Koala Yummies

There's something oddly reassuring about a snack that refers to itself in plural as "yummies." Sure, some of our old snack standbys are yummy (singular), but does each individual chip or pretzel convey its own unique yumminess? I think not.

Amongst all of the koala-themed snack foods out there, Koala Yummies managed to distinguish themselves as the premier marsupial-based snack on the market. Dunkaroos were able to secure a precarious second-place position with their kangaroo spokescartoon upon their release four years later, but their mascot could never reach the level of cuddlability of Yummies fame. I mean look at these guys! Could anything cling to a euclaptys tree in a more lovable fashion?


In an age before extensive concerns over high-fructose corn syrup, trans-fats, and preservatives, children were once allowed to consume nutrition-free overprocessed food without the now-requisite wealth of parental concern and intervention. No one seemed particularly concerned over whether these cookies were organically produced or if the company opted to use free-range koalas. 90s parents food fearmongering was fairly tame compared to their 2000s successors, and junk food reigned supreme for parents with even a shred of concern for their children's cafeteria credibility. Parents weren't sending their children off to school with Disney lunchboxes full of tofu nuggets or soy milk juice boxes; they were sending them with carbohydrate-rich festival of tastes that would make today's South Beach, Atkins, and Sugar Busters-dieting parents blush.

Koala Yummies were one of those magical foods that contained absolutely no natural ingredients. There was something particularly satisfying about biting into a cookie with the knowledge that each component of the fantastic taste sensations on your tongue were developed in a lab specifically for your snacking enjoyment. Just imagine, these little guys were created specifically with your unnatural cravings for artificial sweeteners in mind! The packaging heavily featured a rainforest-type theme, which was certainly misleading. Koala Yummies were in no way linked to nature aside from their marsupial likeness and that's the way we wanted it.

For any of you not fortunate enough to remember the fine blend of sweet tastes that made up these confections, allow me to paint a picture for you. Well, perhaps not paint a picture. While we're using metaphors here, I might as well make them related. Allow me to bake a figurative chocolate-filled cookie for you:

Outside: Pure crispy hollow cookie deliciousness all dolled up in the best koala finery a cheap Asian food production company can buy. These yummies had personality: some of them played some sort of ukelele, some ate plates of cookies, and others yet indulged in deep fits of hysterical emotion (pictured below, bottom left)

Inside: We didn't want to let our parents in on this little secret, but the inside was a Halloween-rivaling level of sweet candy ecstasy. While technically these goodies could contain chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry centers, but everyone knew the chocolate ones were truly the epitome of Koala Yumminess.

The packaging was somewhat odd and clearly reflected its Japanese origins through its complicated shape and construction. Rather than coming in an ordinary household-size box or bag, Koala Yummies lived in little cardboard octagonal prisms. There was no explanation offered for this idiosyncratic packaging, but it certainly made it more fun and plausible to play with the Yummies in the context of their three-dimensional stop sign-shaped house. This awkward shape and size meant that while consuming a full package of Koala Yummies was likely not recommended or healthy, it was certainly an easily attainable goal met by countless 90s youngsters.

As with the now-discontinued Dunakroos, 90s children have been experiencing extreme symptoms of Koala Yummy withdrawal since they were pulled from mainstream American markets. There are full sites, blogs, and lengthy forums devoted to the persistent and persevering quest for these tasty little Koala treats. Unfortunately, the public health community has yet to recognize this as a valid addiction worthy of treatment programs and/or methadone supplementation, but it certainly seems to have reach this level of cookie-crazed concern. Strung-out sugar-deficient 20-somethings beg and plead for a black-market source for their favorite discontinued snacks. A cursory Google search for Koala Yummies shows hundreds of requests, petitions, underground tips, and supposed store sightings. These are clearly more than cookies we're dealing with here, they're the snack of a generation.

There have, however, been some major breaks in this former cold case.

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:


Your eyes do not deceive you. The once-beloved snacks of your childhood are still enjoying relative fame, and not just from doing the occasional Japanese commercial for extra income. Though now known as "Koala's March", these guys do appear suspiciously similar to our coveted Yummies of snack times past. Of course, that disgusting image of gooey, melty centers is a little off, but we can only imagine (read: pray) that this depiction is for illustrative purposes only. If you live near an Asian grocery or market that stocks ethnic specialty fare, you may be in luck.

Beware of imitations, though. The Meiji Seika corporation has been producing notorious knockoffs known in some Yummies-seeking circles as "Hello Panda". Do not be fooled by the octagonal packaging or similarly emoting cartoon animal images. Online Asian Food Grocer describes Hello Pandas as "Chocolate cream filled biscuits that are surprisingly tasty with no oily after taste. Go ahead, try these finger sized biscuits. You wont be disappointed. Excellent for kids school time snack pack." Surprisingly tasty? Finger-sized? No thank you.


Our new Koala Yummies incarnate, however, on the other hand are described by the same vendor as "Chocolate cream filled biscuits that are surprisingly tasty with no oily after taste. Go ahead, try these finger sized biscuits. You wont be disappointed. Excellent for kids school time snack pack." Wait a second. That sounds suspiciously familiar.

