The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade (5 page)

When Steve left the show in
2002, a new dude named Joe moved into the
Blue's Clues
world and the Internet went nuts with rumors that the original host had actually died. That mystery was quickly solved. (Surprise: He was fine. Steve split to pursue a music career.)

We wish that they'd have given some time to the show's real mysteries. Like how Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper gave birth to a jar of paprika, or why Steve always wore the exact same light-and-dark-striped green shirt? Or the solution to the biggest whodunit of all: That when Blue left clues all over the floor, it probably meant she needed to go outside.

Y
ou
never really intended to watch
The Joy of Painting
with Bob Ross, but maybe it was late at night, or maybe you were stuck at Grandma's and the remote was not within your control. Or face it, maybe you had just settled down on the couch after a night out and were completely baked.

And there was this guy, in jeans and a white man's Afro, speaking
in the gentle voice of a pastor, offering up a painting lesson so sparsely shot it may have been filmed in his garage. He murmured the names of the colors, from titanium white to Prussian blue to burnt umber, as if they were his beloved children. And like a good dad, he had complete faith that his audience could do anything he could do, which in this case meant turn a blank canvas into a mountain masterpiece or a seascape in one half-hour show—if they didn't nod off to sleep first. The
New York Times
once called his voice aural Demerol.

Fans learned a little about Ross in the process, including that his mom was his “favorite lady” and that when fishing he “put a Band-Aid on the fish and gave it CPR” before releasing it. Like Mr. Rogers, he seemed unquestionably good at heart—how could anyone painting “happy little trees” be otherwise? For that half hour, you were in the hands of a gentleman, and there was nothing bad in the world.

H
ow
did you apply your body glitter? A spray? Lotion? Powder? Those Kissing Potion–like roll-on bottles? Really, the question should be: Why did we apply it at all? What was it about 1990s fashion that made us feel we could best accessorize by coating our skin with sticky, messy sparkles, as if we'd first dressed to the nines, and then sat down and rolled all over a kindergarten craft table?

Cosmetics companies indulged us by offering glitter in all scents, colors, and formats. Want to paint it on your nails? Squirt it in your hair? Dab it on your lips? Sweep it on your eyelids? Mostly we just splashed it on anywhere skin was at all exposed, envisioning ourselves to be hip and trendy club kids, instead of preteens who might as well have asked Claire's at the mall to set up a direct-deposit account for our allowance.

You'd roll the glittery blueberry- or strawberry-scented goodness all over your shoulders, chest, and sometimes midriff, envisioning that the sparkle would surely catch Nick Lachey's eye as he
stared out into the nosebleed seats at a 98 Degrees concert. In reality, painting the glitter on was the most fun of the whole exercise, and the least fun part was finding the little sparkly speckles for days afterward on your jeans, in your bedsheets, and absolutely everywhere else.

P
ay
for water? When it already comes free out of the tap, the hose, the drinking fountain, even the sky? Our dads found the very concept as horrifying as leaving the lights on when no one's home. In the 1970s or even 1980s, buying water seemed as silly as the old jokes about selling ice to Eskimos, but by the end of the 1990s, it was a billion-dollar industry.

The bottled-water craze made sense in a way. Water is better for you than sugary pop, so who wouldn't feel a bit smug toting a bottle of the clear stuff instead of a Mountain Dew? But the craze brought its own problems—endless water containers clogging up landfills, as well as concerns about BPA, a chemical used in some plastic bottles. And don't forget the cost—the
New York Times
estimated drinking eight glasses of tap water a day costs a consumer $0.49 a year vs. $1,400 for bottled water.

B
oy
bands weren't invented in the 1990s—just ask moms who once swooned for the Monkees. But the late '80s and the '90s saw the trend explode, and junior-high lockers and concert promoters were the richer for it.

