Memorable Commercials from 90's Children's Television Timeslots

Don't even get me started on 90's commercials. Okay, feel free to offer some rough prompts, but be prepared for no foreseeable ending to this downright deluge of cheesy wonderfulness. In order to best serve you, the reader, and to prevent 10,000 word-posts, I've conveniently narrowed the categorical content of this particular topic.

There are countless memorable commercials from the 1990s. White and khaki-clad swing dancers urged us to shop at the Gap, beer promoters coined the frequently quoted "WHAZZUP?!", and soda drinking spokesmen asked us to Make 7 Up (Y)ours. What in particular interests me, however, are those commercials that seemed to play on endless loop during child-geared programming. Whether it was Nickelodeon or Saturday morning cartoons, these ads were shown again and again and again until we could recite the voice-overs right along with them.

This repeated airing, of course, was not without its consequences. It seems (and rather unfortunately, at that) that most of my mind has been crammed so full of 90s song lyrics and television advertisements that I can no longer accurately absorb current information. Someone gives me verbal directions of how to get somewhere and I immediately go blank, but I can sing Bone Thugs N Harmony's "Crossroads" in its entirety without blinking an eye. (By the way, if anyone would like to stop me at any point on this stroll down memory lane, you can meet me at the crossroads (crossroads, crossroads)).

90s-crammed brain aside, let's take a look at some of the absurdly hackneyed advertising that aired during our favorite programs:



Muzzy



It was years before I actually took French and could translate the wondrously useless phrases uttered by the Muzzyites. For the longest time, I was certain that "Je suis la jeune fille" was the dazzlingly appropriate response to any French inquiry. Only later did I learn that litserally translated, my all-purpose French meant "I am the young girl." I was right! Perfect in any situation!

"Excuse me, where is the metro?" "I am the young girl."
"Could you direct me to the cafe?" "I am the young girl."
"Which way to the Eiffel Tower?" "I am the young girl."

Foolproof, I tell you. That gorilla-type thing always scared the bejeezus out of me also. I liked the idea of dancing cartoons teaching me languages, but I certainly would have preferred the cute and dainty to the hulking and clunky.




Better Blocks


I'm not quite sure what it was about these things that were so enticing. It was incredibly unlikely that I or any child I knew would ever have the patience to sit down and labor tirelessly over a bunch of crappy second-rate plastic blocks. I never actually saw the things in person, but I imagine the effort that went into making the once-coveted butterfly was in no way compatible with my attention span as a child.

I've usually found the jumpy excitement of the voice-over to be inversely related to the actual fun of the toy: if it were really all that great, it would sell itself. I did desperately want the glow-in-the-dark version, though. When they turned off that light and spun that glowing blockful carousel, my little heart fluttered.



Topsy Tail


My sister and I actually shared one of these, and I can tell you for certain that it was never used. The ease with which tails are topsied in the commercial? It's in no way related to the actual ease of real-life topsying. I'm sure any male readers were and continue to be generally befuddled by female fascination with these types of tools, but take my word for it when I say we get this sort of bad-hairstying-aid trance. Those ponytails are butt-fugly, but dammit, if those girls could turn their ponytails inside out, well, then so would I.

The first time I saw that god-awful Bump-It! commercial on TV, I immediately thought of my now begotten Topsy Tail. It's good to know that the trend of useless overpriced hair styling aids still has a veritable market of consumers.


Hooked on Phonics



Curse you, retro-centric YouTubers, how could you ignore this gem of a 90s ad? You've uploaded everything else. Sure, I like a good Susan Boyle performance or panda sneeze as much as the next person, but where's my Hooked on Phonics commercial? In case you are curious or need a little refresher course in how and for whom Hooked on Phonics could work, look no further than the above advertisement compilation, from :30 to :60. You're welcome.

The Hooked on Phonics tagline, "Hooked on Phonics worked for me!" was repeatedly mocked throughout the 90s. Parody after parody was churned out in response to the cheesy slogan. It wasn't just in the wording, but in the execution. It was more like, "Hooked on Phonics....worked for me!" Sure, I love literacy and all, but calm yourselves, spokespeople.


Malt-O-Meal


Wow, that guy must have outstandingly powerful quadriceps. His squatty walk takes a lot more lower body strength than you'd think. This commercial was certainly memorable on ridiculousness alone, but probably also struck a painful chord with the kids whose parents were saving "a whole dollar!" by avoiding brand-name sugar cereals. These oft-maligned knockoffs certainly weren't buying any of us the necessary currency of playground clout and credibility. I understand that there are no fundamental differences between Lucky Charms and Marshmallow Mateys, but I would prefer if my cereal didn't come in an industrial-size feedbag.



Hopefully this has also helped all of you realize why your short term memory has been on the fritz: it's crammed to the brim with bagged cereal commercial choreography and dreams of bendable blocks.

