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

  Aaaall righty, then.

  STATUS: Carrey eventually made the leap to more dramatic work with films like I Love You Phillip Morris and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

  FUN FACT: According to IMDb.com, when he was ten years old, Carrey sent his résumé to The Carol Burnett Show.

  Jim’s Journal

  For Jim of comic strip Jim’s Journal, buying a scrub brush is a pretty big day. The big-headed, mouthless Wisconsinite wanders through his comic strip like many folks do through their own lives. Hardly anything major happens in his four-panel strips. In one, he sits at Dairy Queen idly watching an ant crawl across the table. In another, he ruminates about how a sore throat gets better as the day wears on.

  The strip, which ran in more than two hundred college newspapers during the 1990s, followed Jim through college, numerous menial jobs, and an out-of-nowhere marriage to chum Ruth, who’s oddly desperate for him to enjoy stamp collecting.

  While the strips are outwardly banal, there’s sometimes a germ of wisdom or humor. When Jim gets new shoelaces, he spends the day mesmerized by their gleam. After he reads The Sound and the Fury, he finds TV to be a lot more stupid than usual. Like most of us, Jim’s life doesn’t soar into mountains of joy and sink into valleys of despair, it just keeps on keeping on, Thoreau’s quiet desperation measured out in stick figures.

  STATUS: In 2011, Jim’s Journal began running on GoComics.com. The new run features a mix of classic and new Jim, including a prequel where Jim is in high school (an aptitude test tells him he’d be a good dentist).

  FUN FACT: Jim’s creator, Scott Dikkers, later founded The Onion.

  Juice Boxes

  Back in the day, kid beverage choices were as varied as colors for Henry Ford’s cars. You could have milk, or you could have this slightly warmer glass of milk. On your birthday, maybe chocolate milk. But for some reason in the late 1980s and 1990s, the Berlin Wall of beverage isolation was torn down, and juice boxes poured into the breach.

  We’re not sure why Mom’s defenses collapsed—maybe she was too busy fighting against Twinkies or celebrating a victory for carrot sticks. But all of a sudden, squarish juice boxes were an acceptable lunch-box and after-school beverage. For kids bored with moo juice, it was like that moment in The Wizard of Oz when the world suddenly turns into Technicolor. You could have apple juice! Carrot-apple blends! Hi-C Ecto-Cooler, a shockingly green drink with Slimer from Ghostbusters on the box! Capri Sun in bizarre silver pouches! We were overwhelmed with option paralysis, our tongues never tasting the same flavor twice. Sure, the juice was probably more sugar and chemicals than anything ever grown in a garden, but “juice box” was a lot more fun to say than corn-syrup-and-citric-acid box.

  Kids in the juice box era walked around with the things all but surgically attached to their lips. Juice boxes were much cooler than the standard school-issue milk carton, and half of their coolness had nothing to do with the liquid inside, and everything to do with the attached straws. You could blow bubbles, dribble, shoot liquid at the wall or your best friend. Slurping through a juice box straw was like having your tongue replaced with a snake’s.

  STATUS: Kids still love ’em.

  FUN FACT: The Foreigner lyric “juke box hero, got stars in his eyes” is sometimes misheard as “juice box hero, got a straw in his eye.”

  Kid Cuisine

  Heat-and-eat food for kids has been around for decades (uh, oh…SpaghettiO’s), but in 1990, Banquet came up with Kid Cuisine, one of the first microwavable frozen meals for children. TV dinners for tots! The initial lineup featured eight extreeeeme entrées, including pizza, chicken nuggets, and macaroni and cheese with mini-franks, plus side dishes and dessert.

  Kids snarfed them down. An early commercial had a boy celebrating the fact that his mom was so busy, she couldn’t cook and he got to eat a Kid Cuisine meal instead of a homemade one. And why wouldn’t kids start to drool over the prospect of eating fast food at home? Especially when it came packaged with an activity book with games and stickers? And also a lot of saturated fat. Plus pudding.

