90s Underdog Sports Movies

Because most of us aren't Olympic-caliber athletes and will never earn multimillion dollar contracts with professional sports franchises, the underdog story tends to speak to us on a personal level. When it does, it's saying something like, "You may not be talented, but with this level of drive and determination you can outshine all of those people with legitimate athletic ability." It's like a small way of keeping the dream alive. As a child you may have fantasized about playing in the NBA or being an Olympic gold-medal gymnast, but when puberty ended and you were either 5'1'' or 6''7 respectively, you may have had to adjust your dreams slightly. Actually, the short guy might have just wanted to trade with the tall guy, and you may have been gone on to great success in living out the other's wildest calisthenic desires.

The underdog story strikes a special chord with all of us, regardless of how successful we are in our current endeavors. At one point or another, every one of us has had at least a brief taste of hopelessness and self doubt. If our lives worked like the movies, we would see these feelings as our cue to grow and learn and eventually beat out our anonymously evil opponent, but unfortunately real life doesn't play out that way. That's precisely what makes the theme so attractive to us in film: it gives us a sliver of hope that we may someday achieve our indefinitely improbable dream.

Who doesn't like to root for the underdog? I once almost won the jackpot in a March Madness pool by picking a solid lineup of underdogs. At the time, I had no knowledge of college basketball, so I based my strategy solely on my knowledge of cheesy, heartwarming sports cinema. For awhile, it was really working for me, too. If only things had ended up as well for the teams I'd chosen as they had for say, the Mighty Ducks, I would have been a temporarily rich woman.

While not always probable, these stories help us get through the hard times. Or at the very least, they test our crying reflexes. Some of these warrant a full Kleenex multi-pack. Don't say I didn't warn you.


Mighty Ducks



I still can't believe this is sitting steady at 8% on Rotten Tomatoes. It's a 90s classic. Its many many sequels and franchising opportunities tell the real story; we didn't necessarily need a critically acclaimed movie to rush out and buy oodles of licensed merchandise. We would settle for a standard underdog story. Our consumerism isn't too picky.

Rudy

RUDY - Feature Film Trailer from Edgar Faarup on Vimeo.

Rudy is truly one of those classic underdog movies. Even just watching the trailer gets me all riled up against everyone who told Rudy that his dreams were impossible. Granted, they were probably right. Like the groundskeeper remarks, he's 5 foot nothin' and weighs a hundred and nothin', plus he has no real aptitude for athletics. None of that is enough to deter Rudy, though, bless his heart. He's a pretty persistent guy.

Good thing, too, because he's become an enduring inspiration to us 90s kids. It wouldn't work as well if he'd thrown in the proverbial towel, no matter how sweaty he'd gotten it. If this movie didn't make you cry, maybe nothing will. It's a real tears-of-joy kind of flick.

The Sandlot



This movie is just brimming with quotable one-liners and pure, kid-driven heart. It's a sweet movie filled with ragtag misfits that separates itself from the pack of underdogs by not focusing so heavily on winning or losing. What's more important, it seems, is just being a kid. And avoiding certain death at the jaws of a savage English Mastiff. You know, the usual.


A League of their Own



I don't care what the degree of odds stacked against you as a professional female baseball player: there is absolutely no crying in baseball. I checked all of the rulebooks and Jimmy Dugan is absolutely right. No crying. Even if you're a Rockford Peach and have thin skin.



Hoop Dreams



Alas, proof that the heartstring-tugging underdog story isn't always fictional. Hoop Dreams is a documentary, but it's really only about basketball on a surface level. Like many documentaries, it gets to the heart of issues including race and societal values. The movie follows two kids for six years (8th grade to college) as they progress in their athletic careers, and these filmmakers captured more drama and tension than that found in fictional screenplays. In short, it's a great movie. If you haven't already, your homework assignment is to watch it. Report back on Monday.

Ladybugs



Cross-dressing movies are inherently funny, right? I haven't seen this one in ages, but as I kid I was pretty certain it was knee-slappingly hilarious. A clueless Rodney Dangerfield (is there any other kind?) ends up coaching a girls' soccer team and enlists his soon-to-be stepson as one of the players. I had a huge crush on Jonathan Brandis, so I watched this movie probably 30 times. Consecutively. I'm still not over his death. Anyway, back to the movie: adults probably found it pretty hit or miss, but it was child-directed comedic gold.


Mystery, Alaska


There are so many characters in this movie, it's almost tough to tell who's the underdog. The movie essentially takes a stand against things that are fairly easy to take a stand against: evil big corporations, people who cheat on their spouses, sleazy television producers; it's not a huge leap to get us on board with it all. The big hockey game almost feels like a secondary plot in this one, though, so it didn't earn as much fanfare as its underdog-rooting cinematic peers.


