The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade (17 page)

I
n
the early days, your parents had to leave a ginormous deposit in order to lug an equally ginormous VCR home, because no one actually owned one. Then they had to wrangle with the cords and somehow hook it up to your TV, all to rent something lame like
Savannah Smiles
for your tenth birthday party.

But when the video-store industry settled into its stride, oh, the places you'd go. You could walk out with an eclectic triple-feature of
Slumber Party Massacre
,
Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
, and
Lethal Weapon 2
all under your arm! And movie stores immediately turned into one-stop shops. Who knew those purse-sized packs of Raisinets and bizarre offerings like Sno-Caps and Goobers existed outside of a theater's shiny glass case? If your video store was diverse enough, you could even snag a tanning session before you left. Be kind, rewind!

But the high life for movie-rental stores was a short one. VHS tapes were replaced by DVDs, and the craze for wandering the aisles, then having to return the movie the next day, started to wane. Choosing from a streaming website or opening a Netflix envelope was so much easier. Movie stores started a fight for life to rival anything in a Bette Midler–starring tearjerker. But, while it lasted, what a show it was.

Y
ou
could argue that 1941's
Citizen Kane
was where the cinematic twist ending was born (ahem, Rosebud), but the film world's zig-zig-zig-
zag
! gimmick really took hold in the '90s. For a while, you couldn't step into a multiplex without getting the Jujube-covered rug pulled out from under you just before the credits ran.

The Crying Game
was one of the first to really capitalize on its “wait…
what
?!” left turn. (Spoiler: Dude looks like a lady.)
Seven
,
Fight Club
, and
Primal Fear
all used sleight-of-hand to misdirect, and then delivered a dizzying punch to the head while moviegoers were looking the other direction. One of the best twists ever came courtesy of 1995's
The Usual Suspects
. We won't ruin it for you, but it turns out that Kevin Spacey's seemingly harmless nerd is actually the big bad Keyzer Soze. Wait—well, I guess we will ruin it for you. Sorry.

Perhaps the most famous fake-out was served up in 1999's
The Sixth Sense
, where Haley Joel Osment sees dead people—like Bruce Willis. Director M. Night Shyamalan rode that “surprise, suckas!” wave well into the 2000s, where he finally fizzled after producing critically drubbed fare like
The Happening
, where Marky Mark tried to talk a plant out of taking over the world. You mean you can't base an entire career on jerking the audience around? What a twist!

T
he
L.A. Times
once wrote that
My So-Called Life
was “
Beverly Hills, 90210
minus the lobotomy.” Angsty Angela Chase (a luminous Claire Danes) wouldn't have known how to deal with Brenda and Brandon and their bikini-clad, Jaguar-driving friends. To her, school was like a drive-by shooting, where you're just lucky to get out alive.

Angela was battling to find herself—dying her hair red, leaving good-girl friend Sharon behind, crushing desperately on soulful-looking Jordan Catalano, and dabbling in the daring world of new
pals Rayanne Graff and Rickie Vasquez. In the all-consuming world that is high school, she was suddenly sure she didn't measure up, and finding out was agony.

Created by veterans of
Thirtysomething
,
MSCL
lasted just one short year, but that was enough to forever cement it in the minds of those who found the small truths of growing up in boxes of hair dye, band practice, and love letters never sent.

T
he
nineties were the decade that overlaid commentary onto everything.
Beavis and Butt-Head
and
Pop Up Video
mocked music videos and
Talk Soup
took jabs at talk shows, but no one did the supplementary soundtrack better than
Mystery Science Theater 3000
.

You know the story: In the not-too-distant future, a human
(first Joel, then Mike) is imprisoned in space with wisecracking robots Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, and sometimes Gypsy, and forced to watch bad movies and equally awful mental hygiene shorts.

A great idea turned golden. How else would the world have discovered
Manos: The Hands of Fate
, a film made by a fertilizer salesman? Or met up with chubby Canadian ex-cult member Zap Rowsdower, the supposed hero of
The Final Sacrifice
? Or watched victims in 1964's
The Creeping Terror
helpfully crawl into the monster's mouth?

Some viewers were Joel diehards, others preferred Mike's riffs. Some loved the team of Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank, others got a kick out of Pearl, Bobo, and Observer. But whatever your favorite player on the ever-changing roster, this was and remains the all-star team of commentary comedy.

