LA Lights

Whenever I'm shopping for practical, functional sneakers for my imaginary children, I always think to myself, "Wouldn't these be better with some sort of poisonous substance in them? Maybe we could line them with some cushy asbestos or inject a teeny syringeful of arsenic. Just a little something to up the ante on the excitement of wearing stylish, dangerous footwear."

I can only imagine my parents were thinking the same thing when they caved to my endless pleas and purchased me my very own pair of LA Lights. They wouldn't even let me touch the glass thermometer and always seemed a bit concerned I may take to munching on the paint chips from our basement window, but they seemed happy enough to buy me a light-up sneaker chock-full of good old fashioned mercury. Granted, they may not have known of the risk at the time, but I have my suspicions. After all, they let me lick all of those recalled lead-painted Happy Meal toys, didn't they?

LA Gear was a popular brand of athletic shoes, boasting endorsements from the likes of Michael Jackson, Wayne Gretzky, Paula Abdul, Kareem Abdul Jabar, and Joe Montana. In the 80s and 90s LA Gear churned out signature style sneakers marketed to both the athletic and fashion conscious, capitalizing on their celebrity endorsements and placement in high-end department stores to boost their image and project an elite manner of sneaker snobbery.

During the company's pre-light era (circa 1990), MJ danced in his LA Gear sneaks

In 1992, they introduced an innovative design concept that undoubtedly endeared them to children on the virtue of sheer novelty and value to the easily entertained. The concept was simple but new: light-up sneakers. It's a well-known fact that children are big fans of simple visual stimuli, and these shoes were no exception. With each contact of the shoe-wearer's heel to the ground, the shoe would emit a flash of colored light. The inevitable oohing and ahhing was certain to make you the talk of the playground. These babies weren't so great for sneaking up on people, but they certainly were, ahem, flashy.



The shoes were comfortable as any sneaker but with every step, a burst of red LED light would flash from your heel. A a child, this was really the ultimate footwear victory. Suddenly, your shoes were not merely a functional piece of clothing but rather a legitimate novelty item to amuse and distract your classmates. In their own way, LA Lights were hypnotizing; watch a wearer walk away and you became mesmerized by the glowing flashes of light emanating from their shoes.

These light-up shoes unfortunately had a dark side as well. Unbeknownst to us as innocent children, the substance activating that little LED light was indeed mercury, a toxic element that could induce adverse effects on those in contact with it. Let's be real here: the actual tangible threat of mercury in our sneakers was pretty low. After all, it was handily encased in multiple layers of solid plastic. Unluckily for LA Gear, neither the plastic nor its corresponding argument of safety were solid enough to ward off the Cautious Cathys among us.

And so it went. Just as these sneakers had bounded into our hearts and lit up our lives, so fleetingly did they pass. Parents and watchdog groups weren't particularly keen to the idea of a poisonous compound seeping into children's heels with every blinking step they took. Environmentalists in my home state of Minnesota were among the first to take action against the well-intentioned LA Lights parent company, LA Gear.



LA Gear settled with the Minnesotan group with both a financial agreement and by establishing a mail-in program to safely recycle and dispose of the hazardous elements of the shoes. I can remember that day we mailed in my shoes and I said goodbye to those twinkling lights forever. As a child, I was not particularly concerned with the environmental or toxicity implications but more that I was forced to replace my beloved LA Lights with a crappy pair of white Stride Rites. Traumatic, indeed.

The manufacturers changed from a mercury to an inertial switch, but their product image had been tarnished and the brand was in decline. In 1995, the company made an agreement for their products to be sold in Wal-Mart stores, a rebranding effort that diminished LA Gear's hard-earned upmarket image. Sales dropped and by the late 90s LA Gear took action toward bankruptcy.

While our 90s pal LL Cool J might tell us not to call it a comeback, LA Gear has taken serious strides* toward reestablishing their brand. LA Gear is bringing back many classic styles including the beloved lights line sans toxic liquid innards. Yes, you heard right. Your present and/or future children too can relive the magic of LA Lights. In fact, just a few days ago LAgearnews.com posted the following sneak peak at the new light-up LA Gear sneakers:



I know, I know, it's too dark to get a real handle on the detailing, but just use your imagination. After all, if a sneaker company can find a way to use poisonous chemicals to bring joy into the lives of easily amused children, the least you can do is find it in your hearts to be impressed with this tease of a promo.



*please excuse this shoe joke

90 TV Musical Episodes

Who doesn't love a good ratings ploy from time to time? Perhaps that's just my 90s-style cynicism talking; I'm sure these producers were only out to express themselves creatively through the art of song. Oh, and to totally sweep in the ratings. Mostly the ratings thing.


Daria: Daria!

Any moderately faithful reader of Children of the 90s knows I'm a huge proponent of the 90s animated sarcast-erpiece Daria. In fact, I've spent much of my time as a broken ankled bed-bound invalid watching seasons 1-3 of Daria. Season 3's "Daria!" was admittedly uncharacteristically gimmicky in its musical format. It's tone certainly clashes with Daria's self-described bitter 90s cynicism, but its quirky musical numbers and naturally disastrous hurricane theme manage to tether it down to appropriate Daria sarcasm levels.