So whether you choose to sell out to Hello Panda or continue to support your old standards with Koala's March, you can still purchase these once-forgotten goodies online.

Just remember not to follow it up with anything vaguely nutritional for a truly authentic 90s snacking experience.

Then and Now

Then:

Jennifer Aniston, 1990

Now:

Jennifer Aniston, 2009


What? She had a deviated septum. It was reconstructive.

What Would You Do?

If you ever really need to know the answer to a question, here's a little tip from Nickelodeon circa 1991: lead in with a question word remixed on repeat. You may not find out what you would do, but you certainly have a better chance of ascertaining what what what you would do. You know. If faced with some sort of slime/pie type situation. The usual.

Yes, early 90s-era Nickelodeon was full of these handy tidbits of unconventional wisdom. Like their penchant for placing a germ-phobic obsessive-compulsive as host in not just one but two television shows whose underlying purposes were to cause disgusting uncontainable messes. Perhaps it was to Nickelodeon's credit that a hosting gig on their network was so highly coveted that even those with a disordered need for extreme constancy and cleanliness were willing to overlook their most basic anti-mess instincts. Not just any network held the power to persuade Marc Summers at the height of his inner OCD torment to host a show with the words "Super Sloppy" in the title.

Fortunately for Marc Summers, What Would You Do? was somewhat toned-downed in the super sloppy department in comparison to its sister show, Double Dare. I'm not sure this granted him any reprieve, but at least he was allowed a few brief moments of filming during which he was not coated head-to-toe in gooey green slime.



What Would You Do? was another of those magical Nickelodeon shows for which there was no reasonable explanation or justification. Children of the 90s, specifically those who grew up in a house with a cable TV hookup, were generally passionate about nonsensical programming. Nickelodeon demonstrated time and time again that they truly understood what kids were about; they managed to strike the perfect balance between recognizing the simplicity of entertaining children and not insulting their intelligence.

They also had a serious fixation on pies.

For some reason as of yet to be publicly declared and documented, the show included innumerable pie-themed features. While possibly derived from the original pie-in-the-face slapstick gag, What Would You Do? was determined to take this gimmick as far as whipped cream could possibly be flung. No pie stunt was too farfetched for this game show/interactive audience/wacky stunt television mash-up. Usually these pie shenanigans were tied to some sort of competition, but the reasoning was loose at most. There was no shortage of pie-centric hijinks, including but not limited to:

The Pie Slide
Sometimes, a straightforward name is best. The pie slide was, well, a pie slide. Contestants braved a regulation playground slide that culminated in an enormous vat of pie. Thankfully, they had the option of a head-first or feet-first dive. Full pie immersion ensued.



The Pie Pod
There's nothing like sitting in a chair, being covered with an enormous saran wrap-style tarp, and pelted directly with multiple pies, the number of which was based upon helpful audience input. Also popular was the Crowning Glory feature, which dropped additional pie on the participant's head.



The Pie Coaster
See Pie Slide. Replace "slide" with "coaster." Proceed.



The Pie Wash
Imagine if you will a car wash featuring an all-pie cast of cleaning supplies. Now remove the frame of the car and its mobile abilities. Congratulations! You've got a pie wash.



You've got to love that maniacal laughter by Marc Summers while issuing this pie sentence.

Clearly (or perhaps through pie-coated goggles) What Would You Do? could not be characterized by any conventional TV standards in its zany undertakings. The show frequently pitted adults and children against one another (in sometimes Double Dare-esque fashion), with the winning team holding the pie pronouncement power. Pie punishments could also be conveyed by means of the all powerful Wall o' Stuff. While the Wall o' Stuff had its benevolent side in which it dispensed freely the crappy What Would You Do? licensed merchandise to so-called lucky winners, it more often sent the contestant straight to meet their cream pie fates. The show also inexplicably had a "roving camera" segment featuring Candid Camera-style tomfoolery. As I said, the links between any of these segments were fairly difficult to ascertain; pie seemed to be the only element tying these things together.

Regardless of the lack of adherence to television norms, this show was beloved by children everywhere. Its sheer creativity was enough to captivate our young impressionable minds and forever instill within us a deep-seated love/fear relationship with a certain satisfyingly messy cloying confection. As What Would You Do? only filmed new episodes from 1991 to 1993, there is a lot to say for a show that can thrive through an oddly skewed rerun-to-new-show ratio. Because there were only 90 episodes produced, chances are all of us out there in 90s TV-land saw each of these pie-flinging episodes countless times during which we could ponder what indeed we would do in the place of these contestants. Whether you'd choose to brave the pie slide or take your chances on the Wall o' Stuff, What Would You Do? had a little something for everyone.

Everyone without whipped cream allergies, that is.


Check it out:
Pies on the Web: Dedicated to Pictures of People Getting Pies to the Face

Thank You!

From the bottom of my heart (as pictured in the I ♥ 90s logo), I want to thank Fidgeting Gidget and Wild ARS Chase for their respective extremely generous Blogger of the Month awards! You guys are awesome! If you haven't yet, all of you have to go check out these blogs--they are very different from one another, but they are both among my favorites to read on a regular basis. Thanks, Gidget and Andy!

