And even though they’re still around I’ve gotta give a shout out the quintessential 90’s band P.M. Dawn.
Had a string of hits throughout the 90’s, starting with Set Adrift On Memory Bliss in 1991, then Looking Through Patient Eyes, followed by a great cover of the Beatles Norwegian Wood, then Downtown Venus and their last hit Moving On Up.
Ooh, ooh, I forgot!! “Captain Planet, he’s our hero, gonna take pollution down to zero…”
Yo-yos were SO cool at one point. Not just any yo-yos, though; they had to be Coca Cola yo-yo’s. And everyone else had one, and I pestered my mother for months, and I finally got a Coca Cola yo-yo… and by then they were totally out.
My little brother, at one point, had Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bedsheets, TMNT shoelaces, two or three TMNT pencil, pen and eraser sets, TMNT posters, an issue of every TMNT magazine, TMNT underwear… and, of course, not a single actual TMNT action figure.
…Ring Pops
…Push Pops
…Bubble Tape
…Nerf Guns / Bows & Arrows with those foam ends
…Dunkaroos
…Fruit By the Foot
…Fruit Roll-up
…Go-gurt (Yogurt)
…Adam & Eve Box juices…remember takin 'em to school?
…The whole thermos and lunchbox thing
…Mr. Bucket
…Super soakers - the 50 or 100 or whatever. And then the one you had to wear on your back…the little kids stood no chance after the 5th graders got those.
…Tamagotchi (the little keychain pet things)
…Magic Eye books
…My Little Ponies
…Polly Pocket
…Pictionary (the TV show)
…The Magic Johnson show…hehe
…Mad About You
…Murphy Brown
…Boy Meets World …BOBBY’s WORLD!
Doing stuff? Not really. All I ever did was play the same games every other kid in the known universe played…like tag and jump rope. And read. It’s just not the same when you bounce in with “I had a Barbie and a stuffed bunny rabbit and a cool jump rope!”, y’know? That’s practically standard.
But I did have a nice slap bracelet for a while. And it was very popular up until 2nd grade to wear long shirts and tie the corner of them with a hair scrunchie. After that came the great Hello Kitty pencil box trend. Girls would trade stickers and stuff and put them on the pencil boxes. I wished and wished for one until I finally got one in 2nd grade.
Pogs came out when I was in 4th grade. I never really got that whole trend, but the guys at school certainly did. When I was in 5th grade, I remember my gifted class had a school store/fair deal and two of the guys sold their pog collection and got quite a bit of money. Nobody ever played the game, though, they just collected and traded the overpriced bits of decorated cardboard.
POGS!!! Ah, back in the day… I don’t even remember what grade. Third or fourth. That was a trend I didn’t understand even then. No one played pogs, that’s for sure. But you could find them anywhere and everywhere. I think it would be a lot harder these days - demand kinda dried up.
Don’t remember anything about skirts and scrunchies.
But, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Captain Planet! (Which, now that I look back on it, was LAME. But I liked it). Too many things to name, really. Yep, my real childhood. Sigh. Those were the days. I hope they get better though. Hehehe.
POGS!!! Ah, back in the day… I don’t even remember what grade. Third or fourth. That was a trend I didn’t understand even then. No one played pogs, that’s for sure. But you could find them anywhere and everywhere. I think it would be a lot harder these days - demand kinda dried up.
Don’t remember anything about skirts and scrunchies.
But, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Captain Planet! (Which, now that I look back on it, was LAME. But I liked it). Too many things to name, really. Yep, my real childhood. Sigh. Those were the days. I hope they get better though. Hehehe.
The shorter-lived Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? was the show with the “running through doors” endgame. Where in the World had a giant map where kids had to identify countries and/or states with big flashing markers.
Tearjerkers and other sour candies were quite the thing at my school around 1991. We would sit around at lunch eating those little bastards and taunt anyone who allowed their faces to so much as twitch in reaction to the sour death candy.
David Jason, the voice of Dangermouse, has been a respected TV actor for many years now. Terry Scott, the sitcom star who voiced sidekick Penfold, died many years ago. Julia Sawalha from Press Gang was a regular in Absolutely Fabulous; I last saw Dexter Fletcher, the love interest, in a minor role in Band of Brothers. Even Lucy Benjamin, the art editor (IIRC), is now a regular in the soap Eastenders.
Good heavens, Lodrain, you’ve caught my nostalgia bone. I was playing this on my 286 (woo-hoo!) when my father walked in. He asked what I was doing, and I cheerfully replied “I’m killing Nazis!”
He laughed and laughed… then brought my mother in to translate everything being shouted by the characters. “Mein Leben!”
Of course, later everybody was building the high school in Duke3d’s Build engine just to prove they could, and we all had such fun killing each other in it. Not that you could do that stuff today without being branded a sociopath…
Totally forgot about Beavis and Butthead! I lived for that show. If it was still on the air, I’d be watching it. I have the movie on tape and sometimes I still go to the video store and rent the episodes on tape…