Major League


Cut me a little slack here; this one came out in 1989, but it has all the classic makings of a 90s underdog story. Even that trailer follows the misfit montage to a T. Unlike some of the other movies on this list, Major League actually manages to be funny while executing its hackneyed storyline. We're willing to forgive the cliches because it's a genuinely entertaining film. Plus, Charlie Sheen plays Charlie Sheen. That's so unlike him.

The Cutting Edge


Okay, okay, I admit. I have a weakness for incredibly cheesy sports movies. As far as sports films go, this is pretty much as girly as it gets. At least this film throws another standard cliche into the mix: the mismatched-but-inevitably-suited-for-romance partnership. The spoiled Muffy and tough-guy meathead are clearly meant to be together from the beginning, but the fun of the movie is in watching the tribulations of their initial togetherness. Spoiler alert: They win, and they get together. I'm sure you're shocked.


Little Giants


Wow, how young is Ed O'Neill in that trailer?

I loved this movie as a kid, but looking at it now it's obvious it's about as by the books as you can get with an underdog story. It's like the writers took every Bad News Bears-style cliche from every kids' sports film ever made and synthesized them into a single film. They may well have named it, Generic Cliched Sports Film: Children's Edition. Even with its weaknesses, it appeals well to children. Anyone over the age of 10 may not be quite so generous with their reviews, unless they had a real thing for Devon Sawa. I know I did.


It goes to show that films don't need originality to entertain us. They can usually make up for it with a hearty dose of feeding our delicate psyches the reinforcement and reassurance it needs to delude us into thinking we can achieve the impossible. Don't get me wrong. Dream big, and all that. We don't watch movies to remind us of our own shortcomings; we watch movies to escape from the mundane trials of daily life. For the most part, it works too. Assuming the little guy wins, that is.

Awesome 80s and 90s Happy Meal Toys

You've got to feel at least a bit nostalgic for a time when a trip to McDonald's was an incredibly exciting and highly anticipated lunchtime event. As an adult, McDonald's is usually more of a convenience affair exclusive to travel and times when we're in such a rush we can't be bothered to consume anything with marginal nutritional value. As a kid, though, McDonald's was the be-all end-all of fine dining. Give us some nugs, some sweet n' sour sauce for dunking, and throw in a cheap plastic toy, and we'd be satiated for at least an afternoon. Our parents may have been the tiniest bit uneasy about feeding us such junk, but our immediate food coma-related nap was probably more than enough to justify their decision.

While the junk food was an essential element of the McDonalds+Children=Pure Ecstasy equation, the Happy Meal toy was a critical ingredient of our satisfaction. The french fries were oily and delicious, yes, but they paled in comparison to the notion of receiving a brand new toy. While usually we'd have to pull the old "throw yourself on the floor screaming in the toy store aisle" routine sure to humiliate our parents, in this case we got the toy no questions asked. It was just that easy.



Teenie Beanies


Following suit with the TY Beanie Babies craze of the 90s, McDonald's unleashed these "Teenie Beanies" in 1997. While Happy Meal toys are traditionally marketed exclusively at children, the Teenie Beanie promotion caught on in a big way with collectors. The toys quickly became best-selling Happy Meal giveaways, with adults and children alike lined up for cheeseburgers and nuggets. The chain actually ran into a serious issue with food wasting, as many adults were purchasing the Happy Meals solely for Teenie Beanie purposes and discarding their food in the trash. McDonald's had to actually sell them seperately with adult-sized food to satisfy the insatiable public.

McDonald's released two Beanies each week across a month-long span in April/May 1997, creating a self-perpetuating sea of hype. Every week, the hysteria would begin anew. I'm sure all of the very well-paid and never-harassed counter help was so pleased.



Furby


After the success of the Teenie Beanies, McDonald's learned a thing or two about appealing to collectors. Why exactly someone feels that a toy that comes free with a burger and fries is an invaluable collectible is beyond my grasp of logic, but I guess that's why I'm not a collector. These weren't fully functional electronics like the original, but each variety had some special gimmick, be it a growl or an ear wiggle. McDonald's produced 80 variations of 8 main varieties for the launch in 1999, meaning eager collectors had to return time and time again to complete their stash. McDonald's 1, Childhood obesity prevention 0.



Barbie/Hot Wheels



You just don't mess with the classics. You know, even if they reinforce all types of unsavory gender stereotypes. In the eye of McDonald's toy producers, girls liked dolls, boys liked cars, and that was that. It was generally non-negotiable, though I'm sure there were occasional requests for a trans-gender toy. I don't mean a Barbie with a shaved head dressed in baggy JNCOs, of course, just the girl/boy toy switcharoo. That other way would have been interesting, though.

