The Forgotten 90's

Today we are going to take a test. Everyone please pull out a sheet of paper from your crazy Trapper Keeper with 3D shapes if you are a boy, or your Lisa Frank unicorn folder if you are a girl. Also, please only use a number 2 sharpened Yikes! pencil. Now, let's begin...

Trick question! The test is already over. If you read the above paragraph and had no idea what I was talking about, you were not a child of the 90's, and you have failed. But that's okay. Not everyone was meant to be raised in history's most glorious era.

Glory.

I read an article a while back that got me thinking about all the pop culture from the 90's that often gets looked over or forgotten today. Some things have staying power, and some things just don't. My perception of 90's pop culture is admittedly skewed, since I was but a wee lad during most of the decade. For instance, I was bewildered when I learned as an adult that the 1994 movie Little Big League was a box office bomb, because when 8-year-old-me went to see it in theaters with my dad it felt like a big deal. It could have been Star Wars for all I knew, because I didn't have the full cognizance to understand it's impact outside of my small group of baseball-loving 3^rd grade friends. So here are a few things I think back on from the 90's and go “Hey, remember that?” to which the collective seems to reply, “No, not really.”

Crossfire

I wanted this board game so badly as a kid, thanks in large part to this commercial which played between every early 90's Nickelodeon show. I dare you to watch it without weeping at the realization that your life will never be as cool as the kid's in the leather jacket. (I am prepared to triple dog dare you, but I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that.)

If you were too scared or unable (scared) to watch the commercial, it features two kids gliding on hoverboards into a futuristic arena filled with cheering crowds and lightning for a deathmatch while Kenny Freakin' Loggins or a Kenny Freakin' Loggins impersonator wails “Crossfiiiyyyaaaaaaahh!” The actual board game consists of shooting ball bearings at a cog to move it into your opponent's goal, but really the game could have been anything. It could have been a brick you smash your own face with and I still would've begged my parents for it. “Mom, can we please go to the store and get the game where I smash my own face with a brick? Have you even seeeeeen the commercial?”

I have never stumbled upon this game at any thrift store, which means they either didn't sell many copies of it originally (but really, go watch that commercial again) or, the more probable answer, all the ball bearings were immediately lost the same day the game was purchased by begrudging parents and given to their hyper-active and careless kids. Because, looking back with all the acuity of an adult, that's exactly what I would have done.

Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute

Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute (not to be confused with Zandar, Master of That Thing Where You Thump Your Cheeks While You Open Your Mouth) sold his inspirational rendition of classic melodies on vinyl, cassette, or compact disc through commercials which ran at all hours of the day on every channel broadcast in America for what felt like twenty years during the 90's. There was no escaping these commercials. Even as a kid I was sick of them, and I had an incredibly high tolerance for crap back then. The US has a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, but I imagine President Clinton finally gave Zamfir a few million dollars and told him to move to Canada and never return, because I have not heard a single note from Zamfir's pan flute in many years. But wherever Zamfir is today, probably in some small, icy town like Sasquatchatoon or Moose Butt, he can take solace in knowing that at least one man bought his albums – my father.

Wish Kid/ProStars

Saturday Morning Cartoons reached their Golden Age in the 90's. Everybody remembers the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Tiny Toon Adventures, and Garfield (my personal favorite), but for the longest time I had slight recollections of a cartoon where Macaulay Culkin would slap his baseball mitt three times to make Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson magically appear and save the day with their athletic skill and ingenuity. I brought this cartoon up a few times to people in my general age group, and all I ever got was blank faces and the usual questions as to who I was, how I got into their office building, and why I had interrupted their meeting with trivial nonsense.

“But before security gets here, seriously no one remembers? Culkin? Jordan?...”

It turns out I had remembered it incorrectly. I finally did the internet research, and in my head I had combined two cartoons into one. Wish Kid was the cartoon that starred Culkin as a kid that got wishes from his magical glove, and ProStars was the cartoon that had Jordan, Gretzky, and Jackson battling crime with comically inefficient sports equipment. Both series began in 1991, and both only lasted 13 episodes. I think now is the right timing for gritty live-action reboots starring Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, Brett Favre, and Haggard Macaulay Culkin to be aired on HBO long after your children have gone to sleep.

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So what do you remember from the 90's that others have largely forgotten? What didn't quite stick in America's nostalgic mind the way you thought it should have?  These things must be documented. We can't afford to forget the things that subtly shaped us or we risk losing sight of who we were and who we wanted to become.

This kid is the only reason I want to be successful in life.

.....

I'll show him.