The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade (19 page)

H
ey,
you free for a movie on Thursday?” In the late 1990s, for the first time, the answer to that question was right in the palm of our hand. With the pint-sized PalmPilot PDA, introduced
in 1997, we no longer had to flip through our dictionary-sized day planner or—God forbid—run home and check our Garfield calendar to see if we were available.

It was easy as electronic pie: All you had to do was rummage around in your backpack until you found the little gizmo, flip open the plastic cover, wait for it to power up, use your fingernail to pry loose the stylus, tap the calendar icon, adjust the contrast wheel, squint to see the calendar and then curse when the screen suddenly went blank because you forgot to change the two double-A batteries that ran it. It was probably all moot, anyway, since you probably also forgot to sync the thing.

By the time you figured out if you were free, the movie you had planned to see had already been released on DVD.

W
hat
kid hasn't had at least a fleeting thought about what life would be like if their parents suddenly disappeared? Sure, most imagine their newly orphaned life a la
Home Alone
, eating gobs of ice cream and tobogganing down the stairs. Too bad for the Salinger family it was a little more true-to-life on
Party of Five
, one of the most depressing shows ever to run on Fox, up to and including
When Animals Attack!

The show was Lifetime-movie-heavy, as the five children tried to maneuver through life after their parents died in a car accident. Irresponsible Charlie, prodigy Claudia, confused Julia, Tom Cruise–y Bailey, and cipher Owen engendered a small but rabid group of fans, despite the fact that every other episode was about Bailey drinking again. That plotline was so frequent, it quickly became a pop-culture joke—like the episode of
Gilligan
where they almost got off the island.

Even though it often languished near the bottom of the ratings,
PO5
worked its way into watercooler buzz-dom by launching the careers of everybody from Neve Campbell to Jennifer Love Hewitt
to Matthew Fox—before he became a purgatory-trapped ghost-angel-robot or whatever actually was going on during
Lost
. It may have starred a gaggle of soon-to-be-A-list celebs, but with its super-depressing plots,
Party of Five
wasn't all that much of a party.

P
ogs
were more than a fad, they were approved gambling for kids! But gambling that might have been invented by an impatient third-grader with no athletic ability or desire to remember any rules. It was a game in the same way that hitting somebody with a stick and taking their stuff was a game.

First, you collected a ton of the little paper circles, which featured designs ranging from pro athletes to Hello Kitty to Batman to Bart Simpson. Stack them up along with some Pogs from your friend, and throw your slammer, a heavier playing piece, at the whole pile. Hey, did your throw send Joey's treasured Alf Pog faceup? Alf's furry little hide was yours now.

Grandma did it with jacks, Grandpa with marbles—but losing your favorite Pog still hurt like getting the wind knocked outta you in dodgeball. Nobody wanted to see their precious hologram
skull disappear into somebody else's grimy pocket. Sore losers—plus irresistible in-class trading—got the game banned from some schools. That was okay. By the time that the schools got around to cracking down, trends had shifted, and we would no sooner be seen with a tube of Pogs than we would wearing acid-washed jeans.

I
n
1997, America was invaded by addictive little monsters that ate allowance money. American kids took the Pokémon slogan, “Gotta catch 'em all,” literally, shelling out hundreds of dollars on
trading cards aiming to score one of the rare valuable ones. Kids would collect, trade, and sell them with an obsessive frenzy, turning schools, playgrounds, and alleyways into pint-sized versions of the New York Stock Exchange. “Who's got a Bulbasaur? For the love of God, I need a Bulbasaur. Sell all the Squirtles!
Sell all the Squirtles!!
” Sadly, we've yet to meet a kid who was able to retire early because of his stash of Jigglypuff cards.

T
he
1990s were all about multitasking, and music videos were no exception. Why just veg out in front of an ordinary video when you could watch a video paired with
Beavis and Butt-Head
commentary or one adorned with
Pop Up Video
's cartoony word bubbles?

The best pop-ups told you something hilarious, like the one on a Rick Astley video pointing out a dancer who never learned the
steps, or confiding that the director and producer had a two-hour fight about whether Astley should roll up his sleeves. Awesomely, the writers of the pop-ups seemed to have the same bemused contempt for the music industry as the rest of us, never failing to point out where the producers cheaped out on a set or the singer was replaced with a stand-in.

Watching
Pop Up Video
was like kicking back with your friend who worked as the third director's assistant and letting him dish about the scene where Meat Loaf fell off his chair or snark that Dexys Midnight Runners fired their drummer midway through the shoot. The pop-ups were like musical footnotes, but footnotes that were often more entertaining than the real text.

M
ost
prostitutes look more like “Pretty Woman” singer Roy Orbison than
Pretty Woman
star Julia Roberts, but when has a little thing like reality ever stopped the Hollywood movie dream machine?

In the 1990 smash-hit movie, tycoon Richard Gere hired reluctant escort Roberts, and they fell in love. Exactly like it always happens in real life! Awwww. It was a Cinderella story for a new generation, except instead of a glass slipper, she wore hooker boots. The romantic comedy sidestepped typical call-girl-movie issues, like jealous pimps and gonorrhea, and instead concentrated on the super-fun side of prostitution, like the slap-happy scene where Roberts let out a startled, hysterical “bwah-ha!” when Gere snaps a jewelry case on her gloved fingers. What was the next step in this odd courtship—slamming a car door on her thumb?

How does a flick about a prostitute's relationship problems appeal to a mass audience? Pretty well, apparently. The movie raked in almost $500 million worldwide. And the accompanying sound track went triple platinum, likely appealing to the skeezy guys who bought it because of Roberts and her thigh-high, black-leather boots on the cover, but also to preteens who thought Sweden's Roxette (“It Must Have Been Love”) and their hairdos were rad.

H
ey
honey bunny, you know what they call the best movie of the '90s in France? They got the metric system there, so they call it—aw heck, they call it
Pulp Fiction
, just like we do.

Quentin Tarantino's 1994 hit shook up American audiences in a way that few films have since
Star Wars
. The one-time video-clerk-turned-director blended together humor, pop culture, shocking violence, and witty dialogue that stuck in your brain like a ball gag in a hapless boxer's mouth. From Samuel L. Jackson's pseudo-biblical quote to breakfasts of Big Kahuna burgers and Fruit Brute to the disturbing gimp in the pawnshop basement, this movie was a full-on fire hose aimed straight into the face of the Hollywood establishment.

Who knew John Travolta could make such a glorious comeback long after his Barbarino and disco-dancing days? Who knew film noir and brutal violence could go down as smoothly as a five-dollar milkshake? Who knew you could store a watch in such an uncomfortable spot? As Chuck Berry sang while Uma Thurman and Travolta twisted their hearts out at Jack Rabbit Slim's, it goes to show you never can tell.

W
hen
The Real World
began back in 1992, the middle word in the show's title wasn't actually laughable. Original cast members Julie, Andre, Eric, Kevin, Heather, Becky, and Norman were real—and they were also bright, inquisitive Gen Xers with varied backgrounds and actual career dreams. They argued about everything from pets to politics, but there was a strong undercurrent of mutual respect, accented with intelligence.

The “Real” stayed in
The Real World
for a couple more seasons—Pedro Zamora's presence in the San Francisco house being a highlight—but the slide into sluttiness, once it began, was unstoppable. Soon cast members were being chosen for their cup size, not their IQs. Drunken hot tub trysts became de rigueur, and cast members not only didn't care about politics, they probably couldn't spell it.