Slip n' Slide

You'd think with a company name like Wham-O, Inc., people would know to take these products seriously. Slip n' Slides may have slid onto the scene in the 60s, but it was not until the 90s that we got to see some good old-fashioned ambulance-chasing legislative action. The 90s showed a distinct rise in the level of safety-consciousness on the part of overanxious parents desperate to helmet and pad their children to the most insulated degree. Contrary to popular 90s parent opinion, children had once lived in a world without safety features and generally lived to tell about it; those who did not were simply sucked up by the forces of social Darwinism. In the 90s, however, the tide began to turn.

Some would say we were fighting nature. We were protecting the weak. Defying the forces of nature that acted to weed out this type of risky irresponsible behavior.

Others would say that perhaps we never should have been sliding down an glorified sheet of cheap plastic lubricated with hose water into rocky backyard terrain in the first place.

Parents succumbed to children's begging for Slip n' Slides largely on a cost-efficient and effort-exertion level. You could either install a pool, pack up every possible necessary belonging and lug it to the faraway beach, drag your kids to the suspiciously grimy public pool...or you could just run the hose over a giant sheet of yellow plastic in the backyard. Which would you choose? The answer seemed pretty clear. Or at least clearer than the public pool.

Slip n' Slide.




I know there's a Wham-O! Hula Hoop ad on the end of this, but I couldn't help myself when I saw it. It's just so 90s.


The name doesn't leave much room for questioning. No, this was a straightforward product, through and through. It didn't seem necessary for it to come with a dictionary-size manual of directions and warnings. What would they possibly say?

Step one:
Remove Slip n' Slide from package and unroll unto level ground.

Step two:
Place running hose at edge of Slip n' Slide.

Step three:
Slip.

Step four:
Slide.

Wasn't that pretty much it? You slipped, you slid, you laughed in the face of the scorching hot sun's attempt to swelter you, and called it a day.
In reality, the problem was probably not so much with the product as with the parents. In a time where everyone was quick to assign blame to anybody but themselves, it was easy to call foul on a faulty product or unsafe design. However, there were many actions taken by lackadaisical parents that were more than likely the underlying culprits of these purported Slip n' Slide injuries. In case you were unaware, I am happy to share with you a few tips for care and use of your Wham-O Slip n' Slide:

1. Do not place in an area generally abounding with rocks and boulders. I don't even know if I'm supposed to share this type of highly classified information, but some scientists report that boulders can be damaging to heads upon forceful contact.

2. Do not place your Slip n' Slide on a steep hill. As much fun as if may be to go barreling headfirst at full speed down a miniature mountain, the plastic sheet has to end at some point. Then you're simply plunging headfirst into the ground, which I've also been told can be a tad on the painful side.

3. Enormous, oversized, supposedly responsible adults should not use a toy intended for children.

4. This especially goes for any time when these adults are intoxicated.

5. FYI, this includes fraternity parties.

6. And really, any kind of party.

7. Because honestly, this product is recommended for ages 5-12.

8. And while we're on the subject, why the hell are you using this as an adult?

9. Again, I'm not sure how much clearer I can make this.

10. But just to reiterate, really, a terrible idea.


In the 90s, the major lawsuit-prompted injury warnings were not based on injuries sustained by unsuspecting children. The injuries were generally caused by grown-ups attempting to join in on the fun, especially while highly intoxicated, and smashing their spinal column in a paralyzing manner. Teenagers and adults would slip and slide as the directions indicated, but failed to take into account that they were approximately two to three times the size of the recommended users. When coupled with the mere inertia garnered from their notably heavier weights, this was certainly a cause for concern.

What should have been concern for the right-mindedness of these adults was morphed into concern over a lack of safety features. Because really, a product should probably include every possible cause of injury or death in its packaging. I'm not sure your level of marketing expertise, but it's fairly safe to say that a 3000-word brochure on potential causes of death isn't always a major selling point for your product.

Just in case you were curious (which no doubt you were!) here's a handy excerpt from the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's report on the matter:

WASHINGTON, DC -- Kransco Group Companies and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) warn consumers that WHAM-O backyard water slides, manufactured by Kransco and WHAM-O for years as popular summertime toys for children, should NOT be used by adults or teenagers. The toys were designed for use by children only. Use by adults and teens has the potential to result in neck injury and paralysis.

Alright, seems pretty straightforward. Go on, CPSC.

Because of their weight and height, adults and teenagers who dive onto the water slide may hit and abruptly stop in such a way that could cause permanent spinal cord injury, resulting in quadriplegia or paraplegia. The slider's forward momentum drives the body into the neck and compresses the spinal cord.

Ouch. But again, makes sense.

Kransco reports that seven adults who used WHAM-O slides suffered neck injuries, quadriplegia, or paraplegia. A 13-year- old teenager suffered a fractured neck while using a WHAM-O slide. The incidents occurred between 1973 and 1991.

Considering this report was released in the early 90s, that's a pretty troubling grace period before taking a clear stand on this. Oh, you know, it's been happening for 18 years, but we wanted to make sure this lifetime paralysis was the real deal.