T
hose
dainty, dollish features. Those pouty lips. Those long, golden locks. Nope, not Malibu Barbie: We're talking about Matthew and Gunnar Nelson, the twin brothers who rocked '90s audiences' socks off to the tune of more than six and a half million
albums. Never has there been a more literal representation of the term “hair band.”

Armed with a unique acoustic-meets-electric sound and catchy harmonies—and, we're guessing, industrial-size vats of Pantene stashed in the tour bus—the Teutonic-looking twins took over MTV with hits like “(Can't Live Without Your) Love and Affection” and “After the Rain.”

With platinum, California-girl, corn-silk hair down to their waists, the brothers looked a little like they could be the spawn of Edgar Winter, but their musical family tree was actually even more impressive. With '40s-and-'50s TV icons Ozzie and Harriet Nelson for grandparents, and rocker Ricky Nelson for a dad, entertainment—along with a gene for lady hair—was woven into their DNA. Today, with their Samson-esque locks finally chopped, they look more like the twins from
The Suite Life of Zack & Cody
than dolls you just wanted to brush.

P
ew!
Pew! From cowboy six-shooters to rat-a-tat Tommy guns to outer-space lasers, kids from every generation have played with faux firearms. But Nerf made the first toy weapons that let Billy shoot his little brother right in the face.

Sure, they were loaded with foam projectiles, not real ammo, but still. In the '90s, Nerf came out with marketing barrels a-blazing, unleashing its “Nerf or nothin'!” campaign. The commercials made it clear that you needed to beg your mom to buy a bunch of newfangled Nerf weapons or you'd be ganged up on by every kid in the neighborhood and pelted to within an inch of your unarmed life. Millions of Nerf-less kids feigned the flu so they wouldn't be stalked and gunned down with foam bullets while they were waiting for the bus.

The brightly colored Nerf weapons lived up to the hype—Arrowstorm, semiautomatics with rotating turrets loaded with foam arrows; Ballzooka, which let you unleash a constant storm of round bullets; and the Nerf Slingshot, with its TV commercial featuring a street-talkin' Seth Green unleashing holy hell in a shopping mall. In those pre-9/11 days, it was perfectly acceptable to carry loaded weapons in public and shoot mimes—which Green inexplicably did. Of course, today, he'd be Tased by mall security and sent to Guantanamo.

N
ewsies
seemed like it had everything going for it: The 1992 movie musical starred a seventeen-year-old Christian Bale as the leader of a ragtag group of singing newsboys; its rousing tunes were written by Alan Menken, who had just scored with
The Little Mermaid
and
Beauty and the Beast
; and it was directed by
Dirty Dancing
choreographer Kenny Ortega. Slam dunk, right? Wrong—
Newsies
didn't deliver: It ended up being one of the lowest-grossing movies in Disney history.

What in the name of Joseph Pulitzer happened? Critics identified the movie's glacial pace, labor-dispute plot, and terrible New Yawk accents as the reasons the film only raked in $3 million at the box office. Teenage fans who loved every note, leap, and fist pump didn't care that it was an extra!-extra!-huge flop, though, and theater geeks across the country made it their mission to win over new converts, passing along VHS copies and singing the movie's praises to anyone who would listen. Twenty years later, their campaign to give the flick a new life paid off: In 2012,
Newsies
finally made it to Broadway. See kids, it pays to recycle.

1
996's
The Nutty Professor
was a retelling of the classic tale of Jekyll and Hyde, but with a lot more gravy. Oh, and also Eddie Murphy dressed as a woman, clapping and delightfully chanting, “Herc-a-lees, Herc-a-lees!”—something sadly missing from the 1963 original, where Jerry Lewis hammed it up as his buck-toothed “Hey, laaaady” character.

In the updated version, Murphy's four-hundred-pound college professor Sherman Klump drinks a potion that restructures his DNA, and transforms him into slick, slimmed-down swinger Buddy Love, also played by Murphy. Heck, nearly every character is played by Murphy, including his mom, dad, brother, grandma, and the Richard Simmons–looking exercise guru. And we wouldn't be surprised if he played Jada Pinkett too. That was the draw: The reason we kept buying tickets was to watch Murphy, Murphy, Murphy, and Murphy sitting around the dinner table together, handing each other fried chicken and farting.