The songs are uncannily catchy. The episode particularly reminds me of how much I love Daria's dear old Dad Jake. His performance in "God God Dammit" and "Manly" truly captured his good-natured anger and mild insanity. When he sings, "I'm proud to be the home/of a Y chromosome", he does so with such fervor and intent that I'm nearly spurned to jealousy at my unfortunate double-X situation. "Obsessed", the duet between sister Quinn and mother Helen illuminates the perfectionistic similarities of their personalities that were obviously too nuanced for those of us assuming both were merely well-intentioned but grating.

Of course, I'm somewhat partial to "They Must be Worried", mainly because I love Brittany's squeak. It's just so eardrum-shatteringly endearing. Help yourself to the full episode below:








Buffy The Vampire Slayer: "Once More with Feeling"

Okay, so technically this episode wasn't broadcast until 2001, but the producers had been tossing around the idea for years. Unluckily for them, the timing of the Xena: Warrior Princess musical (see below) put a halt to their plans. After all, they didn't want to appear to be piggybacking on the success of their fellow hit fantasy program.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a show with a serious cult following, so the show's producers had a good deal of leeway from their trusting fans. Not every live action show can swing a musical, but Buffy viewers had some pretty serious faith in the object of their television affection. Of course, musicals work better in fantasy shows as there can be some sort of vague and mysterious supernatural force that brings about this wave of singing and dancing. Such was the case in "Once More with Feeling", where everyone has suddenly been compelled to air their innermost feelings via song-and-dance. Unluckily for some, this could backfire and short-circuit, causing spontaneous combustion.

The songs are well-arranged and the cast is surprisingly musically inclined. All of the cast members sing their own parts, though some of the less musically robust stars have fewer singing parts than others. The episode was extremely well-received by Buffy's loyal fan base and critics alike, with TV Guide ranking the episode at a noteworthy 14th place on its countdown of TV's 100 best episodes.






Rocko's Modern Life: Zanzibar

You know a musical episode has some powerfully catchy songs when you still clearly remember the lyrics unprovoked 13 years later. This Earth Day themed musical featured the good-hearted earth-minded citizens of O-Town seeking to clean up their town and fight against the tyrannical pollution from supercorporatio Conglom-O (slogan: "We Own You"). Rocko's Modern Life is one of those great cartoons aimed at children that manages to be legitimately funny on a level more mature audiences can enjoy.

"Zanzibar" doesn't disappoint on the well-timed deadpan humor. When everyone spontaneously bursts into song about Spring Cleaning, Rocko looks around bemused and bewildered. "How is it you all know the words? Did you rehearse?" He asks somewhat accusatorily in that adorable Aussie accent of it. "Yeah, every Thursday," his pal Heffer replies without skipping a beat, brandishing a paper filled with rehearsal details. "Didn't you see the flyers?" Thus goes the tongue-in-cheek but admittedly socially-conscious musical episode: it doesn't water down the message, but it certainly entertains between preaching.

Luckily a giant compost heap with some helpful visual aids commands them to "R-E-C-Y-C-L-E recycle! C-O-N-S-E-R-V-E conserve! Don't you P-O-L-L-U-T-E pollute the river sky or sea or else you're gonna geeeeeet...what you deseeeeerve!" Moved by the rotting vegetable heap's words, the crowd takes to city hall in the form of a big unruly mob. Despite some setbacks, Rocko succeeds at fighting City Hall. Ed Bighead gets sentenced to some dirty work cleanup but remains unmoved by the cause.

Luckily, the compost heap returns at the close to offer us these heady words of wisdom, "See kids? If we're not nice to Mother Nature, she'll kick our butts." Wise words indeed, especially as they come from a rotting pile of discarded vegetation.

Rocko's Modern Life - Zanzibar





Xena: The Bitter Suite

The 90s were big on historical fantasy, specifically those types of shows geared toward historical fantasy nerd fetishists. Xena: Warrior Princess featured hulkingly beautiful Amazonian Lucy Lawless as a muscularly endowed ancient Grecian seeking to repent for past sins by helping others. A spinoff of Hercules: The Legendary Journey, the show could be summarized in the following SAT-style analogy: Xena is to Hercules as pseudo-historical porn for female-seeking fantasy nerds is to pseudo-historical porn for male-seeking fantasy nerds.

The show didn't need much of a push to be classified as over-the-top, but its musicals certainly made a valiant effort. The show produced a musical episode entitled "The Bitter Suite", featuring original songs. I was never much of a Xena person, but admittedly the promo below makes it look like a veritable guilty pleasure. The Bitter Suite pitted Xena and her sidekick Gabrielle against one another in the mysterious Land of Illusia after Gabs's semi-demonic daughter kills Xena's son. Scandalous, no? From my limited knowledge of Xena music (based on the non-lyrical Xena episodic soundtrack I used for a synchronized swimming trio routine), I'll put myself out on a limb and vouch that it's pretty badass. In a pseudo-historical fantasy television sort of way, that is.