According to Kransco, 9 million WHAM-O water slides called Slip 'N Slide, Super Slip 'N Slide, Slip 'N Splash, White Water Rapids, Fast Track Racers, and Wet Banana were sold nationwide from 1961 to February 1992. The slides are long plastic sheets with stakes to secure the sheet to a flat lawn free of rocks, mounds, and depressions. Some slides included an inflatable raft to slide on the plastic sheet; others may have an inflatable pool at the end of the slide.

Oh no, not Wet Banana!

CPSC and Kransco urge adults and teenagers NOT to use the WHAM-O backyard slides. Consumers should read the warnings and instructions on the box and on the toy itself which state that the product is NOT intended for adult use. Adults should instruct children how to use the slides safely.

So there you have it. Slip n' Slide. Sure, it may be risky, but again, who wants to schlep all the way out to the beach when you can lay out a bright yellow roll of cheap, non-durable plastic?

Case closed.

A Little Something to Get You Through Your Weekend...

I have yet to get around to writing about the Golden Girls' because I'm a tad concerned about not doing this comedic gem justice in blog post form. I keep putting it off for some imaginary date when I will have adequate time and motivation to sufficiently convey its hilarity. Until then, here's a little something to tide you over and give you a heaping spoonful of 90s humor to hold you for the weekend.

As sad as I was to hear of Bea Arthur's passing, it did remind me of a little something I vaguely recollected from the 1996 MTV Movie Awards. I will admit up front that this is 100% cheating to in any way link this to Bea Arthur as she was the only Golden Girl who did not appear in this, but I remembered this clip existed earlier this week and felt it was my duty as distributor of all things sacred and 90s to pass it on to you.

This Clueless spoof had me laughing so hard I nearly ruptured an internal organ, and not because it's so brilliantly scripted. In actuality, the script is no comedic revelation and the spoof lifts many lines nearly word-for-word from the original film. No, the real humor is all in the uncanny Clueless-to-Golden-Girls visual translation. I don't want to give it away, so you will just have to watch it for yourselves.

Without further ado, the Golden Girls (or perhaps the Golden Palace, as it is sans Bea) do Clueless:





Happy weekend, everyone!

The MASH Game

We all grew up with big dreams. For some of us, it was to have a blossoming career. For others, to raise a happy and healthy family. There are some of us out there however, with more pre-specified ambitions.

Namely that you're going to marry Screech from Saved by the Bell, live in a mansion in the United Arab Emirates, have 12 children, and drive your purple subcompact car to your job as a housewife everyday.

Sound odd? Absolutely! But if the fates proclaim it, so shall it be.

The fates we're talking about here are admittedly less professional than your run-of-the-mill neighborhood psychic or carnival palm reader. Regardless of their questionable credentials, we trusted these fortune seers to predict for us a decidedly silly, squeal-inducing future. These were our peers on the playground, and they held in their hands our very fates.

The brilliance of MASH was that it became a universally known and widely accepted practice among children in the 80s and 90s. If you were to have stopped by nearly any elementary school and asked if they would like to play MASH, no one would look at you questioningly or jump in to discuss the preachy-ness of Alan Alda's television directing career. They would grab a pencil and a piece of looseleaf and start prophesying.

One of the main elements we all loved so dearly about MASH was the ability to lightly humiliate our friends by assigning to them less-than-stellar options in any of the preselected categories. The categories usually ran a little something like this, with at least 5 options listed per category:

MASH
This one was a constant; the game's namesake. MASH stood for Mansion-Apartment-Shack-House. These were your choices for living accommodations. In some circles, more creative (read: cruel) options were added, but this was the basic underlying foundation of the game. This was one of the more important categories, as we all assumed money would make us outstandingly, incomparably happy. And they say kids don't learn anything from TV.

Boys'/Girls' Names
Depending on your gender, you were ordered to name 5 people of the opposite sex. When meaner kids were running the show, they would get to select the options for you, but usually you had some say in who was listed. It was requisite to list your crush, unattainable famous people, and at least one unsavory kid; this was usually the kid who picked his nose in the back of the classroom or was forever regaling his classmates with stories about what happened last night on his ant farm. It was generally understood that the more appalling and undesirable options you listed, the more hilarity would ensue when your moment of fortune-telling came to fruition.

However, if you were lucky enough to bag JTT or Tatyana Ali in a game of recess MASH, you were certainly entitled to bragging rights for the remainder of the school day.

Jobs
This one was pretty self-explanatory, but it was always fun seeing what wacky undesirably professions one could add to the list of possibilities. Garbage collector? Septic tank engineer? Cootie quarantiner? Sure, you can always throw in some of the standard Doctor/Lawyer/Teacher/Housewife fare, but that was never quite as humorous or entertaining.

Gender role-reversal was also popular. A male housewife? An instant classic!

Cars
Again, the money=happiness paradigm reigned supreme. Sure, a Corvette or a Lamborghini would be nice, but what's that when you could have a broken down AMC Hornet?* What, I ask you?

Some versions also included car colors, which are not inherently funny but accurately reflect a child's disproportional sense of humor. A pink car? For a boy? Oh my god. Pink. And for those of us who dreamed of one day owning a shocking fuchsia Maserati, well, this was our chance. That is, if you didn't get stuck with the puce Buick instead.

