Sometimes we all look back and cringe just a bit at the sugary garbage we ate as children. Though it may still hold some nostalgic appeal, it’s tough to defend some of the candy we so adored as kids. You would think we were all spent a significant portion of our youth drifting into diabetic shock--how else to explain the pure sugar our parents pushed down our throats? I can only assume they had no orange juice on hand and had to save our lives with the cunning use of Pixie Sticks. There’s just no other explanation for willingly serving your child the equivalent of the contents of your sugar bowl.
For those of us who now work with or have children of our own, we know the lure of bribery is one we cannot always ignore. Do your homework? Have some Nerds! Clean your room? Help yourself to the Fun Dip. Sure, it’s morally ambiguous, but it works. Sometimes, you’ve just got to give in and let the kids be kids. In this case, that means our parents allowed us to hype ourselves up on a diet of pure sugar only to crash later with unforeseen consequences of immeasurable crankiness. We loved them for that moment in which they relinquished the candy, though, and that’s what really counts.
We ate all sorts of processed sugar masquerading as innocent snacks, but here are a few of the sweetest culprits:
Pixy Stix Possibly the worst offender, Pixy Stix were composed of little more than colored sugar. Apparently an acceptable snack consists of taking pure sugar and a dab of food coloring and calling it a kid-friendly nosh. The worst of the worst prize went to the giant-size straw version, which we can only imagine contained a full two-pound bag of refined sugar.
Fun Dip
What better to dip candy in than candy? It’s a perfect solution to all your dipping needs. Simply take sugar molded into a solid mass and dip it into its granulated counterpart. Delicious.
Nerds
Nerds may have been glorified color-coated rock candy, but we can award some credit where due for delicious flavor combinations. Nerds conveniently packaged two complementary flavors in a single box, allowing us to ingest our flavor sugar with a well-balanced palette.
Jawbreakers If you thought it was kind of gross simply to consume sugar-laden hard candy, imagine adding an element of extreme germ exposure to the mix. The problem with Jawbreakers lay in the fact that they were simply too large to be consumed in a single sitting. The result? Days of your giant candy hanging out in a bowl or similar open-air receptacle, collecting delicious dust mite seasoning mix.
Pop Rocks
Pop Rocks have been available since the 70s, but their popularity saw a resurgence in the 80s following their restock on candy store shelves. The candy suffered briefly from the implications of an urban legend that claimed the candy could make your stomach explode when mixed with soda. It can’t, for the record, but it still does work to scare children as effectively as it did back then.
Children have a naturally competitive nature, so it’s little surprise that they became the target market for discomfort-themed food. It may not sound especially pleasant to endure a painfully sour candy throughout the dissolution of its coating, which is because it’s not. At all. Not even a little bit. With children, though, the natural playground spirit of competition made candies like Warheads a huge hit--not to mention a major indicator of elementary school street credibility.
Sour Patch Kids
Sour Patch Kids represent sour flavor in its slightly less repugnant form--as a sugar coating over a chewy fruit snack-type candy. It admittedly burns off a taste bud or two, but it’s a small price to pay for coolness in front of your pro-sour friends.
Of course, no discussion of sugary 90s candies would be complete without mention of two of the most traded and widely respected hard candies on the playground market: push pops and ring pops. Both caused unnecessarily sticky messes and had limited functionality outside of their general novelty appeal, but who cares? They were delicious in their own sugary way. Though, to be fair, they did give a generation of young girls very unrealistic expectations about the size of a rock they could be expecting on their engagement ring.
It should go without saying that I just can’t discuss 90s-themed sugar highs without playing the eponymous song from Empire Records. All of the sugary sweetness, none of the calories. Enjoy!
It’s that time of year again. You know the one: the time for back-to-school shopping and all the fresh-smelling new school supplies your child-sized heart can fathom. It’s tough as adults to deny the covetousness we feel when passing the mid-to-late August back-to-school displays at Target or OfficeMax. Even former low-performing students with an aversion to all things academic feel the allure of freshly sharpened pencils and shiny new folders; they symbolize an anticipation for a year that’s tough to match as a grown-up as the seasons blend together in ubiquitous office life.
Though we can’t go back to those simpler times in which colorful erasers could denote immeasurable promise and potential, we can at least reminisce about the items that gave us that rush of August or September excitement. I even give you full license to stop at that school supply display next time you’re out shopping and buy a 45 cent puppy folder or two--it’s a small price to pay to recapture the delight of back-to-school items like these.
No back-to-school supply list would be complete without a big binder to hold it all together, and no binder proved more popular in the 80s and 90s than the Trapper Keeper. With its flashy licensed designs and velcro closure, it served as the perfect all-purpose paper holder for school-age children.
