GC was certainly quite a craze. I was on the forums (obviously with a different account- forgot my old login info and created a new one after several inactive years) at the time while in college. From what I recall, I don't think GC actually really took off on these forums until it was already on the way out (in favor of the gold Belgian Castrol). I want to say much of the known supply was found either when it was on clearance or pulled from the dusty back reaches of the shelves, forgotten amongst the bottles of American 0W-30. It was an interesting oil, and I had always wished I had a chance to use it. The silliness with elves and such did go overboard for my tastes though.
Other flashbacks to those days that make me chuckle now: the complete disdain in which almost all Fram products were held (now probably the most commonly cited "good" filter that is widely available), the high regard in which Purolator filters were held (now probably the most hated filter on here), the shock and horror when we discovered the plastic ecore in our beloved Champ Labs Supertech filters, the way Valvoline products (except Maxlife) were largely treated as the Fram of the oil section, etc.