Doogie Howser, MD

As children, it was tough to see beyond our own narrow worldview. If the world didn't revolve around us, then at least we must have had a fair portion of gravitational pull. In turn, our flawed perspective-taking led us to believe that every child's life was pretty much just like our own. Unless evidence to the contrary presented itself, we all seemed relatively assured that our childhood was the prototype.

Until, of course, we heard of a youngster named Doogie Howser. Though technically a fictional character, his divergence from our limited expectations of childhood and adolescence was enough to secure our interest and engage our imaginations. Just think, a mere kid, a kid just like you or me, living a double life. No, not in the exciting superhero manner we were accustomed to, but rather on the basis of his academic achievements alone. You could almost hear the collective sigh of relief from nerdy kids that there existed a route to exceptionality that precluded athleticism.

Doogie was renowned for his geekiness, and the uncool amongst us savored this fact. Though seriously ill as a child, Doogie managed to beat society's odds not only through a recovery to good health but also on the academic front. At the tender age of six he aced the SAT, achieving a perfect score. In a couple of months, he had breezed through high school and found himself accepted to the prestigious Princeton University at the age of ten. After a few years of medical school, our Doogie was well on his way to becoming a full-fledged doctor.

Of course, all of this happened before we ever laid eyes on our hero. We met Doogie at the slightly riper age of 16, already elbow-deep (sometimes literally, or at least surgically) into his medical residency. In the first episode, Doogie is taking his driver's license road test and drives recklessly to step in at the scene of a nearby accident. When a cop tries to apprehend him by asking "Do you want to go to jail?", Doogie bad-assedly retorts "No, you'll be the one going to jail...for criminal negligence!" Oh, burn! His mother looks on dreamily and remarks, "That's my son...the doctor!"

(Doogie Howser DVD trailer runs until the 1 minute mark...I can't be responsible the garbage that follows, I'm at the mercy of the almighty YouTube uploaders)

Doogie was not just your run-of-the-mill socially inept wunderkind, though. The show knew better than to make Doog into what he probably would have been in real life: a pompous social outcast incomprehensible to his peers. No, our friend Doogie was marvelously well-adjusted for someone who'd had a lifetime's worth of achievements in a mere decade or so of existence. In the show, he was just a normal kid, or so we were led to believe.

So how exactly did they manage to lead us to this improbable conclusion of normalcy? Well, for starters, he's got a totally goof-off best friend, Vinnie. In sitcom tropes, a zany sidekick is more than just a comic foil; rather, this character allowed us to take the leap of faith in assuming that a Doogie could really be friends with a Vinnie.

Vinnie, like all good 90s TV best friends, meets up with Doogie by climbing through his bedroom window. I guess he, Jessie Spano, and Sam from Clarissa Explains it All had a conference call or something. I don't know about you, but I was generally encouraged to use doors as my main point of entry. Bromancing aside, Vinnie was always pulling Doogie into his fast-talking teenage craziness. The intro shows a tiny snippet of their soda-packed beer hat-wearing, pool jumping antics:

If that theme music fails to transport you directly back to your childhood, I don't know what will.

Before he was hawking Old Spice deodorant and tripping in the backseat on Harold and Kumar's car, Neil Patrick Harris was a formidably pioneering child star. Though you may have forgotten it, he was the original Carrie Bradshaw--albeit, with more calming music and less voice-overs during his typing sequences.

Don't you just love that two-color screen and boxy font? That computer is just beckoning me, aching for a floppy disk insertion or a rousing round of Space Invaders.

All in all, Doogie Howser, MD was just a smart show. Not because of its brainy main character, but for its ability to present him to us as a relatable, regular guy. A part of all of us wanted to be Doogie, regardless of our actual academic aspirations. He had normal teenage relationships and problems, but he also got to be a legitimate hero.

Thankfully, we can all get our weekly (daily, on Lifetime) fix of NPH on ABC's How I Met Your Mother in which Harris plays the womanizing Barney Stinson. Lucky for us, the show isn't afraid to poke fun at the former child star:

(My favorite part is when he looks up, nods, and smiles. Is it just me, or did the guy from the Commerative Obama Plate commercial steal that signature move from Doogie?)

The "Very Special" Episode

Image via NY Post PopWrap Blog

Tonight, on a Very Special Episode of Children of the 90s: watch as our heroes combat drinking/smoking/drugs/racism/domestic abuse/eating disorders/gang violence/poverty/suicide/disease/prejudice/homophobia. Stay tuned, as this is not one you'll want to miss!

The Very Special Episode was spurned in the 70s, when the airwaves were teeming with family sitcoms just aching to impart morality and wisdom onto the eager viewing masses. With time, the Very Specialness of it all had been toned down considerably; the 80s boasted its fair share of preachy sitcom episodes, but for a few minutes in the late 80s it appeared as if the trend were preparing to taper off gracefully.