We’ve talked about Lisa Frank merchandise a lot here at Children of the 90s, and with good reason: it was everywhere. You couldn’t open a girl’s backpack in the mid-90s without finding a store inventory-level variety of Lisa Frank paraphernalia. Most little girls have a natural inclination toward loving colorful kittens playfully canoodling with high top sneakers or bunny rabbits laced tightly into ballet slippers. Lisa Frank simply played into this scientifically proven fact with major financial results.
Sanrio Erasers All kids need to clean up after their mistakes, so what better way to do so than with an eraser printed with the whimsical Japanese Sanrio characters? Whether you were a Kerroppi fan or a Batz Maru fiend, these collectable erasers usually found their way into your pencil box.
Yikes! Pencils
Yikes! Pencils were all the rage in the early-to-mid 90s. As the above commercial suggests, Yikes are the only pencils as unique as you. Even though everyone else had them. Aside from that minor detail, the commercial tagline says it all: “They write like other pencils, but they make you go, ‘Yikes!’”
Pencil Cases
Of course, you had to store all of these supplies somewhere: your cubby wasn’t going to organize itself. Selection of the perfect pencil case was always a good way to kick off a new year. It was important to set the tone with a colorful translucent plastic case textured with bumps or perhaps the more sensible opaque case bearing a picture of--you guessed it--pencils. There’s something to be said for taking things literally.
Gel Pens Following the release of gel pens, it seemed all art supply and office stores immediately had the best colors placed on backorder. The reason? Young children purchased these writing utensils nearly as quickly as they were shelved. With fun metallic or signature “milky” colors, gel pens were a fairly certain way to render your eventual yearbook inscriptions both sparkly and indecipherable.
Lunchables aren’t exactly a school supply per se, but they were a staple for earning some serious cafeteria clout. Parents concerned with nutrition and possessing general anti-junk food attitudes weren’t likely to be found of these lab-generated Oscar Meyer concoctions, but parents short on time seeking convenience surely appreciated their simplicity. They may not have borne especial resemblance to real food, but they were fun to assemble and devour. Plus, the fancier versions came complete with fun size candy bar and Capri Sun juice box. What more could you have asked for?
Pencil Toppers For those of us who couldn’t decide between toys and school supplies, pencil toppers provided us an excellent middle ground. Teachers undoubtedly despised these unnecessary distractions for their complete lack of functionality, but kids adored the notion of their pencils wearing a little Troll doll hat. Adorable.
If ever there was a movie to make a generation of children wish they could act as mother and migration guide to a flock of adorable Canadian geese, Fly Away Home is it. To be fair, it sort of has the market covered; the premise of the movie is so specific and original that we can safely say there is no other family film quite like it. While it may have given us all some unrealistic expectations about the boundless potential of our parents to swoop in (literally) and save the day, Fly Away Home is ultimately a feel-good story about the power of family and the triumph of doing the right thing. Plus, it showcases the surprising cuteness of Canadian geese. Those little guys are adorable.
Like all good 90s family films with a focus on animals, the story hinges on some anonymously evil bad guys who are inexplicably hell bent on destroying the benign, unoffensive project. In real life we rarely find such strong-willed opposition to these types of sweet, well-intentioned endeavors. For the sake of plot development, Fly Away Home follows the underdeveloped universal bad guy formula with little deviation. It does so skillfully enough, though, that we are convinced a local game warden can be a calculating, ne’er do well evil plotter while area ornithologists have the potential to save the day.
The story is actually very loosely based on a true story, but truthfully the movie explores the general plot in a way much more heartwarming and family-friendly than the inspiration. Fly Away Home gives us a little of everything from the family film value variety pack: relationship development between father and daughter, strong bonds formed with loyal animals, and an exciting and potentially dangerous journey. Before the release of this movie, it’s a safe bet to assume none of us had a deep desire to fly a glider painted to resemble a goose, but the movie’s power of suggestion was strong enough to implant the idea deep within all of us. I’m still waiting for my chance, but the best I’ve been able to scrounge up is a flight in a glider painted like a rogue cockatoo. I’ve got to say, it just wasn’t the same.
Fly Away Home opens on a tragedy in traditional fairy tale fashion with the untimely death of main character Amy’s (Anna Paquin) young mother. If we have learned anything from Disney films, it is that if you seek to become a hero, it’s pretty imperative that your mother is killed off in the first fifteen minutes of the film. Amy is no exception, and the tragic car crash leaves her poised to emerge as a strong sympathetic hero a la Bambi, Jasmine, Cinderella, Snow White Sleeping Beauty, or any of those other half-orphaned Disney protagonists.
