a popular publication, when most people weren’t able to pay attention to fact checking.

Thirty-five-year-old Oleg recalled that he bought All Stars because of the “short, amusing interviews with artists” and the posters. In the magazine, as a rule, they included one mega-poster with some Shakira or other, and smaller posters with the likes of HIM, Fred Durst, actors from Charmed, and other heroes from the period. Oleg did not consider All Stars an “alternative" magazine, like the zines Hooligan, NME, and Punk Gazetta were in his eyes.

The All Stars editorial team believes that people value the physically tangible more than the digital. Evidently, they are right: All Stars continues to be published twice a month, with a print run of 150,000 issues. The audience, according to journalists, remains unchanged—the same young people aged between 12 and 15. Only now, readers do not have to wait for new deliveries by newsstands, they can order the magazine on marketplaces. And they can vote for the hero of the next issue on VK, rather than by SMS or in letters to Moscow.

Discussion of how well the latest issue turned out also takes place on social media. You encounter two types of people in the comments: teenage-fandomists and adults on whose profiles you find pictures of rooms covered in posters or albums of portraits of their idols. The majority of them are hardened hostages of nostalgia. They ask for posters featuring characters from the film Bastards, Destl, KISS, and Limp Bizkit. More rarely, and mainly on Telegram, one catches sight of names like GONE Fludd, Ruslan CMH, and Slava KPSS.

I asked active subscribers why the still follow All Stars. A woman called Lena explained that she bought the magazine in the 2000s because of the posters and pages with announcements, where fans exchanged news about their idols. Today, Lena hardly buys the magazine—why would you, if you can print your own posters. But out of habit, she goes on to social media to see who appeared in the latest issue, and votes for J Lo every time (and asks others to also do so). Lena is disappointed that “modern people” have forgotten her favourite singer.

Evgeny, a grown man with a wife and children, explained that he bought the magazine from the 1990s, and that in those years, he had no need for wallpaper—the walls were covered with portraits of Britney, Eminem, Detsl, and MakSim. After his wedding, he threw away almost the entire collection, which he regrets to this day. A couple years ago, he saw the All Stars public page on VK, and was surprised to find that the heroes of the issues were “old” celebrities—he decided once again to become a buyer of every issue. Evgeny wishes All Stars a long life and regrets that, for already a year now, they have not printed posters of his dear Eminem.

With the twenty-five-year-old Denis, a strange but touching dialogue took place. He dreams of getting hold of Detsl, Arni, Timati, and Icegergert posters, and believes I can influence this matter. He even sent me biographies of each of the rappers, apparently in order to speed up the process.

Rostislav, twenty-two, subscribes to All Stars because he missed the era of the naughties and is now recreating the life of the “cool teenagers” of those years. He is proud of the fact that no “unofficial” posters hang in his room—only posters from All Stars.

While I was writing this text, All Stars published another issue. This time, characters from the film Korol i Shit. Navsegda (2026) were on the cover, as well as the actor Rubio Minekaev from the series The Boy’s Word, the singer Lida, and Will from Stranger Things. You won’t believe it, but once again, they couldn’t do without a mention of Tokio Hotel.