The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade (7 page)

For some reason, people kept giving wrestler Hulk Hogan second, third, and fourth chances to become a movie star, with terrible flicks like
Suburban Commando
,
Mr. Nanny
, and one of the worst movies ever made,
Santa with Muscles
. In that 1996 disaster, the Hulkster played a millionaire with amnesia who thought he was Kris Kringle. Naturally, he wore studded black-leather gloves with his Santa suit, as you would.

Basketball star Dennis Rodman and his multicolored hair starred in a couple of duds as well:
Double Team
and
Simon Sez
. Simon says: Rodman, Hogan, and everybody else with little natural acting talent, please stop making movies.

C
heetos
have come in puffs and twists, balls and whirls, but none of the brand's long-lost junk-food variants are as much missed as a 1991 marvel known as Cheetos Paws.

In the commercials, hepcat snacking mascot Chester Cheetah would hand the treat out to boys and girls on the playground like a furry crack dealer. The kids would go so nuts for the puffy orange pillows, and for good reason: Paws were extra-fluffy and thick, and more aerodynamic than the caveman-club-shaped regular Cheetos.

But why wasn't anybody getting bent out of shape over what should have been the biggest snack-food scandal of the '90s—the fact that Chester Cheetah was selling his own severed hands to hungry children?

B
efore
she played a teenage witch, Melissa Joan Hart was the confident and spunky title character with funky fashion sense and a heck of an imagination on
Clarissa Explains It All
. The show, which ran from 1991–1994 on Nickelodeon, broke new ground as it broke the fourth wall: Clarissa talked directly to the viewer as she deftly dealt with such problems as boys, pimples, and her annoying redheaded brother, Ferguson.

The mini–Mary Tyler Moore had a slew of boyfriends throughout the show's four-year run, but the one dude who stood by her
through it all was her platonic guy-pal Sam. Although why in the world were Clarissa's parents okay with the stalker-like way he always visited: on a ladder through a second-story window?

Clarissa was an all-American girl, but with a decidedly adult side, quoting Karl Marx, actually saying the word “sex,” and getting arrested for protesting animal testing. Wonder if it had something to do with show writer Suzanne Collins, who went on to create the kajillion-selling, not-for-little-kids phenomenon
The Hunger Games
. Wouldn't it have been awesome if Clarissa would have stalked Ferg-face with a bow and arrow, Katniss-style? Clarissa would have had a lot of explaining to do.

I
f
the colors of the 1970s were earthy tones like harvest gold and avocado green, and the colors of the 1980s were the sunshiny pastels of
Miami Vice
, what was left for the 1990s? For a while in the early part of the decade, marketers just gave up on color completely, and suddenly, clear was the way to go.

Clear sodas, including Tab Clear and Clearly Canadian. Miller
Clear beer and the much-derided Zima. Clear soaps. Even clear trash bags were introduced—because if there's one thing you want to get a good sharp look at, it's a mashed-up bunch of garbage.

Crystal Pepsi, a caffeine-free beverage introduced with a Super Bowl ad featuring Van Halen's hit song “Right Now,” led the see-through cola pack in late 1992 and early 1993. But gone along with the color? The flavor. Once the big publicity push died down, consumers couldn't see their way clear to keep buying the nasty stuff, and a reformulated citrus version went sour almost instantly.

K
evin
Smith's success was the American dream. Scrounging up money through credit cards, a parental loan, and the sale of his comic-book collection, this regular Joe from New Jersey made
Clerks
for $27,000 in 1994 and raked in millions—and began an enviable directorial career.

Things weren't quite so rosy for his characters. Dante fended off shoplifters, egg examiners, and an antismoking gum rep, and also discovered that his girlfriend was a total nympho. Pal Randal in the neighboring video store actively tried to chase away customers, reading a list of porn titles in front of a mom and daughter and recommending the worst movies he can think of. (
Smokey and the Bandit 3
, anyone?)