Lucky for all of you children of the 90s, television executives reconstructed and revived the Very Special Episode into a veritable art form. With the advent of countless interchangeable family sitcoms aimed at considerably younger viewers, the 90s boasted a roster of series for whom the Very Special Episode was nearly synonymous with the sehow itself. Let's take a morally conscious stroll down memory lane and examine some of the 90s most Special moments that shaped our childhoods and warped our perceptions for years to come:

Blossom (1991-1995)

Blossom was the real innovator in 1990s Very Specialness. Indeed, it was the good people at NBC who took great liberties in introducing an inordinate number of Blossom episodes with the oft-mocked phrase, "Tonight, on a Very Special Episode of Blossom..."

The show's breadth of very special episodes ran the gamut from drinking to divorce. It truly seemed as if every episode of the show was in some way Very Special; the series had no qualms about shoving allegedly acute moral lessons down the throats of its impressionable young viewers, albeit often with humorous undertones. Observe, a lighthearted reprimand from Six's mother following an incident of stealing:





Saved By the Bell (1989-1993)

Saved by the Bell was unabashed in its portrayal of faultless, morally rigid teenagers masquerading as carefree characters. Saved by the Bell spared us no issue, undertaking parental unemployment, feminism, fake IDs, drunk driving, and drug use in a scant 4 seasons. While often the drama of the purported misconduct took place outside the nuclear group of major characters, a few episodes did choose to sully our heroes' good names with some good old fashioned cheesy 90s transgressions.

While the drinking and driving episode certainly has its moments (particularly as they manage to crash Lisa's mother's car after a mere sip of beer), the most memorable episode was none other than the infamous Jessie Spano caffeine pill freak-out:



"I'm so excited! I'm so excited! I'm so (choke/gasp) scared!" And to think the movie Showgirls couldn't manage to coast along on Elizabeth Berkley's master thespianism alopne. I'm not sure if you have ever had any run-ins with caffeine pills, but unless you're on the serious overdose track they tend to be fairly benign. They might as well have had Jessie sobbing over her skinny soy latte from Starbucks.



The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1990-1996)

The Fresh Prince of Bel Air was not without its fair share of issue tackling. Like any good sitcom featuring adolescent main characters, there were many of the requisite coming-of-age themes (such as the episode in which Will likes a plus-size girl). The show also occasionally skimmed the surface of topical issues featuring episodes about interracial marriage, race riots, and gun violence in an episode where Will is shot in an armed robbery.

Two of the most Very Special are an episode where Carlton mistakenly takes amphetamines from Will's locker and is subsequently hospitalized and an episode where Will's absentee father returns with empty promises. I did not compile the following into a video, but its existence on YouTube certainly is convenient to my chronicling its Very Specialness.





Full House (1987-1995)

If nothing else, Full House is truly a Very Special show. Rarely did more than an episode or two pass in a season without confronting some sort of wholly unsubtle moral dilemma. The perfect and sanctimonious children of Full House may not have been prone to many discretions themselves, but they were certainly good at pointing out other people's faulty behavior.

The quintessential example of this is undoubtedly the episode in which Uncle Jesse wrongly accuses DJ of drinking beer at a school dance. Of course, our fair DJ would never engage in such raucous and unbecoming behavior, particularly not while wearing that Hilary Clinton circa 1995 pantsuit. DJ's wardrobe and rockin' mullet aside, she is the epitome of innocence shocked when she exclaims, "You're drinking BEER!" I especially like when the supposedly rebellious beer-drinking 12-year old proclaims her to be "so uncool!" It seems our friends over at ABC lifted this script directly from a DARE in-class video presentation.








90210 (1990-2000)

90210 was teen soap operary at its finest, and certainly featured a hefty dosage of Very Special Episodes. One of the most memorable was the season five finale in which Donna's abusive boyfriend Ray pushes her down the stairs. This would be an admirable leap into real-issue territory if the scene hadn't been quite so hokey. Tori Spelling's verbal acting aside, it's possible her physical work could use some work. I know it's in poor taste, but watching this clip potentially suggests she'd be well suited for some sort of highly-physical comedic work:



The drama! The drama! It is, of course, a very serious issue and it makes you wish they could have pulled it off a little better in the execution. Oh well, I guess it's either you hire your daughter or you hire a credible actress, and you just can't have it both ways.



Unfortunately, I just can't fit all of your favorites into a single post. I can, however, make a totally cop-out move by simply listing my runners up without actually describing them in any great detail. Hence, here we have some formidable honorable mentions:

Dinosaurs: Robbie encounters peer pressure to smoke weed
90210: Dylan's alcoholism
Family Matters: Laura gets beat up by a gang for wearing a certain jacket, racist graffiti at school
Boy Meets World: Shawn's drinking problem
Every episode of 7th Heaven and Dawson's Creek

Thank you for tuning in to this Very Special Episode of Children of the 90s! Join us next time when Children of the 90s confronts peer pressure/promotes Black History Month/feeds the homeless/administers STD testing/get juvenile diabetes.