Garfield and Friends: Picnic Panic

I can't lie to you, readers. I mainly just like this episode because of the singing ants. They're so cute. And I don't even like ants. They move in on the picnic and steal their delicious basketful of food, singing the whole way through in their adorable tinny ant voices.

A close second for Garfield doing an impression of BLT on rye. Really, he's quite convincing.

Garfield and Friends
Uploaded by Wrestlegameshow.

Though musical episodes are risky, they're also a lot of fun if the show manages to pull them off. I'd venture to say most of these episodes succeeded, as I am still humming, "R-E-C-Y-C-L-E recycle" to myself at inopportune times. If you watched that video, I'm willing to bet that you are, too.

The Sharon, Lois, and Bram Elephant Show

When you're a child, you accept things at face value. There's no insatiable need to make sense of things; instead, you assume that everything makes perfect sense as it is. Once you're an adult, of course, you can see that much of what you so thoughtlessly accepted was completely and totally absurd. Really, just all sorts of insane.

Thus is the case with most children's entertainers, particularly those who are musically inclined. These people, though physically adults, seem to have tapped into some unique inherent skill to retain a childlike outlook on the world. To children, the world is a fanciful place full of possibilities. Though as cynical adults we're pretty sure that's not true and can outwardly express bitter resentment at everyone who encouraged us to believe so while growing up, professional children's entertainers seem able to block out this negativity altogether. While this quality is admirable and their output certainly speaks to and entertains children, looking back at the people who entertained us as kids we may have to think twice about our unquestioning devotion to their work.

Sharon, Lois, and Bram managed not only to retain this sense of wonder, but also to package and market it in a highly lucrative if admittedly elephant-heavy way. They forged for themselves a highly successful decades-spanning career, boasting innumerable albums, television shows, and live performances. Sharon, Lois, and Bram were generally received with rave reviews, though this snippet from the Toronto Star makes me question the city's sense of perspective: "Simply the best musicians in North America, and probably the world."

Wow. Well there you have it. Forget all of those Julliard-trained classical musicians and ground-breaking musical trailblazers--all along, our best and brightest have been 3 middle-aged folks singing around a giant anthropomorphic elephant. Of course.


Children ate this stuff up. They loved it. The trio began touring together in 1979 and spent a good portion of the 80s and 90s cashing in with their fun and silly set list. The really got that kids required no background information whatsoever, particularly in their zany television exploits. They certainly utitlized this principle to their favor in The Elephant Show, their Canadian children's variety show that later re-ran on American television.

Sharon, Lois, and Bram's Elephant Show was children's programming at its finest. For no good reason, Sharon, Lois, and Bram lived together in a house with a giant mute elephant whose presence was represented only by punctuated tuba notes. No one ever discussed their living arrangement or relationship to one another, nor did anyone question the fact that they were constantly hanging out with a random group of children. Maybe I'm off base here, but to me this behavior seems mildly suspect. As a kid, however, I just assumed that my neighborhood gang's respective trio of adults and a giant elephant had yet to move in next door and take an interest in our daily activities. It was coming, I just knew it.

Regardless of the questionable premise, this jazzy intro with corresponding wacky animation sequence was enough to quiet anyone's inquiries:



I love the three different kids that get to shout out our stars' names. "Sharon!" "Lois!" "And Braaaam!" What kind of a name is Bram, anyway? Is this some sort of traditional Canadian thing? Either way, our pals Sharon, Lois, Bram, and Elephant were a fun group who spent all of their time on adventures, breaking spontaneously into song, and inviting unsuspecting little children to come and hang out in their wacky home. They were all super over-actors, except Elephant who managed to keep things booming-notedly subdued, as seen here:




They usually included some sort of live-performance segment, highlighting both their stage presence and awesomely 80s and early 90s outfits. These segments were usually taped in a theater in front of a full audience, with all sorts of fun audience participation. Oh, how I yearned to be one of those kids nodding and clapping along. Nodding and clapping along at home just wasn't the same, though in retrospect it was probably less publicly embarrassing.

And of course, no show would be complete without their signature jam, "Skinnamarink." No, I have no idea what a skinnamarink was, but I know that it was my favorite song to which I had memorized all key choreography. It went a little something like this:



Bear in mind this show ran 1984-1988 and then reran on Nick Jr. until 1995, so there was a seriously extensive spread of children who grew up with this show and skinnamarinky-dinky-dinked their little hearts out. As if that weren't enough, in 1998 the group starred in another show on TLC appropriately entitled Skinnamarink TV:



Please take note of the changes in music and characters, updated for the short attention spans of the new generation. These kids couldn't even put up with a few tuba notes, as their elephant had both a name (Ella Acapella) and functioning vocal cords. Back in our day, we didn't need fancy gimmicks. We didn't even need basic explanations. Those were simpler times, when a somewhat effeminate man and two flamboyantly enthusiastic women could just live with their mute elephant and their mysterious gang of drop-in children in peace.