  Even when everyone from Consumer Reports to nutritionists went after the trays of fat and freezer burn for their distinct lack of nutrition, parents kept serving them up, letting their kids shovel the mostly empty calories down their gullets one high-sodium forkful at a time. Mmm…tasted like convenience—and a little like childhood obesity.

  STATUS: Today, the revamped brand touts its whole grains, protein, and fiber, and upgraded ingredients.

  FUN FACT: Initially, the brand was represented by two animated mascots, BJ the penguin and the Chef, a cartoon bear. Soon, the Chef was phased out, and BJ the penguin was replaced by KC, a different, hipper penguin that apparently enjoys snowboarding, hockey, and—for some reason—breakdancing.

  Kindergarten Cop

  Quick—how many times have you seen Kindergarten Cop? If your answer is anything less than eight thousand, either you grew up on Uranus or you’re lying. Thank you very much, every basic cable station ever. It’s on twenty-four-seven for good reason: The 1990 flick is an irresistible blend of cute kids (“Boys have a penis; girls have a vagina,” one bright tyke informs the class) and Ahnold Schwarzenegger one-liners (“Thanks foah da tip,” he deadpans in response). It’s the movie that taught us that the future Governator could play characters other than thick-necked, thick-accented barbarians. He could also play thick-necked, thick-accented undercover cops!

  The plot: Tough-guy Schwarzenegger goes undercover as a teacher in Oregon to catch a drug dealer. The draw is watching the former bodybuilder deliver lines like “Who is yoah daddy and what does he do?” “I’m da pahty poopah,” and the most Arnoldiest line of all time: “It’s not a toomah.”

  Ahnold’s experience with whiny, nap-needing kindergarteners likely came in handy when he moved into the California governor’s office and had to deal with politicians all day.

  STATUS: Still all over the airwaves—on TBS, TNT, USA, CMT…

  FUN FACT: The penis-vagina kid, Miko Hughes, also played the blonde zombie toddler who sawed though Herman Munster’s heel in Pet Sematary.

  Koosh Balls

  In the late ’80s, Koosh balls became the latest gotta-have-it craze, like Slinkys and Pet Rocks before them. The multicolored balls were an explosion of flexible strings protruding from a soft core—a rubber-scented sea urchin. And unlike their underwater cousins, you could fling a Koosh across the room without worrying about impaling someone in the eye or breaking a tooth.

  They were simple to catch, but if you did bobble one, you didn’t have to chase it under the couch. Unlike most balls, they couldn’t roll. When they landed, the little pom-poms would settle into the ground with a rustle and a sigh, and wait for you to pick them up. While they were great for tossing, Kooshes were even better for absently—and addictively—picking at. You’d pull at the individual threads and they’d snap back like rainbow-colored whips.

  We couldn’t fight it, nor did we want to: Kooshmania had taken hold, and expanded into everything from key chains to yo-yos. In 1990, the manufacturer even anthropomorphized the things by introducing Koosh Kins, with plastic heads, hands, and feet. They looked like little rubber Chia pets, and even had their own comic-book series. Your move, Pet Rock.

  STATUS: Still around.

  FUN FACT: Rosie O’Donnell regularly launched Kooshes at the camera and into the audience during her late-’90s talk show.

  Kris Kross

  Here are ten little words that may make you want to jump, jump off a bridge: The kids from Kris Kross are now in their thirties. Can that even be possible? It doesn’t get more wiggedy-wiggedy-wiggedy wack than that.

  Depending on your perspective, Kris Kross was either a talented kajillion-selling rap duo, or two little kids with their pants on backward. But whatever you thought of thirteen-year-old Chris “Mac Daddy” Kelly and Chris “Daddy Mac” Smith, who hopped around with preteen swagger and looked like they got dressed in the dark, you couldn’t ignore their 1
992 double-platinum single, “Jump.” The tune sprang to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 charts and stayed there for eight weeks, and the little guys reared their cutie-pie heads on uber-’90s shows like In Living Color and A Different World. Why? Well, they were even more adorable than a pair of hip-hop kittens and pumped up the jams better than rappers twice their age.

  So was their smash hit in-depth social commentary about breaking the rules and doing their own thing, or just a frothy ode to leaping into the air? Yeah, probably the second one. One of their follow-up songs was about missing the bus.

