New Kids on the Block fans, alternately known as either Blockheads or Thirty-something Female Masochists, formally declared vindication today regarding ticket prices for the boy band's upcoming reunion tour.

Ever since it was revealed that the band (best known for such classic songs as...uh...uh...never mind that, there's more to a band that the songs they record) would be reuniting, critics, music fans, those with functioning temporal lobes, and cultural observers with a modicum of good taste have questioned the band's motives in reuniting after a blissful nearly 20-year layoff.

Yet the band's fans are now having the last laugh, as the reasonable ticket prices for the tour have confounded skeptics and silenced critics who leveled the age-old charge that the Kids "are just in it for the money" and that a reunion tour "would be more pointless than a surf board in Siberia."

For the NKOTB tour starting in September, ticket prices range anywhere from $35 for a view near the rafters to upwards of $80 for the best floor seats. Prices which, the vast majority of Blockheads agree, are more than appropriate for a band of NKOTB's stature. "Of all the bands that could described as a footnote on the epic ass of music, NKOTB was the biggest of all!" exclaimed user Iluvjordan in a recent internet posting. "Only between $35 to $80 to see my favorite childhood band at a coldly impersonal, enormous, cavernous arena? Sign me up!"

Although the band was rehearsing 20 hours a day to perfect their instrument-less song and dance craft, an announcement via the band's website explained the band's decision to offer such cheap, inexpensive, music-superstar-level prices: "In continuing the NKOTB tradition of honoring its dedicated fans, tickets for this tour have been priced in keeping with rates for other artists of NKOTB's caliber. We used equivalent artists like Tom Waits and Bob Dylan, as well as other reunited bands such as The Stooges, to gauge our market value. The best tickets only cost about $16 per Kid, though Danny might of course get less."

Kathy McMontgomery, an avid 35 year-old Blockhead from Wheeling, West Virginia who still boasts about her NKOTB ankle tattoo, took a quick break from her work-at-home telemarketing job to express a view shared by many of the band's fans: "All we've heard since the reunion was announced was that the band was doing it just for the money. Let's be clear: the ticket prices for this tour clearly answer that accusation."

Husband John McMontgomery, a rare male NKOTB fan who didn't request that his identity be withheld for this report, echoed his wife's sentiments: "An NKOTB reunion comes along, if you're really, really, really lucky, only once in a lifetime. Although you can't really put on a price on that, I think it's fair to say that the prices speak for themselves."

The Blockheads also feel that the going rates for the upcoming tour confirm their belief that the band's primary motives in touring are strictly fan-based. "No question these low, low, bargain basement liquidation ticket costs clearly show the Kids are doing the tour for the fans," stated Annie Franzen-Crosby of Kansas City, MO. "With these ridiculously low ticket prices, it's clear the Kids aren't interested in making any profit. This is truly a tour for the fans, just like we also thought."

Franzen-Crosby added, a bit less diplomatically, "All those critics who thought the reunion was simply a way for the band to cash in on some people's love of irrelevant, nostalgic, mediocre, disposable kitsch can shove it. We're rough."