The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade

by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

  You remember: The innocuous looking red ball comes with an unending list of warnings, delivered in the soothingly dulcet tones of Phil Hartman. “Happy Fun Ball may stick to certain types of skin.” Its liquid core should not be “touched, inhaled, or looked at.” And then, the big revelation: Happy Fun Ball’s ingredients “include an unknown glowing substance which fell to Earth, presumably from outer space,” and it “is being dropped from our warplanes on Iraq.” And the line everyone remembers, quotes, and repurposes: “Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.” If this didn’t lead you to envision the carnage that would ensue if you disobeyed, you, my friend, have not read nearly enough Stephen King novels.

  Happy Fun Ball was simple and ingenious. Even though the skit’s two decades old, it’s worked its way so deep into our pop-culture fabric that no amount of taunting will remove it. Not that we plan to try. We might have that certain type of skin.

  STATUS: You can check it out on SNL skit collections and on YouTube.

  FUN FACT: The sketch was written by Jack Handey, of “Deep Thoughts” fame.

  Have You Ever…You Will!

  This series of futuristic AT&T TV commercials were a mix of completely whacked and utterly prescient. Featuring the soothing narration of Tom Selleck, each ad demonstrated three not-that-far-off scenarios and bragged that they would soon be delivered by the communications company.

  Some were nuts. “Have you ever sent a fax from the beach?” Good Lord, who wants to? This segment also had no idea that faxing was about to become as outdated as smoke signals.

  But others were scarily right on. “Have you ever had an assistant who lived in your computer?” Hello, iPhone’s Siri. “Have you ever crossed the country without stopping to ask directions?” Thank you, in-car GPS. “Have you ever watched the movie you wanted to, when you wanted to?” Video on demand or Netflix streaming, anyone?

  Sure, not all of the eventual breakthroughs came from AT&T, but still, watching these ads was a little like sitting in 1993 and getting passed notes from Future You in 2013. It was a damn shame you couldn’t send along lottery numbers or stock picks while you were at it. Get on that, Future You.

  STATUS: AT&T continued trying to position itself as the company with its finger on the pulse of tomorrow by using ads that urged customers to “Rethink Possible.”

  FUN FACT: David Fincher, who directed the ad series, was later nominated for an Oscar for the Facebook movie The Social Network. Facebook wasn’t predicted in an ad, but perhaps should have been. Have you ever online-stalked your high school girlfriend ten years after graduation? You will!

  Home Alone

  Yes, back in the 1990s, the tale of an eight-year-old boy left alone in his house while criminals tried to break in was considered hilarious fodder for movies. In real life, the story would have led the nightly news, and ended with a Macaulay Culkin–shaped chalk outline on the floor.

  But in 1990’s Home Alone, it was a hoot. Yes, we suspended disbelief as little fishy-lipped Kevin McAllister took on robbers Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern using nothing more than his ingenuity and a few items he found around the house, MacGyver-style. Where did Kevin get his elaborate booby-trap training—the CIA? He also showed pretty severe psychotic tendencies and more than a little bloodlust. Pesci and Stern were trying to break into the house, but Culkin was trying to kill them, with a blowtorch to the head, a hot iron to the face, a BB gun to the pants, and Micro Machines beneath their feet.

  We kids luckily never had to deal with a robber taking us on mano a mano in our own house, but after this movie, man, we dreamed about it. If only Mom and Dad would forget about us long enough for us to set up an uber-complicated network of traps of our own. That Avon lady, cookie-peddling Girl Scout, or pesky guy selling aluminum siding would never know what hit ’em.

  STATUS: The original movie sparked a 1992 sequel, with Kevin on his own in New York, and a third flick, where Macaulay Culkin was replaced by bowl-haircut-headed Alex D. Linz, plus a 2002 TV movie.

  FUN FACT: The suburban Chicago house featured in the movie sold in 2012 for $1.5 million, paint cans in the face not included.

  Hypercolor

  Hypercolor heat-sensitive clothing made people into real-life mood rings. Don a purple Hypercolor shirt and have your friend slap you on the back…voila, pink handprint.

