The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade (3 page)

The charm of the cast and the non-Hollywood style of the setting earned raves, but MTV made
Austin
pretty much impossible to find, throwing other shows in its time slot with no warning. Then they canceled it for good, leaving the talented leads to move on to Hollywood, and fans to forever wonder if snagging a theater-employee vest from the thrift store would really earn you free movies for life.

I
n
case you haven't heard, Sir Mix-A-Lot likes big butts, and he cannot lie. That's what he claimed in his 1992 smash Grammy-winning (!) single “Baby Got Back,” anyway. And we believe him. He was pretty clear.

We're not exactly sure where Mix got the title “Sir,” but we're
guessing he didn't get knighted by the queen for the classy line “My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns, hon.” Still, while Her Royal Highness probably wasn't a fan, plenty of people were. The song sold more than two million copies, many of them to suburban kids named Ashley or Trevor who somehow felt the lyrics spoke to their white-bread, Nickelodeon lives: “Tell 'em to shake it! Shake it! Shake that healthy butt!”

The tune sparked a butt-load of controversy. Some people took it to be a straight-up tribute to women with large backsides, others called it antifeminist and protested Mix-A-Lot's concerts. Whatever the rationale, the tune sparked a whole new generation of musicians to sing songs about derrieres. You other brothers can't deny: The folks behind “Thong Song,” “Rump Shaker,” “Honky Tonk Badonkadonk,” and “Da Butt” should give Sir Mix-A-Lot a giant, butt-shaped medal.

D
id
every girl who read the Baby-Sitters Club books try to organize her own version of the group? Did anyone succeed? Sadly, our friends were neither as industrious nor as kid-competent as Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, Stacey, and the rest of Ann M. Martin's characters. And what kind of neighborhood did they live in where parents burned up the phone lines during one half-hour period trying to book preteens to babysit? When we kids tried the same thing, the only time the phone rang was with a wrong number.

Moms preferred Baby-Sitters Club books to Sweet Valley High novels because the Baby-Sitters weren't boy-crazy. But that doesn't
mean the books didn't tackle issues. From diabetes to divorce to detesting gym, the sitters grappled with all kinds of kid angst. Yet at the core of the group was a deep love and loyalty that rang true. Middle school can be agony, and if you couldn't find a solid pack of pals in your school lunchroom, you could at least read about one.

And oh, the fashions. Quirky Claudia led the way, but all of the girls had wardrobes that seemed alternately drool-worthy and disastrous. Red sneakers covered with beads and glitter? Denim jumpsuits? Purple harem pants paired with a green leotard and red belt? Good thing it wasn't the Fashion Designers Club.

W
ith
his dopey voice and incessant “I Love You” song, Barney the declawed dinosaur appealed to toddlers and college-age potheads alike when he lumbered onto PBS in 1992. Because why
wouldn't
you tune into a show about a vicious killing machine running a day care?

The purple T. rex would have had his felt-covered behind handed to him by a real prehistoric predator (or a small mouse), but you've
got to wonder what kind of parent would drop their kids off at a clubhouse to spend the day with a dinosaur—even one that looked like a minor-league baseball team mascot. The “Friends” of the title, green Triceratops Baby Bop, yellow Protoceratops B.J., and orange Hadrosaur Riff, were no Monica and Chandler either.

But 1990s kids loved Barney with the same passion they reserve for other things adults abhor, like SpaghettiO's with those weird little hot dogs or that “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall” song. Speaking of songs, let us speak of the song. Even those blessed humans who'd never seen a single episode of
Barney
knew the song. I love you, you love me, this tune will make you go out of your tree.

I
f
you're going to go swimming in Los Angeles, find somewhere to take a dip other than the strip of beach patrolled by the beautiful lifeguards of
Baywatch
. Unless you enjoy your suntan lotion mixed with murder, diamond smuggling, tropical storms, illegal offshore casinos, and giant octopuses, that is. It's a wonder the lifeguards had any time at all to rescue drowning swimmers, since they seemed to spend most of their days (and nights) fighting crime and natural disasters—and dealing with more pedestrian issues like dog-sitting, custody battles, and root canals. Also, oiling up their pecs.

The over-the-top plots were beside the point. Most of the show was an excuse to linger on jiggly, slow-motion shots of red-swimsuited lifeguard babes running in the sand. And David Hasselhoff and his hairy, bare chest (he's big in Germany, you know). The show made gigantic stars of its cast, especially Pamela Anderson and her cleavage. And it made Hasselhoff a very rich man. When
Baywatch
was initially canceled after just one season on NBC, the star put up his own money to launch it in syndication. Smart move: At its peak, more than a billion people a week all over the world tuned in. Slow-motion boobies apparently translate in any language.

L
et's
hope your parents invested in Apple or Microsoft in the 1990s instead of putting your whole college fund in Beanie Babies. Everyone knew one aunt or cousin with an extra bedroom stuffed with the soft little beanbag animals, convinced that one of them was rare enough to be her magical lottery ticket to Mansionville. But since thousands of people thought the same thing, there were innumerable clones of Cheezer the Mouse or Dinky the Dodo out there, and nobody got rich.

Most of us didn't collect with dollar signs in our eyes, though—we just bought the ones we liked best. Who didn't swoop up the calico cat because it looked just like your own Jessica Patterpaws, or take home Princess, the Princess Diana bear, because you were still mad about Prince Charles cheating on Di with Camilla?

The Ty toy company was brilliant when it came to reeling us in. Each animal not only had a name, but a birthday and, oddly enough, a poem. A poorly written poem, with uneven meter, that might rhyme “swim” with “fins,” but a poem nonetheless.

If you were a collector, your fun was pretty much limited to dusting the things now and then and screeching at anyone who tried to remove the all-important hang tag. If you were just a kid, Beanies provided you with a fun, animal-centric world, where manatees hung out with huskies and unicorns shared room space with tyrannosaurs, like a weird and wonderful zoo with no bars. Or logic.

I
t's
every bad American teen stereotype put into an amplifier and cranked up to eleven. In the spaces where Beavis and Butt-Head's brains should be, you'll find convenience-store burritos, a
love of fire and bad heavy metal, and a million variations on the word “buttmunch.”

But for being such dumb kids, B&B smartly channeled their inner
Mystery Science Theater 3000
when it came to dissing music videos. Watching Kiss, Butt-Head declares: “These guys are pretty cool for a bunch of mimes.” Perplexed during Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” he asks Beavis: “Is this, like, grudge music?” And say what you will about their opinions, their music criticism was often spot-on. In one segment, they watch Milli Vanilli for several seconds in complete horror, before changing the channel to Journey without saying a word.

M
aybe
the Bee Girl of Blind Melon's 1991 “No Rain” video was an early metaphor for how the decade would progress. You remember: Gawky ten-year-old Heather DeLoach is laughed at for her dowdy appearance and clunky tap dance. Bravely, she
keeps on trying, and eventually joyously stumbles upon a sunny green field full of outsider bees just like her.

So too the 1980s, full of slick Madonna and Duran Duran videos, poofy shoulder pads and elaborate hair, were giving way to the sloppier, more laid-back flannels and garage-band aesthetic of grunge and riot grrrls. Suddenly the cheerleaders and jocks no longer ruled, the burnouts and nerds were ascendant. For a while at least, it seemed as if the entertainment world was realizing that there were more imperfect originals than cookie-cutter pop princesses.