Clerks
earned acclaim for its witty script, which was so layered with profanities that it almost received an NC-17 status. The movie raters at the MPAA may not have understood, but a generation of minimum-wage workers found kindred spirits in the clock-punching slackers they saw onscreen. As he said over and over again in the film, Dante wasn't even supposed to be there that day, but thank Hollywood and a chubby comic-book geek from Jersey that he was.

C
losing
time—one last call for alcohol, so finish your whiskey or beer.” When the lights came up in any late-'90s bar at the end of the night, it was a near certainty you'd hear this ubiquitous Semisonic song. Millions of drunks gathered up their jackets and moved it to the exits to the bouncy strains of the familiar tune. Even today, whenever some people hear it on the radio, they swear they smell stale Schlitz.

Unlike most '90s tunes, “Closing Time” persisted, wrapping its catchy tendrils around pop culture. It's a recurring joke in the Justin Timberlake–Mila Kunis flick
Friends with Benefits
(Timberlake thinks it's by Third Eye Blind). Danny McBride beats up Robert Downey Jr. and Zach Galifianakas to it in
Due Date
. And Jennifer Egan referenced it in her 2011 Pulitzer Prize–winning book
A Visit from the Goon Squad
.

But few realized it wasn't just a literal ode to the end of the night. According to Semisonic's Dan Wilson, who wrote the song, it was also a metaphor for being born. (“Time for you to go back to the places you will be from.”) Whoa—deep. And lost on most of the people stumbling out of a bar to barf into a snowbank.

A
merica
near the end of the twentieth century had the best contests. Publisher's Clearing House, where people win a fake check the size of a pool table. McDonald's Monopoly, which was just as drawn-out and unwinnable as the real thing. And for a brief shining moment in 1990, the Coke MagiCan contest.

MagiCan was that rare game where companies actually messed with their own product. You may have thought you were getting a can of Coke, but if you were a winner, your Coke can was filled not with soda, but weird-tasting and specially stinkified chlorinated water. The can also featured a spring-loaded device that popped up your prize—maybe a five-dollar bill, maybe a coupon for cash or prizes that you had to take to a nearby Coke bottler to redeem.

Of course, we kids tried to game the system, shaking each can on the store shelf and listening to see if it offered any clues about what was sloshing around inside. And then leaving them on the shelf and going on our merry way, a happy little splashy surprise for the next unsuspecting consumer.

C
OPS
hit the ground running after its first suspect in 1989 and hasn't pulled over since. The Fox reality show taught us that police officers aren't always knee-deep in a Hollywood-style murder investigation—most of the time they're out pounding the beat, breathalyzing drunks, separating angry neighbors, and filling out thrilling paperwork.

Best of all are the chases, of course, whether seen from a squad car-mounted camera or from the jostling view of a
COPS
cameraman, who earns his pay and then some just for keeping up with the fleeing suspects. And of course, it's sweet schadenfreude to see just how dim criminals can be. Highlights include the guy who tried to flee a fast-food robbery in light-up tennis shoes, the Einstein who tried to eat a bag of pot, and the multitude of citizens who choose to drive completely naked.

Deserving of special mention is
COPS
' uber-catchy theme song. Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do? When the Shub Jub Shun come foh you! Wait, it's actually “When Sheriff John Brown come for you?” Okay. If you say so, officer.

S
ure
,
winners of the Best Supporting Actor Oscar don't always exactly become household names. Isn't that right, Dean Jagger, Melvyn Douglas, and Joseph Schildkraut? But we were expecting big things from Cuba Gooding Jr. after he took home the little gold statue for his energetic, likable performance as football star Rod Tidwell in 1996's
Jerry Maguire
. Heck, the actor even outshined Tom Cruise and his megawatt smile and adorable moppet Jonathan Lipnicki (“A human head weighs eight pounds”), who was apparently created by mad scientists in a cuteness lab.

And then
Boat Trip
happened. Okay, in all fairness, Gooding made a string of dubious career decisions before he starred with Horatio Sanz in that 2002 stinkfest of a movie, which made everyone who saw it seasick. How bad was it? Gooding dresses in a metallic peacock outfit and later throws up on Vivica A. Fox. And those were the two best scenes in the movie.