  It sounded cool when you bought the shirt, but Hypercolor was a pretty weird technology. Hey, nice pink spots in your sweaty armpits, dude! Is that a pair of Hypercolor pants or are you just happy to see me? Nerds would sport a Hypercolor shirt in the hope that the cute girl in math would be unable to keep her hands off them, but let us be frank, that never happened. Instead it was your own friends and the occasional hallway dork who smacked you or, worse, rubbed their snotty nose on you to make the color change.

  Sadly or thankfully, once you washed the shirt enough, it would no longer do its little trick, and you could resume sweating with impunity.

  STATUS: Chains like American Apparel rediscovered Hypercolor around 2008.

  FUN FACT: Hypercolor’s opposite was a brand of winter gloves called Freezy Freakies, which displayed patterns when it got cold enough.

  If You Give a Mouse a Cookie Books

  First, in 1985, there was Laura Numeroff’s popular picture book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. But then the food-items-to-animal giving took off in a big way, and soon pigs were getting pancakes, cats devouring cupcakes, moose receiving muffins, and the original cookie-taking mouse was going to school, the movies, and heaven knows where else. Hopefully a bakery, where he could buy his own damn cookie.

  This book format was quickly memorized by every kid, parent, and babysitter in the 1990s and beyond. Once the animal received their treat, they started to get demanding. The mouse wanted milk to go with his cookie; the cat, sprinkles to accompany her cupcake; the pig, syrup for its pancake. And if you think it’s a good idea to give such potentially mess-producing items to small mammals, think again. Milk will result in demands for straws, sprinkle requests will somehow turn into beach visits, syrup will lead to baths. Where will the greed end?

  Yet the narrators of these books never learned. They continued the unrestrained giving! This only led to disaster, with pigs seeking out tap shoes, and eventually building elaborate tree houses that for whatever reason required eight metric tons of wallpaper. We’re still not sure how working out at the gym inspired the cat to want to go to the park and then the science museum, but ours is not to reason why.

  This much we know: If you read a kid a Give a Thing a Thing book, pretty soon she’s going to ask you for another one. And if you read her another one—well, you get the picture.

  STATUS: Still extremely popular.

  FUN FACT: Numeroff’s autobiography is called If You Give an Author a Pencil.

  “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”

  The Doublemint Twins were annoyingly perky. The creepy identical ghost girls in The Shining freaked us out. But in the 1990s, the set o’ lookalike siblings that most people wanted deported were the pasty, bespectacled Scottish brothers Charlie and Craig Reid, better known as The Proclaimers. Their crime? Unleashing the earworm to end all earworms on an unsuspecting nation with the 1993 hit, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles).”

  You know the song—and your therapist probably does too. “Buht Ayyyye wouhld walk fah-ve hundred miles ahnd Ayyye wouhld walk fah-ve hun-dred moooooore…” Romantic, sure, but actually, that’s a terrible idea, sure to give you hospitalization-level blisters and a scorching sunburn.

  The twins may have sung it, but we have Johnny Depp to blame for its 1990s ubiquity. The bouncy tune hit the charts—and burrowed its way into our brains—as part of the soundtrack to the Depp film Benny & Joon. The song was kind of like haggis: It must have seemed like a good idea originally, but about thirty seconds in, you wanted to squeeze the singers’ heads like bagpipes.

  STATUS: Still popping up on certain radio stations. All it takes is a couple seconds of the catchy, nonsensical chorus and you’re humming
it for weeks. “Da da dun da. Da da dun da. Undela undela undela la la la.” You’re welcome.

  FUN FACT: A running joke on the CBS show How I Met Your Mother revolves around a tape of the song that’s permanently stuck in Marshall’s car stereo.

  “I’m the King of the World!”

  Remember when it was supercool to stand on the front of a boat, spread your arms wide, and yell, “I’m the king of the world!” like Leonardo DiCaprio famously did in 1997’s Titanic? Yeah, it never was. But supercool or not, everybody who had seen the movie struck the pose, no matter if they were on a luxury liner or in a canoe.

  It was as if we were compelled: Water + boat = an uncontrollable urge to inappropriately call attention to ourselves by screaming lame dialogue from a movie. (In 2004, it was voted the cheesiest movie line ever, even beating out “Nobody puts Baby in a corner” from Dirty Dancing.)