  STATUS: The duo has been replaced by other just-beyond-babies with microphones, notably Justin Bieber.

  FUN FACT: Kris Kross probably played a lot of video games, but they weren’t great at inspiring them. Electronic Gaming Monthly named the duo’s video game to its list of the twenty worst of all time.

  Lamb Chop’s Play Along

  Preschoolers who watched Lamb Chop’s Play Along from 1992 to 1997 had no idea that Emmy-winning puppeteer Shari Lewis and her goofy puppets had also delighted their parents’ generation back in the 1960s and 1970s. They just knew that the curly-headed lady in overalls and shiny neon shirts had a delightfully wacky way of entertaining them, like a beloved grandma who was always slightly off her meds.

  Lewis brought her classic puppets to the show, including sweet little Lamb Chop, and frolicked with a rainbow connection of kids who were blatantly not actors. The show taught lessons (Lamb Chop negotiated for a raise in her penny a week allowance), but really revolved around Shari’s songs. They ranged from rollicking and goofy (“Cat Wearing a Hat”) to sweet and touching (“If You Should Run Away”) to the most indelibly memorable of the group, “The Song That Never Ends” (“it just goes on and on, my friends…”). Aaugh, make it stop!

  Just as the Neighborhood of Make-Believe wouldn’t have existed but for Fred Rogers, so Shari Lewis’s personal charisma cast the spell that made Lamb Chop’s magic work. In 1998, the show spun off into a new program, Charlie Horse Music Pizza, but that was canceled when Lewis died of uterine cancer that same year. The song that never ends, it turns out, must now replay its happy insanity only in beloved childhood memories.

  STATUS: Daughter Mallory continues to perform with her mom’s most famed character, Lamb Chop.

  FUN FACT: Shari Lewis and her husband wrote an episode of the original Star Trek in 1968. Beam me up, Lamb Chop.

  Leisure Suit Larry

  The Leisure Suit Larry series was to computer games what Porky’s was to movies—goofy, sometimes groaningly bad sex jokes loosely holding a story together. Not the most mature entertainment out there, but a heaping helping of lowbrow fun.

  Larry was Larry Laffer, a nerdy wannabe womanizer in a white leisure suit who looked and acted a little like Jack’s horny best friend (also named Larry!) on Three’s Company. He wasn’t out to shoot zombies or win football games—Larry’s entire goal was to slip between the sheets with any female he met.

  It wasn’t so easy for poor Lar. He needed to find passwords on restroom walls, avoid spoiled spinach dip, bribe drunks with wine, and dodge the KGB. But there was a sweet charm to the lovable loser, and the saucy scenes and double entendres felt fresh and even naughty. The games were like the first dirty joke you heard: not really that dirty, not really that funny, but always fondly remembered.

  STATUS: In 2009, Leisure Suit Larry: Box Office Bust was released, focusing on Larry’s nephew. Critics hated it. Larry’s creator, Al Lowe, was not involved with this game or the one preceding it.

  FUN FACT: The original games used an age-verification quiz to see if players were old enough to play such a risqué offering. Players had to identify Spiro Agnew or know Annette Funicello’s last name in order to be allowed to play.

  Light-Up Sneakers

  Move over, cure for cancer: In the ’90s, the world’s greatest researchers focused their efforts on something even more important: shoes that lit up.

  Talk about a bright idea. Kids understood that anything was better when it glowed in the dark. And at first, children were the most fervent customers. They simply had to have princess-pink shoes that exploded into a seizure-inducing light show, or sleek black sneakers with flickering red lights in the heel that pulsed with every step, stuttering and flickering like epileptic fireflies. Eventually, bling-wearing adults were drawn to the footwear like moths to a battery-operated flame, spending big bucks on basketball shoes that would light up when the player’s feet left the ground and running shoes designed to keep nighttime joggers from getting hit by a bus.

  Creative people found other uses for the frenetic footwear, like helping you find your seat after the movie started, or kicking at the front door after dark so you could fit your key in the lock. As long as we had our sneakers, we never had to carry a flashlight again.

