The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade (21 page)

L
ike
a terribly written car accident, we just couldn't look away from
Saved by the Bell
, the best worst show of the 1990s. Every Saturday morning, we tuned in to watch preppy schemer Zack, nerd Screech, fashion-plate Lisa, cheerleader Kelly, preening jock Slater, and smart girl Jessie wrestle with issues like bullying, environmentalism, and addiction. The episode where Jessie lost it after getting hopped up on goofballs set a new standard for overacting—there are no words to describe the way she thrashed around, tearfully singing “I'm So Excited”—until Elizabeth Berkley beat her own record in
Showgirls
.

The show was as formulaic as it gets: Lisa would always rebuff Screech's sexually harassing advances, Zack would figure out some way to skate through class, and Slater would show up in a sleeveless T-shirt and mullet. What did we learn? Not much, other than Screech probably should have been in special ed, and Mr. Belding should have won the award for the most ineffectual principal in history, getting outfoxed almost every week by a group of fourteen-year-olds. (How many times can a guy fall for Zack pretending to be someone else on the phone? Answer: All of the times.)

It was cringe-inducing, but kids tuned in by the millions to watch the familiar group.
Bell
was a TV version of a bowl of Cap'n Crunch: sugary, comforting, and too much of it made your stomach hurt.

J
ason
Voorhees, Michael Myers, and Freddy Krueger ruled the '80s, but who would have guessed that ladies from
Party of Five
and
Friends
would be the ones to revitalize the horror genre in the '90s? Created by thrill-meister Wes Craven and
Dawson's Creek
auteur Kevin Williamson,
Scream
caught on with '90s audiences with its winky take on horror-movie clichés of decades past. The joke was that the kids in the movie knew everything there was to know about how to survive a horror movie (Never investigate scary noises or say, “I'll be right back.”), but they were murdered anyway.

The twisty plot, dude-that's-so-meta approach, and legitimately freaky scares were what propelled
Scream
to become the highest-grossing slasher flick ever. And the cast didn't hurt either: It starred mega-wattage stars Neve Campbell and Courteney Cox, and dimmer bulbs like David Arquette and Jamie Kennedy.

Scream
sliced into horror flicks with a self-referential knife—and gave new life to a genre that was very nearly six feet under.
“Do you like scary movies?” serial killer Ghostface would ask his victim before he drew blood. We sure did now.

W
hat
Duchess of York Sarah Ferguson did for hair bows in the 1980s, Kelly Kapowski did for scrunchies in the '90s. And once the
Saved by the Bell
hottie wore them, '90s girls fell in love, and in line. Bye-bye, boring rubber bands that yanked on your hair like a crabby little sister. Hello, soft, fuzzy, fabric-covered piece of hairdo heaven. Crocheted scrunchies, denim scrunchies, scrunchies to match your cheerleading colors, satin scrunchies—there was one for every mood and outfit. Those whose hair wasn't long enough to scrunch got in on the trend by wearing them as bracelets.

At about the same time, Kelly Kapowski's fashion opposite, Courtney Love of Hole, popularized her own hair accessory. When Courtney started wearing little-kid barrettes snapped randomly through her hair, girls who longed to show that they were marching to their own drummer snapped back. The barrettes were cheap and easy to find, and it really didn't matter that they couldn't hold more than two or three hairs. Having a pastel pink airplane flying through your bangs or a light blue butterfly fluttering through your curls was more about the presentation, not the practicality.

If there was a message in 1990s hair accessories, it was simple: Do your own thing. Whether you wanted a subtle scrunchie to sweep your tresses off your neck or a plastic plaything to make a statement, there was no need to look like everyone else. Until 1994, when the Rachel came out.

I
n
the 1970s, Mary Tyler Moore made a family out of her coworkers, and in the 1980s, Sam Malone created one out of a bunch of barflies. In the 1990s, the most-loved family on TV consisted of Jerry, Elaine, George, and Kramer, four friends who would sell each other out in a New York minute for a prime parking spot and a marble rye.

Viewers may long to be as suave as cereal-eating, Superman-loving Jerry, but secretly we all kinda resembled George Costanza, wannabe marine biologist, near-professional parallel parker, and celebrator of Festivus. Crazy Kramer's schemes included trading Cuban cigars for golf, making salad in his shower, and letting Japanese businessmen sleep in his bureau. Elaine was the only woman to infiltrate the friend group, and she did it with style, except for when she was performing her weird little thumbs-up kicky dance.

But whereas
Mary Tyler Moore
ended with the entire cast in a group hug,
Seinfeld
would never go out on such a sentimental note. In the controversial last episode, the group ends up in jail for not stopping a carjacking, and more than a dozen minor characters return to testify against them. The show about nothing ended with its stars in jail—for doing nothing.

W
hat's
more fun than attaching a ball-and-chain to your ankle and swinging it around? Well, lots of things. But for some reason, Skip-It, the plastic version of the restraining device used on prisoners, had '90s girls thinking about committing grand larceny just so they could get sentenced to this brightly colored chain gang.

Once you'd mastered earlier jumping games such as hopscotch, this was apparently the next logical step. Skip-It looked like the float ball that sits in a toilet tank, only covered in charms and stickers and attached to a plastic leash. Kids would stick their ankle through the leash's hoop and start to skip, swinging the heavy plastic ball around like a multi-colored mace from Roman warrior days. Sure, sometimes it would connect with your ankle or another girl's knee. But whoever said life on the playground was all ponies and glitter?

Seventies girls had a simpler version of the toy, called Lemon Twist. Skip-It was a giant, uh, leap forward from its fruit-shaped
forebear: Though it was introduced in the '80s, in the early '90s manufacturer Tiger Electronics added an ingenious element that only upped its addictive properties: an odometer. Yes, the new and improved toy now had a counter to track the number of successful swings you completed. It wasn't just play anymore; now Skip-It was a challenge. Girls would skip until after the sun went down, working their exhausted ankles to the bone to spin the thing around 999 times. And then they'd wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

A toy based on a staple of the penal system has never been so much fun.

K
ids
always gravitate toward toys that possess that extra edge of danger. Cracking your head open on a Slip 'n Slide, impaling your friend with a lawn dart—that's as much a part of growing up as PB and Js. Slap bracelets translated that perilous play into jewelry form.

Less bracelets than toys, they were thin, fabric-covered ribbons of steel that would curl around one's wrist when cracked across
your arm. Some schools actually banned them, reportedly because the knockoff versions could wear down and cut a kid's arm, but we always suspected that the distraction factor was really what brought down the ban. At their peak, every kid in school was slapping them on and off during especially dull lectures or study hall.

Decked out with smiley faces, Bart Simpson, or tiger prints, none of them were too attractive, but beauty wasn't the point. It was all about the application—whacking your own limbs, or a friend's, then marveling as the bracelet grabbed an arm like Doc Octopus wrapping a tentacle around Spider-Man. They didn't hurt, but they really looked like they did. Joked comic Michael Ian Black, “It's for pre-teens who are into pre-bondage.”

S
napple
drinks did for the 1990s what wine coolers did in the 1980s—invented an entirely new kind of beverage. Suddenly, everyone was toting the chubby glass bottles filled with a sweet blend of tea or fruit juice.

To look sharp, you popped your Snapple before twisting off the lid by smacking it on the flat of your palm several times, the kid version of tapping a pack of cigarettes before opening it. Underneath the cap, you found a random factoid, some of which were cool (“No piece of paper can be folded more than seven times”) and some of which were just crazy (“Alaska has more caribou than people”).