  Little known fact: There’s actually no such thing as the king of the world. The reality is that Earth is made up of many countries, each of which has its own leader. One person doesn’t actually govern the entire thing. Although with the wind in his face and a sweet job like coal shoveler in the bowels of a ship on his résumé, it’s no wonder DiCaprio’s character truly felt like he had the world at his feet. Too bad he also had an iceberg looming in his peripheral vision.

  STATUS: People are apparently still using this phrase in conversation. In 2011, police in Florida Tased a man three times after he ran naked into traffic, screaming the memorable line.

  FUN FACT: Titanic director James Cameron delivered the line when he took home the Oscar for Best Director. He was not Tased, although perhaps he should have been.

  Inline Skates

  We couldn’t roller skate, we couldn’t ice skate, and suddenly in the 1990s, we couldn’t do both at the same time. Inline skates like Rollerblades combined the wheels of roller skates with the one-single-blade design of ice skates, supposedly to let hockey players stay in shape in warm weather months. Most people, however, wore them to flirt with cute strangers around city lakes and parks, ticking off bicyclists and occasionally going head over wheels straight into some oblivious mom pushing a stroller.

  Inline skates worked pretty well if you were capable of getting them moving, but heaven help you if you ever wanted to come to a complete stop. There was a chunky brake included, but that worked about as smoothly as Fred Flintstone putting his feet down to stop his prehistoric car. Everyone we knew was able to stop only by stumbling headfirst onto a patch of grass, or worse, straight into a tree.

  Fortunately, whoever sold you the blades probably also upsold you on some knee, wrist, and elbow pads, plus a helmet. Unfortunately, they were probably still sitting in the box in your closet, since it was much cooler to risk a concussion than to look like a bubble-wrapped dork.

  STATUS: Still rolling.

  FUN FACT: There’s a 1991 martial arts movie, The Roller Blade Seven, about a post-apocalyptic world where people travel only on skates and skateboards. Of course Frank Stallone is in it.

  “I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Get Up” Ads

  You remember. Old Mrs. Fletcher wipes out in her bathroom, hollers the now-infamous line, and presumably is saved by medic-alert service LifeCall before she’s eaten alive by her (certainly thousands of) cats. From the Dolly Parton–esque hair of the concerned daughter to the whiny diction of the star (“Oi’ve Fawwen!”), the spot offered more cheese than a deli.

  The phrase became the 1990s version of “Where’s the beef?” There were musical remixes, endless parodies, a mention in a Weird Al song, a Roseanne reference, and mocking shirts (“I’ve Fallen and I Can’t Reach My Beer”).

  Sure, old people taking dives isn’t funny, but damn, this ad was.

  STATUS: LifeCall went out of business in 1993, but similar company Life Alert trademarked the slogan and still uses it. Other catchphrase-causing ads since then have included “Head On! Apply it to your forehead” and Subway’s ubiquitous “Five! Five-dollar! Five-dollar footlong!”

  FUN FACT: In one MadTV parody, a dense elderly couple think their medical-alert button is the remote control. Their attempt at channel changing calls the paramedics, which freaks the oldsters out so much they dash outside and are run over by a semi.

  Janet Reno’s Dance Party

  Quick, who’s the U.S. attorney general? In the late ’90s, every kid in the country knew—thanks to Will Ferrell’s impersonation of a certain A.G. with a mannish ’do, deep voice, and bright blue outfit. On Saturday Night Live’s recurring “Janet Reno’s Dance Party” sketch, Ferrell portrayed the first female attorney general as a defensive, clench-fisted, karate-choppin’ force of nature in pearls and sensible pumps—who also happened to be throwing a party for local kids in her unfinished basement. Amid the crepe paper, balloons, and disco ball, Ferrell would stop to interview students, and quickly accuse them all of lying (“Shut your mouth, you dirty liar”), or dive into the crowd (“Here comes 180 pounds of pure Reno!”).

  Watching “Reno” herky-jerk to “My Sharona” or slow dance with then–Secretary of Health Donna Shalala (Kevin Spacey!) blew our minds, but it was seeing her in a boxing match with the real Rudy Giuliani that pushed the skit into classic territory. Ferrell kneed Giuliani in the groin, and then, when accused of boxing dirty, crazily flailed his arms and uttered one of the best retorts ever to come out of SNL: “Then how comes my conscience is so clean?!”

