I’m proud to say that by mere happenstance, Episode 102, “The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy”, the first ever aired episode.
We didn’t have cable at our place, but my brother and I were housesitting at a family friend’s house, taking care of her little yip yip weiner dog.
I don’t recall the time, but I do remember turning on the TV after a couple hours of listening to an NPR play of one of the Star Wars radio drama episodes, then an episode of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was a very SF day that day. I successfully also avoided getting nipped by the weiner dog as well, so it was a very good day.
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My parents split up when I was younger. Every other weekend I went to my dad’s and he introduced me to it. I loved it! Totally got my sense of humor from him.
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I heard about it in passing and then found wome episodes on youtube. Took me years to discover Rifftrax and find out what was going on with the cast themselves. But it was and still is a wild ride.
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I love this thread. So many heartfelt answers!
The year was early '90s or so, and I was in middle school. My little brother, mother, and I were staying in a motel in Thermopolis, Wyoming. We lived in Laramie, and had been vacationing with old friends from Montana. It was the last night of our trip, and I was hopped up on sugar snacks. All packed for home, I turned on the TV, and was mesmerized. The movie? It was Bad. All I can remember is that there were bikers, and they were very stupid. Part of me deeply wanted to change the channel, because the strange, stupid people from the '70s frightened me, but three little figures were watching the movie with, and their comments added a perspective that eased my fear. I could relate to puppets, and to mocking hypermasculinity. The show ended, and I had the oddest dreams that night.
Then we returned to Laramie, and I forgot all about the puppet and motorcycle show.
It would have simply been a weird memory, but in high school, a friend “circulated the tapes,” and God bless him for it. At our local YFC, we held weekly viewing parties, with our wonderful, bemoustached mentor and a dozen rowdy teens, watching recorded episodes on a 28" CRT television set and munching popcorn.
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Say what you will about those old ultrasonic clicker remote controls — they never needed batteries! Oh, the hammer mechanisms occasionally jammed or broke, but those things were built to last.
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I discovered MST3K while channel surfing in the 90’s. Pretty sure it was Comedy Central. I fell in love immediately.
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From Mn originally so I caught it on cable access when I went to visit my friend in the Twin Cities and never got to see it again but kept asking people if they know about this werid show where people talked during movies, then I was on a family vacation and saw it when it finally made it to cable! I was hooked after that.
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Completely by accident flipping channels late at night in '91 or '92, the comedy central days. Instantly hooked and I’ve obsessed the 30 years since. I was in high school and I’d found something that seemed like it was made just for me.
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Channel surfing late one night in the mid-90s sometime. Came across what I thought was just an old movie until I heard jokes being cracked… I thought maybe it was bleed-thru from another station until I noticed the little silhouettes. The next day I mentioned it to my brother and he told me what it was.
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Best friend introduced me freshman year of college. “Wild Rebels” I was hooked. The tapes were circulating at Princeton University in 1992…
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I discovered MST3K in 1993 while I was in college. I remember, while channel surfing, passing by an odd show on Comedy Central showing some crummy movie with silhouettes near the bottom of the screen The first couple of times I stopped for a few seconds & moved on to something else. But the next time my interest was piqued enough to stop & watch. The episode was The Giant Gila Monster, and from that point on, MST3K became MuST See.
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It was a huge part of my 90s experience. I want to say SciFi era - it was the background noise to my Windows 95 and 98 video gaming experiences.
To be honest, the Netflix revival kind of opened a pandora’s box of memories and I’ve circled back since.
And on that note, I want to give a shout out to Diablos 1 and 2, the 2nd Warcraft, and all the X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and Dark Forces games. Much love, ya’ll killed my grades.
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It was on Sci Fi Channel all the freaking time, back when Sci Fi Channel was AWESOME.
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One of the earliest memories I have of it is watching “The Time of the Apes.” I was really weirded out by the movie itself, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of the shadows at the bottom of the screen. I thought that was so cool. I couldn’t even imagine how they were able to do it. I don’t know if that’s the first episode I saw because I was 10 when it aired. All I knew was that it rarely came on, so when you could catch an episode, it was super exciting!
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I remember when we got a fourth channel! It was mine blowing! We got to turn the nob a few more clicks! (Yup. I’m old too!)
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We were also a house without cable. My brother’s friends would tape episodes for him to watch and i would watch with him. We’ve had a lot of fun being backers together and helping bring back stuff that helped us bond as young adults. We also have our kids hooked, like proud geeky parents should 
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I was in middle school. I was home sick a lot, so I watched a lot of TV. I turned on the Comedy Channel, and there were these guys making hilarious jokes about some stupid movie. And also there were robots being silly in space. And goofy mad scientists. What’s not to love? I watched the show whenever I could.
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Drinking beer on Saturday nights while in college in the early 90’s with my roomates. Loved it Back then and still love it today.
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MST3K was something I had always been vaguely aware of but it wasn’t until some friends of mine started livetweeting the first Shout! Factory streaming Turkey Day marathon back in 2013 that I decided to check it out for myself.
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I started watching MST3K because I kept hearing YouTube reviewers talk about the RiffTrax Twilight riffs, in 2013 finally found and watched the RiffTrax Twilight riffs, and figured I should watch the show these dudes were featured in before they were in RiffTrax.
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