City/Location
One of the games more practical aspects, we all were truly curious about where we were going to end up. However, as children our worldview was relatively limited, so we frequently had our pick of 5 neighboring suburbs of our then current location. A kid can dream, can't he?

Number of Children
This was a pretty obvious dimension; two or three were preferable, six was sort of a bummer, and ten was ridiculous. Bear in mind the Duggar family of 18 Kids and Counting fame were not yet being broadcast into our susceptible minds weekly, so we were under the impression that there was some sort of a finite cap on how many children one could feasibly physically produce. Unfortunately, most of the options listed in this category were pretty reasonable and rational and hence lacked the shock value of some of the more outlandish categories. Depending on your foreseen mate, however, the shock value could fluctuate significantly.



Once all the lists had been generated, the real fun could begin in a tedious, meticulous fashion uncharacteristic of otherwise attention spanless children. At this point, there were several ways in which to randomly select a benchmark number, all of which were terminated by the fortune seeker saying, "Stop!" Usually, you would draw spirals or tally marks and whenever the MASHee indicated for you to stop. Whatever the number of circles or tallies drawn would serve as your reference point number. If your number was four, you would start at the top, count down four items, and cross off the fourth. From that one you would count another four, cross out the list item you landed on, and so on and so forth until you had one item remaining in each category.

For those of you to whom this makes no sense at all (and let's be honest, if you never or rarely played this game, this is a pretty shaky explanation), I invite you to play the online version for illustrative and/or enjoyment purposes. Go on, I'll wait.

Online MASH game

If you ended up with less than spectacular results, fear not; the beauty of MASH is that it can be played repeatedly until you finally achieve your desired outcome. Much like a Magic 8 Ball could be shaken again and again until it displayed the coveted response, so too could MASH be reformulated and re-tabulated umpteen times.

So go ahead, keep playing. I think you'll find that despite your current status as a so-called adult, this game retains its novelty. For those of you lucky enough to possess an iPhone but are currently living in tenuous fear of being caught slacking by your boss/parent/significant other/roommate/pet, don't worry. As the iPhone commercials so helpfully inform us, "there's an app for that":



Feel free to drop your MASH results in the comment box.


Check it out:
An Amazing MASH Game T-Shirt
Oh, How the Mighty Have Fallen: Bratz MASH


*My dad once owned an AMC Hornet. One day, he came outside and found that someone had stolen his driver's side door. His driver's side door. This story is completely unrelated (especially since it happened in the 70s) but it is also true and hilarious and therefore must be shared.

Floppy Disks

Once upon a time, before the dawn of our alleged full-fledged digital age, computers were simpler creatures. Sure, they required roughly 247 times the maintenance of current computers, but they had character. They also had disk drives.


Looking closely at my up-to-date if admittedly bulky desktop model, it suddenly occurs to me that disk drives have virtually (yes, that's a computer pun) disappeared from today's computers. While I was once able to hear that satisfying click--POP! noise of floppy disk insertion, it appears that my once-beloved disk drive is no more. The portal that once gave me green-and-black-screen delights like Oregon Trail has gone tragically extinct. The Disk became Disc and eventually Drive, and our children will never know that computer devices once included ridiculously non-technological preceding adjectives like "floppy."

While their value as data storage devices may now be obsolete, back in our elementary school classrooms, they were all the rage. Just think, in a pre-internet age, you could write a book report on your computer at home and print it off at your computer at school. To those of us who now spend at least 8 hours a day parked in front of a computer screen with remarkably expedient internet capabilities, this is generally un-fazing, but as children growing up amongst quick-developing technology we still had our sense of wonder.



Unfortunately with this sense of wonder came a sense of impropriety. We as children may not have had as much technology at our fingertips as today's youngsters, but we certainly shared with them to some degree a sense of childlike greed and entitlement. For any of you who think pirated software, games, music, and movies is a new phenomenon, you must a pretty poor memory. Maybe this little number will do something to refresh it:



(Don't Copy That Floppy)

I recognize some of you (myself included) were fairly young when this PSA came out, so if you're not familiar with the above video from your 1990s childhood here's a little background information. In 1992, the Software Publishers' Association was pretty fed up with freeloading kids like Corey and Jenny here denying them their royalties on their precious floppy disk computer game releases. If these kids (read: all of us) thought they could get away with a crime-of-the-century like this, they were wrong. Or, at least the SPA tried to convince us that they were wrong. In reality, it was about as simple and certainly as tempting to pirate software then as it is now, but advertisers thought they could use guilt-inducing tactics to nip this in the bud early on.

The brilliance of the campaign was not in it's effectiveness, because it was not particularly effective at deterring floppy disk pirating. It did, however, feature the following absolutely brilliant educational PSA-style rap. Allow me to guide you through some of its finer points:


"Don't Copy That Floppy"
Performed by MC Hart
Lyrics by MC Hart and Ilene Rosenthal

Right off the bat, you know this is some hardcore gangsta rap. With a co-writer with a name like Ilene Rosenthal, how could it not be? It just screams bad-ass.

Did I hear you right, did I hear you sayin'
That you're gonna make a copy of a game without payin'?
Come on, guys, I thought you knew better don't copy that floppy!
[Don't don't don't don't...]