Amy’s father (Jeff Daniels) arrives from Canada to transport her from her home in New Zealand to his in Ontario. Their relationship is understandably strained considering he’s never taken any prior interest in her existence. Nonetheless, they forge ahead under tense circumstances, with Amy resenting her father and his live-in girlfriend (Desperate Housewives’ Dana Delany) the whole way through.
Following a construction incident near a local Canadian geese nesting area, Amy discovers a batch of abandoned unhatched eggs. As the goslings hatch, their natural imprinting instinct leads them to believe Amy is their mother, cementing their status as completely inseparable. By this point, of course, we’ve gone too far blissfully uninterrupted by highly motivated obscure animal-hungry villains. In this case, the local game warden is adamant about clipping the geese’s wings--an action that leads Amy to throw a popcorn bowl in the general vicinity of his head. Ouch.
Cuteness--and some weirdness--ensues, with several sequences involving the geese following Amy around a field and joining her in the shower. Amy’s father Thomas is excessively determined to see these geese through to migration, so much so that he researches some land in the US that he could purchase as their nesting area. I’ve heard of trying to buy your kid’s love, but buying a plot of land for a group of geese that think your daughter is their mother? Seems a little excessive.
Thomas hatches (hatches!) a scheme to teach the birds to migrate south using a small aircraft. After many sporting tries and dramatic near-miss incidents, Thomas and Amy assemble the ultimate migratory vehicle complete with Canadian goose exterior paint job. They practice their vee formations and set out for North Carolina without so much as a map.
Like all good family adventures, they endure some troubling trials and tribulations but ultimately emerge victorious in their mission. The duo attracts a great deal of media attention and fanfare, though they nearly lose their intended land to developers. Thomas’s plane breaks down, Amy goes it alone, and--spoiler alert--she makes it. I know, it’s shocking to see a happy ending like this for a children’s movie. Truthfully, though, Amy has us rooting for her the whole way.
Fly Away Home is ultimately heartwarming and sweet without being overly corny. Unless you are made of stone, you probably shed a tear or two at the film’s conclusion when we saw photos of the geese returning to Amy’s farm in Ontario the following spring. Assuming I don’t have a large contingency of granite readers out there, it’s safe to say you all sniffled a bit at those credits. It’s okay, let it all out--after all, if you can’t cry at the triumphant return of a gaggle of Canadian geese that beat the migration odds, what can you cry at?
Possibly the worst offender, Pixy Stix were composed of little more than colored sugar. Apparently an acceptable snack consists of taking pure sugar and a dab of food coloring and calling it a kid-friendly nosh. The worst of the worst prize went to the giant-size straw version, which we can only imagine contained a full two-pound bag of refined sugar.
What better to dip candy in than candy? It’s a perfect solution to all your dipping needs. Simply take sugar molded into a solid mass and dip it into its granulated counterpart. Delicious.
Nerds may have been glorified color-coated rock candy, but we can award some credit where due for delicious flavor combinations. Nerds conveniently packaged two complementary flavors in a single box, allowing us to ingest our flavor sugar with a well-balanced palette. 
If you thought it was kind of gross simply to consume sugar-laden hard candy, imagine adding an element of extreme germ exposure to the mix. The problem with Jawbreakers lay in the fact that they were simply too large to be consumed in a single sitting. The result? Days of your giant candy hanging out in a bowl or similar open-air receptacle, collecting delicious dust mite seasoning mix.
Pop Rocks have been available since the 70s, but their popularity saw a resurgence in the 80s following their restock on candy store shelves. The candy suffered briefly from the implications of an urban legend that claimed the candy could make your stomach explode when mixed with soda. It can’t, for the record, but it still does work to scare children as effectively as it did back then.
Children have a naturally competitive nature, so it’s little surprise that they became the target market for discomfort-themed food. It may not sound especially pleasant to endure a painfully sour candy throughout the dissolution of its coating, which is because it’s not. At all. Not even a little bit. With children, though, the natural playground spirit of competition made candies like Warheads a huge hit--not to mention a major indicator of elementary school street credibility.
Sour Patch Kids represent sour flavor in its slightly less repugnant form--as a sugar coating over a chewy fruit snack-type candy. It admittedly burns off a taste bud or two, but it’s a small price to pay for coolness in front of your pro-sour friends.
Of course, no discussion of sugary 90s candies would be complete without mention of two of the most traded and widely respected hard candies on the playground market: push pops and ring pops. Both caused unnecessarily sticky messes and had limited functionality outside of their general novelty appeal, but who cares? They were delicious in their own sugary way. Though, to be fair, they did give a generation of young girls very unrealistic expectations about the size of a rock they could be expecting on their engagement ring. 