Whether you grooved to New Edition, Boyz II Men, 'N Sync, 98 Degrees, the Backstreet Boys, or earlier offering New Kids on the Block, the most important part of boy-band fandom was selecting a favorite band member. Every girl knew immediately if she was going to fall for the Cute One ('N Sync's Justin), the Shy One (Backstreet's Kevin), the Bad Boy (NKOTB's Donnie), or the One Who Was Left Over After All Your Friends Already Called Dibs (oftentimes he was the one who quit the band early and immediately flopped at a solo career).

Thanks to teen magazines and TV specials, you soon knew
your favorite's hobbies, dog's name, preferred foods, and of course his astrological sign and how it compared with your own. Your slightly older brother would mock you endlessly for this trivia, but really, he had no ground to stand on, considering he knew the same factoids about his own chosen idol on the Vikings or Red Sox.

Boy banders embraced the clean-cut, cookie-cutter image that made girls swoon. From the meticulously coordinated outfits to the never-out-of-step choreography, this was music cranked out by the corporate machine. But who cared? The harmonies soared, the tunes made for perfect prom themes, and the singers themselves were cuter than Beanie Babies. They had the right stuff, baby.

H
ere's
the story…of a lovely lady. And her family, who never left our minds.

Campily classic sitcom
The Brady Bunch
was canceled in 1974, but never really ended. Reruns ran eternally, and there also was a
cartoon, variety show complete with synchronized swimming,
The Brady Brides
TV series, and
A Very Brady Christmas
.

But it was in the 1990s that the famed blended family came back into the spotlight.
The Real Live Brady Bunch
dramatized scripts onstage. The 1990 drama
The Bradys
brought the family into a more troubled era (Marcia's an alcoholic! Bobby gets paralyzed!). Two big-screen movies parodied the original series. Suddenly, the Bradys, who'd never really been cool, were everywhere.

Many kids who grew up watching the Bradys didn't have the happy family they saw on the show. They sought comfort in it as kids, and as adults, they enjoyed the family reunion. Interest in the Bradys peaked around 1995, but it's never truly gone away. Every generation, it seems, longs to somehow form a family.

N
ot
many TV characters spawn a newsletter and a song devoted to hating them, but Brenda Walsh on Fox's hit
Beverly Hills, 90210
was not your average TV character. Shannen
Doherty's Minnesota twin turned California brat may have had plenty of dates onscreen, but to viewers, she was as unpopular as emergency dental work.

Brenda was a piece of work indeed. She shoplifted. Called best friend Kelly a bimbo. Slapped OHN-drea because they both had a crush on the drama teacher. Ran away from home. Pretended to be French to fool a guy she met in Paris. Blabbed about her friends' flaws to a TV reporter. Her back-and-forth with Kelly and sideburned loner Dylan was a love triangle to rival Edward-Bella-Jacob in its day.

And just as with
Twilight
, fans' feelings about the character leaked over into real life. Doherty's offscreen troubles tied right in with the character's slide from dutiful midwestern daughter to West Beverly bad girl. Brenda was written off the show after its fourth season, with her character ostensibly enrolling at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, a plotline at least as realistic as
when Dylan spent his summer racing motorcycles in Europe and climbing K2.

W
hen
the Mad Scientists of Gum World get bored, they think of a new shape or container for their stretchy, chewy treat. There are gum Band-Aids, gum lollipops, bubblegum cigars, and the Chewapalooza that delighted '90s kids' mouths, Bubble Tape.

The best thing about Bubble Tape wasn't actually the gum but the circular container, which parceled out gum in long strips like—duh—tape. Even kids from antitobacco homes couldn't resist pretending the round plastic box was a tin of Skoal—though this worked better after you'd chewed all the Bubble Tape and refilled it with shredded Big League Chew.

The gum itself was a tightly rolled snail of flat, sweet heaven, testing kids in the one area where they had no self-discipline—portion control. Sure the prim goody-goody in social studies could
probably break off a tiny slice and make it last till study hall, but the rest of us crammed at least four of the promised six feet of gum into our mouths at once.