Come on, guys! There's your next clue this is a legitimate rap; the childlike whininess. That background "don't don't don't don't" doesn't hurt, either.

(Wait a minute. Who are you, anyway?
Yeah. And what are you doing on my computer?)

Seriously, slow down here. Corey, you've got a point, here. Your acting skills, by the way, are impeccable. You must see this kind of thing all the time, because you don't look particularly surprised.

I'm your MC Double Def DP
That's the Disk Protector for you and the posse

Ah, well that clears thing up nicely. Thank you for that, MC Double Def DP. Mind if I call you DP?

That's your artists, writers, designers and pro-grammers
They pump up the images for games and grammas that lets you learn, but also play
The games you came here for today
Now I know you love the game and that's alright to do
Because the posse who make them, they love them too
But if you start stealing, there's no more they can do

The grammas, huh? Let's try to leave my grandmother out of this, okay, DP?
And you're right, I do love the game. I never really thought of their posse in such a vulnerable way. Go on, DP.

(But I just wanted to make one copy!)

I just wanted to steal one car!

You say 'I'll just make a copy, for me and a friend'
Then he'll make one and she'll make one and where will it end?
One leads to another then ten, then more,
And no one buys anything from the store
So no one gets paid and they can't make more
The posse breaks up and they close the door
Don't copy! Don't copy that floppy!

The posse is going to break up? Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down, DP. That does seem to be a rather disturbing chain of events.

So let me break this down for you
D-D-Do-Do-Don't

Ah, well, thank you for that. That don't does seem to be fairly broken-down. Good work.

No Carmen Sandiego, no more Oregon Trail
Tetris and the others, they're all gonna fail
Not because we want it but because you're just takin' it
Dis-res-pec-tin' all the folks who are ma-kin' it
The more you take, the less there will be
The disks become fewer, the games fall away
The screen starts to tweak, and then it will fade
Programs fall through a black hole in space
The computer world becomes bleak and stark
Loses its life and the screen goes dark

Wow, I never really considered that whole black hole/space scenario, but it makes perfect sense. If I copy this game, everything will immediately be sucked into a swirling vortex of doom.

[Welcome to the end of the computer age... mwahahahaha..]

Uh-oh, evil laughter. That seems like an ominous cue of some sort, I just can't figure out for what...

But I'm much too strong and you're much too smart
To let that happen to your chances to explore
Parts of the new age just behind the door of your minds
You're the posse of the future and you hold in your brains what's never thought before
And in time, you'll see just so much more
That's why I'm here and that's what I'm fighting for
Don't copy! Don't copy that floppy!

Jenny and Corey are the posse of the future? You're right, DP, things are certainly looking grim.

Now let me introduce you, to some of the teams
That will explain a little more about what I mean!

Ah, the boring spoken-words snippets I was hoping for. Wait, this guy was working on a Dungeons and Dragons game? And I ruined his chances for success? This is worse than I thought. I can't believe people would try to create a computer game for something like that.

[D-D-Do-Do-Don't...Don't copy that floppy!]

You see, on these disks we have frozen in time
The creativity of someone's mind
Do you think, that because, with a flick of a key
You can copy that game, that the work is free
This creativity, we protect it by law
We value so highly, what the mind's eye saw
Don't copy! Don't copy that floppy!

[D-D-Do-Do-Don't...Don't copy.. Don't copy that floppy!]

You have to admit, nice chorus framing on this one.

To do the right thing, it's really simple for you
The copyright law, it will tell you what to do
Buy one, for every computer you use
Anything else is like going to the store
Taking the disk, and walking out the door
It's called thiefin', stealin', taking what's not yours
Is that really where you want your life to go?
Think about it, I don't think so.
Don't copy! Don't copy that floppy!

Thefin'? Stealing? Taking what's not mine? I prefer theifin', I think. It suits me.

Now you see a game you like and you really want to try it
Don't copy that floppy, just go to the store and buy it
Think of it this way, okay?

Okay.

When you're buy a disk, you're sayin' to the team
You respect what you do and what you're workin' for
We'll keep up our support so you can make up some more
We'll do the right thing and the future will be clear
There will be new programs here at the end
Don't copy! Don't copy that floppy!

Okay, sounds fair, DP. I was planning on saying that to the team, anyway.

Now you know how the games and the programs are made
And what you do to make sure that they're not gonna fade
The bottom line is it's all up to you
There's nothing more that I can do
The goals in your court, dribble, shoot, or pass
I'm sure you'll make your decision with class
[Don't copy that floppy]

Dribble, shoot, or pass? I'm a computer kid, man. Use words I understand!

See ya, I'm outta here.


Check it out--modern novelty floppies:
Floppy-Disk Coasters
Floppy-Disk Notebooks
Floppy-Disk Pouch
Floppy-Disk T-Shirt
How to Make Floppy-Disk Earrings

A Children of the Nineties' Hump-Day Treat

Because I received so much Pete-and-Pete DVD-related nostalgia feedback, I thought I would do some of the heavy lifting for you and share with you a few 90s Nickelodeon gems currently available on DVD.

Also because it is Wednesday, and perhaps treating yourself to one of these will get you through your work week and/or school week. I give you full permission to slack off or procrastinate at your leisure by perusing the following list.