  Taking a cue from her fictionalized self, the real-life Janet Reno hosted a dance party as a campaign fund-raiser when she ran for the governor of Florida. She didn’t win.

  STATUS: Available on DVD collections, Hulu, and YouTube.

  FUN FACT: The actual Reno appeared on the final “Dance Party” sketch, busting through a cinder-block wall Kool-Aid Man–style.

  Jell-O Jigglers

  Jell-O wasn’t the first gelatin company to make their product into wiggly but firm blocks that were easy to shape with cookie cutters—Knox Blox had been around for decades. But when marketing manager Dana Gioia helped launch a promotions blitz for Jell-O Jigglers in 1990, the colorful finger food was suddenly everywhere.

  In a 1991 TV ad, Jell-O spokeslegend Bill Cosby advocated making Christmas-shaped Jigglers for Santa in place of milk and cookies. Egg- and jellybean-shaped molds encouraged Jigglers as an Easter treat. Kids loved them because it was suddenly okay to eat Jell-O with your fingers. Jell-O loved them because they required four times as much Jell-O to make as a regular pan of the stuff, plus they could keep cranking out holiday-themed molds.

  For some kids, Jigglers were the first step into mom and dad’s kitchen. They were tasty, easy, fun to eat, and the variety of colors and shapes kept things interesting. If only all foods came in every color of the rainbow and required the use of cookie cutters.

  STATUS: Still jiggling.

  FUN FACT: In Carolyn Wyman’s book, Jell-O: A Biography, it’s revealed that Jell-O marketers first laughed off the term “Jigglers” because it sounded obscene. But when a quick poll of Kraft secretaries revealed that the name passed muster with them, a new product was born.

  The Jerry Springer Show

  Are you a pregnant prostitute? Having an affair with your cousin? In love with a phone-sex operator? Proud to be a homewrecker? Cheating on your boyfriend with his identical twin? All of the above? There’s one place for you, and it’s center stage at The Jerry Springer Show, the spawned-in-the-1990s phenomenon that all but invented tabloid TV.

  Springer’s show was a revelation when it launched in 1991. Sure, TV hadn’t exactly been all Masterpiece Theatre for some time, but we didn’t see this tasteless talk show coming. The swearing! The punching! The blurred boobies! Security guard Steve—who soon became a star in his own right—diving bravely into a cartoon-like ball of flying fists and hair-pulling! Jerry’s insipid “Final Thought,” a weirdly discombobulating statement that was about as relevant to the hillbilly guests as toothpaste!

  Springer faded from the spotlight for many reasons. Once the
dialogue became completely incomprehensible thanks to the necessary bleeps, it wasn’t as much fun to watch the fights. And eventually, there was just no way the show could top its latest insane topic. Really, after the transvestite who cut off his/her own legs with a power saw, even boob-flashing grandmas and self-proclaimed vampires felt tame by comparison.

  STATUS: Thirty-six hundred episodes strong and still screaming.

  FUN FACT: Some stations refused to carry a Springer episode titled “I Married a Horse.”

  Jim Carrey

  Remember when Jim Carrey was known only as the White Guy on In Living Color? For a brief time in the early ’90s, the lanky comic’s claim to fame was off-kilter characters like Vera de Milo and Fire Marshal Bill on the Fox comedy-sketch show. But then, in 1994, three of what would become his signature flicks hit the big screen, and—ssssomebody stop him!—he became a household name. (Although in many households, the conversation went: “Isn’t Jim Carrey annoying?”)

  In The Mask, Carrey’s “ssssmokin’!” human cartoon character romanced Cameron Diaz (in her first role) and ate up the scenery with his giant choppers. In Dumb & Dumber, he teamed up with the Farrelly Brothers and fellow goofball Jeff Daniels to unleash a whole new level of sophomoric—yet undeniably hilarious—humor onto cineplexes from coast to coast. (“What is the soup du jour?” “It’s the soup of the day.” “Mmmm—that sounds good. I’ll have that.”) And as Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Carrey showcased his Big Boy pompadour and talked out of his butt.