And that commercial? Wow. Just wow. I especially like the way the tone of the voice-over and background music change when describing the fast car versus the tiny doll with styleable (!) hair. If you've got to squeeze a wealth of gender stereotypes into a single 30 second spot, you might as well give it all you've got.



Halloween Pails



I think the reasoning behind these trick-or-treat pails was something like, "If they're not going to get anything nutritious from us, we might as well limit their eventual candy consumption by offering way-too-small Halloween candy portals." You couldn't make much of a haul with these; you'd have been far better off with a pillow case. For some reason, though, we had these stacked around our house storing toys and holiday decorations for years. I can't imagine we ever ate that many Happy Meals. Perhaps my mom force-fed them to us on the condition that she could use the pails for her home storage needs. It seems vaguely possible.




McNugget Buddies



Ah, McNugget Buddies. You just don't see good fried food children's character action figures like you used to. These days, they're all Veggie Tales and their religious-tinted health-conscious ilk, but in our day we were more than happy to play with some anthropomorphized Chicken McNuggets. This was clearly a simpler time, or at least a time before parents had any access to relevant nutritional information.

When we were kids, apparently no one thought it was creepy for a commercial to feature a clown chatting conversationally with some juvenile chicken nuggets, reminiscing about their younger days and their first dipping sauce experiences. That sounds like a red flag to me, but obviously someone green lighted it. They are sort of cute, in a "I'm going to eat you and not feel remorse" type of way.





McDonald's Food Changeables



These were like the poor man's Transformers. There's something sort of innocent and benign about a cheeseburger that morphs into a killer robot. It's kind of...cute. In its own way. Even the voiceover guy can't take it seriously. "French fries become....FRY-BOT!" It sounds like he's trying to hold him some major guffaws. And who can blame him? That sentence is completely ridiculous.




Disney Movie Tie-Ins: Bambi, 101 Dalmations, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Hercules, Mulan....the list of cheap licensed merchandise goes on and on



I'm pretty sure I had the 1988 Bambi Happy Meal toys on display on my dresser for ten years, minimum. What? They were adorable. If I could find them today,I'd probably become that annoying person in the office whose desk is overtaken by tchotchkes and knicknacks (see Scott, Michael).

McDonald's acquired the licensing rights to all sorts of Disney paraphernalia, meaning whenever a new Disney movie premiered they were ready with a million tiny molds of all of its characters. I distinctly remember the 101 Dalmations toys because they haphazardly stuck Cruella in there. Who, I ask you, wants to play with a Cruella toy? We were all holding out for adorable puppies. I must've gotten three Cruellas before I finally got my hands on a pup.



Cabbage Patch Kids and Tonka Trucks



This was our other major boy/girl specific promotion. Obviously they never got too far thinking outside the box. Dolls and Cars, Dolls and Trucks. Big leap on that one.



McDino Changeables



We've got a similar Changeable concept here, only with...dinosaurs? Don't ask, I don't know what kind of weirdos they had in their development department, but McNuggetasaurus? Really? Is that an actual thing? To be fair, it is sort of cute, but you've got wonder the route to getting that into production.



Super Mario Bros 3



This ad is awesome. I love it. It just encompasses so much nostalgia in every beep. It manages to combine two things we loved as children (Super Mario Brothers and fast food) and combine them into a neat little package, complete with take-home toy. Well done, McDonald's.



As the promotions cycled in and out monthly, there are dozens of others I simply couldn't contain within the confines of a single post. Feel free to wax poetic about your favorites in the comments section. Just don't get too carried away; we don't want any of you inadvertently morphing into FRY-BOTS or a MCNUGGETASAURUS! Okay, okay, I admit it. That wasn't really related. I just desperately wanted to use those words again. They're adorable. Now knock yourselves out reminiscing about fast food freebies, kids. It's been fun.

SimCity, The Sims, and Other Computer Games in the Sim Series

No wonder all of us 90s children have such a puffed-up sense of self-worth and entitlement. What else would you expect after repeatedly encouraging us to play the role of virtual God throughout our childhood and adolescent years? Through the magic of computer games, the Maxis company gave us a unique opportunity to create our own little worlds complete with a population of inhabitants to control according to our benevolent or occasionally sadistic whims. We may not all have been kind and compassionate gods to our burdgeoning creations, but we certainly were powerful.