  STATUS: After environmental watchdogs banned the shoes for using mercury in the lighting mechanism, light-up shoes made a comeback without it.

  FUN FACT: Ever wonder why the human species hasn’t lived up to its potential? In a 2001 interview, comedian George Carlin blamed people’s obsession with light-up sneakers, SaladShooters, and DustBusters.

  The Lion King

  Remember when Benson voiced a baboon, Ferris Bueller played a lion, and Darth Vader was his fa-thaaaah? In 1993’s blockbuster The Lion King, Robert Guillaume, Matthew Broderick, and James Earl Jones led an all-star voice cast in a classic animated tale of death, darkness, and fart jokes.

  Even though it was rated G, The Lion King was much more adult-themed than bouncy, Elton John–penned tunes like “Hakuna Matata” initially made it seem. It tapped into common fears all kids had, like losing a parent and getting trampled by wildebeests.

  With his slinky prowl and slithery speech, baddie Scar (Jeremy Irons, at his creepiest) ranks right up there with Cruella de Vil and Snow White’s Evil Queen as the most terrifying Disney villains ever drawn. And (spoiler alert) Mufasa’s death packed an emotional wallop equal only to Bambi’s mom becoming a rec-room trophy. Parents always die in Disney films, but in The Lion King, little cub Simba was even blamed for his beloved dad’s demise. “No worries for the rest of your days”? For kids in the audience, it was more like “tortuous nightmares every time mom turned out the light.” The Lion King taught a generation of American children that “the circle of life” was nothing to mess around with.

  STATUS: The movie gave birth to two direct-to-video sequels and a TV show. As successful as the original film was, the “hairy Hamlet” concept took on an even bigger life three years later when it was reborn as a Broadway musical. The puppet-heavy production gave the story a depth and weight that made the cartoon seem, well, two-dimensional.

  FUN FACT: The Lion King marked the second time that James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair, who voiced Simba’s parents, teamed up as an African king and queen. The first time was as Eddie Murphy’s mom and dad in 1988’s Coming to America.

  Lisa Frank School Supplies

  Panda bears juggling paintbrushes. Penguins perching on rainbows. Bunnies dancing ballet. Puppies sniffing starfish on the beach. Kittens snuggled into giant sneakers. And all of it was drenched in rainbows, as if a clown had sneezed. If it involved a cute baby animal and a helluva lot of bright colors, you could probably find it on a Lisa Frank folder.

  Lisa Frank was around in the 1980s too, but it was in the 1990s that she really ruled the kingdom of cool school supplies. From folders to pencils, backpacks to book covers, her acid-trippy, neon-bright designs were everywhere. It was like an animated unicorn ate a rainbow and barfed all over America’s junior high lockers.

  STATUS: In 2011, Lisa Frank began selling clothing. There’s also an iPhone app, Lisa Frank Pic n’ Share, which allows users to Lisa Frankify their own photographs with her colorful characters.

  FUN FACT: Yes, Lisa Frank is a real person, and to no one’s surprise, she loves color. Her sons are named Hunter Green and Forrest Green, and she told the Daily in 2012 that “my house really is pu
rple. And yellow and hot pink and light green and orange.”

  Mac Classic II

  While many ’90s kids got their first taste of home computers by banging around with their older siblings’ Commodore 64s or TRS-80s, it was the Mac Classic II that created a generation of gadget addicts. Born with the decade in 1990, this was the first Mac for the masses. It had personality—and had us salivating at the prospect of a future filled with sleekly designed, whimsical robots that lived on our desktops and did our homework while we grabbed a quick nap.

  Because the Mac Classic II was relatively affordable (around one thousand dollars), the little guy showed up en masse in classrooms from coast to coast, and quickly became the coolest dude in school. We didn’t care that it was a cutting-edge educational tool—we just wanted to be friends with it. We could play games (Stunt Copter! Lode Runner!). We could change the system sounds, from bink-bonk to boiiinnngg. We could even make it swear, thanks to the speech synthesizer. Did every kid make their Mac utter the famous line from WarGames, “Shall we play a game?” or was it just us?