Like, I read a few Hardy Boys books, but the Hardy brothers were all outdoorsy and athletic and generally gross. I couldn't empathize with them at all. (For some reason, I had decided that their friend Chet was a fat nerdy loser like me, and there was one book that featured large segments of Chet being helpful, so I kept that one around for a long time.) The Three Investigators were led by an uber-nerd who also had the hands-down coolest goddamn clubhouse of all time. Not even a contest.
I think technically I read some twenty-page chapter book about an alien that came to Earth in a cereal box when I was in kindergarten or the first grade or so, and I know I read Bruce Coville's "My Teacher is an Alien" in first grade (because our class had to wait for the second run of buses in Ms. Erwin's room, and she taught second grade and had a bookshelf full of actual books instead of picture book crap, so I snuck in a chapter or two every day during that 10-15 minute wait. For some reason I was convinced that what I was doing wasn't allowed and it never occurred to me to just ask to borrow the book.)