The first SimCity computer game debuted in 1989, featuring a simulated city-building program. It seemed like an innocent enough concept, and almost extensively educational at that. The object of the game was to build fully functioning cities that could withstand the impact of various disastrous scenarios, ranging from the realistic (1906 San Francisco earthquake) to ridiculous (Tokyo attacked by unlicensed Godzilla knockoff). Upon first glance the game seemed tedious, but it quickly became exceptionally addictive. Dealing with zoning laws and tax codes are a small consolation for the unlimited control of our little city. We commanded our anonymous miniature townspeople to do our bidding, and we saw that it was good.

SimCity was a runaway success, leading to countless reincarnations and reinventions. Clearly, people just could not get enough of ruling their own microcosmic universes. It was a pretty good feeling, after all. For the cost of a computer game, you could elevate yourself to the status of almighty ruler. All in all, not a bad deal.


The follow-ups to SimCity were endless. We had SimEarth, in which we got to design and guide the development of your very own planet. There was SimLife, allowing us the opportunity to mold the "genetic playground" of an ecosystem of plants and animals. We even had SimFarm, a primitive predecessor to that pesky Farmville on Facebook. The next time you have to endure endless newsfeed posts regarding the sad encounter of an ugly duckling or sad brown cow found wandering on the outskirts of a friend's farm, you may want to shake your fist in disgust at the Sim creators who planted the idea in the first place. Yes, I said planted. It's a farm pun. Get over it.

Early predecessor of Farmville? We may never know, but I'm going to blame them either way

By the year 2000, it seemed nearly inevitable that the computer whizzes over at Maxis would run out of ideas at one point or another. SimCity 2000 and SimCity 3000 seemed to have covered all possible ground for the game. It was hard to imagine expanding beyond the already exhaustive details of the SimCity series. By SimCity 3000, the programmers had gone so far as to insert angry citizen protesters when we made an unpopular public works decision. It sounded like they must have used up all of their viable computer game ideas. How much more could they possibly squeeze into a reissue?

And then, suddenly, Maxis issued us an entirely new vantage point from which to get our world-ruling jollies. In 2000, they released The Sims, through which we could live the complete simulated life of a virtual character. We may have thought we had been playing God in all previous incarnations of the game, but that all seemed pretty entry level once we saw what was to come.


In The Sims, we had full control over a virtual person (or people, if you were an adequate multi-tasker). Many of us saw fit to actually model a Sim after ourselves, christen it with our name, and try to control its life decisions. What we may not have known, however, was that our mischievous little Sims were imbued with the pesky power of free will. Yes, that's right. The video game versions of ourselves over which we thought we had full control were actually wont to rebel against our commands and make their own decisions. Even if you tried your best to give your Sim an exclusively happy life devoid of disappointments and unfortunate experiences, he or she was bound to go off on their own and make some poor choices. Go figure.

Not all of us were kind and just rulers of our virtual underlings, either. Many of us derived great pleasure from cruelly experimenting with the emotions and reactions of our Sims. There were countless instances in which to muse, "I wonder what would happen if I..." and then proceed to subject our innocent Sim to all forms of unhealthy deprivation and morally ambiguous scenarios. "I wonder what would happen if I blew up his house?" "I wonder what would happen if I won't let him use the bathroom for six days?" "I wonder what would happen if I force him to have romantic liaisons with every neighbor on his block?" I wonder what would happen, indeed. Even without the aid of my handy Simmish to English dictionary, I could tell my Sim was not especially pleased with the lifestyle choices I'd made for him.

What , you don't like discussing Uncle Sam's hat with your neighbors?

What started off as an interesting concept and novel idea for a computer game quickly morphed into an existential experiment in human behavior. The trickiest part was there was no way to win the game. The combinations and permutations of situations were infinite, and as long as you kept your Sim eating and sleeping, they would keep on living. They dealt with the same minutiae as the rest of us; their circumstantial residence in a virtual world didn't preclude them from having to pay bills and brush their teeth. Unluckily for them, the original version of The Sims didn't give them weekends off. Bummer.

The Sims went on to become one of the bestselling computer games of all time, proving that we all must deep down have some morbid fascination with the notion of playing god to a host of virtual people. In The Sims and all of the Sim worlds that preceded it, we got our first taste of complete power, and it felt good. It wasn't until more recently that they unleashed the ultimate virtual rulership beast: Spore. Seriously, if you have not played it, go pick it up. It's amazing. You grow from a spore into a sea creature and you evolve and you kill things. Just don't blame me when you start dreaming in tribal strategy and have sudden flashes of inspiration for a redesign for your creature's aerodynamicity. Yes, I just made that word up, but didn't you hear? I'm entitled. I'm a creator.