The Forgotten 90's Kick Back

This post rehashes the same ol’ formula as the first – highlighting pop culture of the 1990’s that seemingly got wiped from our memories when our brains made the Y2K update. As the title alludes, I’d like to think of this post as the unnecessary sequel that your teacher made you view on days that she desperately needed some peace and quiet for 1 hour and 33 minutes because your class spent the whole day being terrible. “Hey, stop that! Give Dillon back his X-Brain yo-yo! And quit calling him ‘The Blue Ranger’, you know that’s an insult!...Hey, you with the stirrup pants! Put those Dunkaroos down until snack time! Who poured Mondo all over these Goosebumps books? AAAHHHHHH!!!”

Beakman’s World

This Saturday morning educational show made science cool and interesting – a year before Bill Nye the Science Guy debuted and stole all the thunder. Whereas Bill Nye is still revered today, Beakman’s World vanished into obscurity quicker than that one Winslow daughter, who may or may not still be trapped in Urkel’s basement. It’s sad, really, because Beakman’s World was just as good, or dare I say, even better than Bill Nye. The show was fast paced and slightly irreverent, and receives bonus points for having one of the main characters be a dourly, disgusting man in a rat suit.

This is as dignified as I’ve ever seen a man in a rat suit look

I submitted an experiment I saw on Beakman’s World to my 4^th grade science fair that demonstrated how submarines work by using a plastic cola bottle, a balloon, and a straw. I didn’t win, and from that point on I denounced science as witchcraft and pursued a life of liberal arts…until I also failed at that, denounced it as witchcraft, and ended up in marketing. Still, Beakman’s World was a great source of entertainment even if it was thinly veiled pro-science propaganda for children.

“Did you know earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates?”

–Beakman, Level 6 Supreme Warlock

  

The Flowbee

Is your hair getting a little too long? Are you desperately lonely and don’t have a single sane friend you would trust with a pair of scissors? Have you always had the uncontrollable urge to stick your head into a Shop-Vac? Well, do I have the product for you!

Act now and the shame and ridicule are free!

The Flowbee is a self-haircut system that attaches to your vacuum cleaner, and the infomercials ran all the time in the early 90’s. I remember thinking even as a child how ridiculous of an idea this was, and how silly everyone in the commercial looked vacuuming their heads. Also, it cut your hair the exact same length unless you were constantly changing out attachments. In retrospect, maybe that’s why so many kids in the 90’s looked like one of the Lawrence brothers.

The family that Flowbees together, uh…snow peas together?

Heck, I dunno. Write your own caption.

The best part about the Flowbee is that you can still buy it on their website for $80, and they have made no effort to update any of the advertising. So there’s always the hope that its popularity can be resurrected by trust-fund hipsters.

I envision a future where every Instagram photo will look exactly like this.

Vending and Change Machines

I am changing the rules up a little bit for this entry, because vending and change machines are not something specific to the 90’s. Clearly they are still around and useful. But have you stopped to think of the advancement this field of technology has gone through the past 20 years? It was near impossible to get a vending machine to take a dollar growing up. If there was the slightest wrinkle, the most microscopic imperfection on the surface, you were better off eating that dollar than expecting to snack on some Now and Laters. To get the machine to actually work your bill had to have been 1) Freshly minted, 2) Blessed on the grave of George Washington by a Tibetan monk, 3) Transported to you by a climate controlled truck, and 4) Steam ironed in front of you by the Treasurer of the United States. Hundreds of years from now scientists will stumble upon a change machine from the 90’s and be baffled as to why we built a primitive robot whose sole, repetitive purpose was to take your dollar and hand it back to you.

“Judging by the words scrawled across it, we think it was trying to evolve.”

So there you have it; this installment is over. But don’t worry, just like your favorite 90’s sequels there will be an even more unnecessary sequel that maybe has a wacky new location or introduces a female character. But in the meantime, please remove the VHS from the VCR, apologize to Dillon for stealing his yo-yo and tell him he is totally ‘The Red Ranger’. And, as always - Be Kind. Rewind.

*whiiirrrrrrrr*…“This post rehashes the same ol’ formula…”