Feel free to drop a line in the comments about which DVD releases you are still holding out for!


Nicktoon Nostalgia:



Doug
The Beets, Quailman, Pork Chop, Patti Mayonaise, and the Honker Burger. Need I say more?





Rocko's Modern Life
What's not to love about an expat Wallabee living the aforementioned modern life?





Hey Arnold!
Your favorite, and hopefully only, football headed friend. Includes the episode featuring the "Stoop Kid's afraid to leave his stoop!" chant which has been forever burned some unmovable area in my cerebral cortex.




Ren and Stimpy
For all of you who grew up knowing coveting a log that's better than bad, it's good! Plus Cher from Clueless watches it, so you know it comes with stellar references.





Rugrats
I can't promise this DVD doesn't contain any late-era episodes, but they do claim to be fan favorites. I can only hope one of these eps includes my favorite lesser-known character, Suzy's cat Chowder.




Live-Action Fare:


The Secret World of Alex Mack
What's not to love about a teenager whose contact with a toxic waste spill leaves her all sorts of telekinetic and CapriSun commercial-style liquefying?




Clarissa Explains It All
Enjoy CNN--The Clarissa News Network, and other amazing talk-directly-into-the-camera novelties. Also, that part in the theme song that goes, "Hey, cool!"




The Adventures of Pete and Pete
The much-anticipated DVD release featuring Artie the strongest man in the world and little Pete's Petunia tatoo. Pure eccentric genius.



Honorable Mentions (AKA selected episodes available on Itunes):

Hey Dude
Hey Arnold
Rocko's Modern Life
Doug
The Angry Beavers
Catdog
Aaah! Real Monsters



So until all of these shows eventually reach maturity as full-blown blog posts, happy shopping, Children of the Nineties. Happy shopping.

Nickelodeon Gak

If there's one thing we know, it's that nothing entices a child like mysterious scientific compounds. If it's been whipped up in a beaker or heated over a Bunsen burner, I assure you, they would like a part of it. In fact, if you could just package any potentially toxic experimental remnants in your lab and ship them to Mattel and TYCO distribution centers nationwide, that would probably be easiest.

Gak was one of those inexplicable phenomenons that only children could understand. It served no direct purpose outside of our general distractability and bemusement. Gak was a perfect blend of slime and silly putty with whoopie-cushion-style talents. Suddenly, you had in your possession a messy, slimy, hyper-colored, fart-producing goo. As a child, what's not to love?

"Playing with" Gak could potentially pose an issue. There was nothing you could really do with Gak. It wouldn't maintain a shape like play-doh or silly putty, and it dried out easily if not tended to properly. Not to mention it made your hands smell terrible. Really, just awful. I don't know what they made that stuff out of, but it was remarkably potent. And God forbid you played with Gak within a 10 mile radius of carpeting. The consistency of Gak was rather drizzly and hence prone to all sorts of droppage. Many of us child Gak enthusiasts were forced to incur the wrath of livid parents upon the realization that we had just smushed a tubful of purple mystery goo into their padded berber.


The Nickelodeon/Mattel team was smart enough to realize that despite the obvious mesmerizing qualities of Gak, it would only hold a child's attention for so long on its own. Sure, the clever transparent plastic star-shaped containers (known as "Gak Splats") made it entertaining to re-squish the Gak back into its packaging, but squishy fart sounds alone can only take a toy so far. Luckily, they had conceived of a few other brilliant Gak-related devices from which to accelerate the franchise:

Observe, a commercial for the original Nickelodeon Gak:



As a service to all of you, I will forgo my limited sense of propriety and just come right out with it: I owned an inordinate number of these Gak splatting devices. They were incredibly simplistic in their design, and despite their giving use to the Gak substance, they still served no practical purpose. Let us explore, if you will, a few of the marvelous Gak tools by which we were endlessly entertained:

The Gak Inflator
This was an incredibly mechanical-looking device for its absolutely unnecessary existence. The major aim behind inflating Gak was to shove air into a thin pocker of Gak to produce a chewing-gum style bubble. You would simply insert the Gak, pump the device, and inflate a Gak bubble until it burst. This product deftly circumvented the question of "Why?" and went directly to the "Why not?" Why not inflate a bubble of flatulent goo? In fact, why not create a colorful plastic device with the specific intention of bubbling Gak? As an adult, you may see through this faulty (read: lack of) logic, but as a child it all made perfect, satifyingly-poppable sense.

The Gak Vac
A sort of inverse to the Gak inflator, this piece of toy equipment served the sole purpose of vacuuming up Gak into a chamber and subsequently spitting it back out with the press of a button. The more sadistic amon us would employ action figures on which to splat the aforementioned Gak. This was sort of an at-home version of Nickelodeon's classic sliming action. As a result, my Barbie's hair has yet to recover from it's green Gak deep-conditioning treatment.

The Gak Copier
Whenever I'm scribbling away on an etch-a-sketch or a Magnadoodle, I often think to myself, "You know what would be really super? If I could imprint this image temporarily onto a sticky rubbery substance." Luckily Mattel's telepathy department was hard at work that day and devised a device, so it seemed, to meet my specific doodling needs. The Gak copier allowed children to draw an image, close the device with a fresh coating of Gak on one side and the drawing on the other, and transfer the image onto the Gak. While the device was more of a glorified heavy-book-to-close-it-in, I would not recommend using a book from your own home by which to complete this copying. I know my parents certainly would not, after I ruined the M volume of our Encyclopedia Britannica. I just wanted to see if I could transfer the image of a manatee onto a wad of Gak. FYI, you can not.

Gak came in all sorts of other varieties; glow-in-the-dark, scented, multi-packs...the possibilities were truly endless. One key thing these Gak products all shared was the ubiquitous Gak-specific warning label:


I don't know if you were aware, but Gak is a trademarked product. I probably shouldn't even be using the word Gak, considering the amount of mini-TMs they have plastered on this thing. I can only imagine I'm infringing on their copyright by thinking about the product at all.

They certainly made good use of their bold, all-caps lettering capabilities. GAK IS NOT A FOOD PRODUCT. You have to sort of respect the way they put this directly after the phrase "Gak is non-toxic." It's like telling Gak-crazed childen, "Sure, this stuff may not kill you on contact, but please refrain from eating an entire Splat of it."

It's also very kind of them to include directions for how to re-moisturize your disgusting, stringy, dried-up cornhusk-esque Gak. Simply "work in" some water! Perhaps it's just me, but the phrase "work in" seems unnecessarily gross and potentially graphic. Why can't we just add a teaspoon of water? Mix with a teaspoon of water? No, that will not do; it's preferable to massage in that water gently and tenderly.

Oh, and by the way, don't even THINK about playing with Gak on, well, anything. I can understand the carpeting part, but varnished and unvarnished surfaces? Isn't that, um, everything? I may be mistaken here, but I assume that if it's not varnished, it's unvarnished. In what sort of an environment is it safe to play with Gak? An anti-gravity simulator? I suppose the cleanup would be simple. Just use the Gak Vac!

Also, dry cleaning will not remove Gak. Don't even try it, buster. All hope is lost. We warned you about playing with Gak on surfaces, didn't we?

Despite all of these warnings, we still craved Gak splats with a near-religious fervor. Sure, those warnings could be a bit ominous to adults, but hey, we were kids. All we cared about was sliming GI Joes and producing endlessly hilarious Gak flatulence.

But never, ever on the carpet.


Check it out:
How to make your own Gak

Singled Out

How did people ever find true love before the handy advent of at-home internet dating? Lonely hearts once were forced to brave the cold wide world in desperate search of a potentially suitable mate, singles were relegated to the awkward shame attempting small talk over a cup of coffee, and blind daters eagerly anticipated meeting their mysterious dining partner.

And for the lazy ones, well, there was always Singled Out.

Singled Out proved that adolescents would gladly watch a game show so long as all educational elements had been sufficiently eliminated and the double-entendre reference count was somewhere in the high 20s per episode. It was around this time that market researchers discovered that young people would tune in for game shows if they were generally valueless and smutty--in a lighthearted way, that is. If their parents were mildly to moderately offended by it, that didn't hurt either.

In days of television past, when networks sought to produce cheap TV shows they didn't necessarily go straight to the default reality series angle that floods our current television marketplace. Though MTV was certainly pioneering in the reality show arena (namely through their once-edgy Real World), they also recognized that unscripted game shows were equally cost-effective and quick to produce. To make make production exceedingly expedient, the show's producers formulated mainly 50/50 multiple choice answers from which the majority of contestants could be eliminated. This was certainly not a game of skill we were dealing with here; the show had already conveniently broken down potential contestant responses to bite-size lifeline-esque proportions.

In all honesty, Singled Out was more of hormone-rampant free-for-all of eye candy and sexual innuendos than an actual game. Imagine an entire season of The Bachelor sped up into two 15-minute segments with an old-school 1970s episode of The Dating Game spliced into it intermittently. The show was fluffy and substance-free, but MTV had enough know-how in dealing with 90s teenagers to make this a profitable and attention-worthy enterprise.


The show was originally hosted by then rising-star Playboy Playmate Jenny McCarthy and otherwise unexceptional television personality Chris Hardwick. I had a fairly serious crush on Chris Hardwick circa 1995 in all his floppy-haired glory, but looking back on 90s video footage of him it seems my taste as a 10-year old was somewhat questionable. While Jenny McCarthy went on to fabulous fame, Jim Carrey, and dispersion of questionable anti-inoculation propaganda, Chris Hardwick certainly took a quieter route in performing near-unknown stand up comedy and maintaining his blog The Nerdist. His current picture is notably more studly and I actually consider his blog fairly entertaining, but I find it difficult to read more than a few sentences without stopping myself and thinking, "Wait, the guy from Singled Out is writing this?" But I digress. Let's get back to the game show at hand (/screen).

The premise of the show involved 50 preselected young men and 50 preselected young women respectively vying for a date with single female and male contestants. Prior to the show, these 100 guys and gals each filled out questionaires, the answers from which would either propel them to last-round fame or banish them to early-elimination obscurity. The initial categorical round was followed up by what I like to call the "humiliate yourself to win the affection of another"/"reply to any questions in a determinedly sexual manner" round (more officially known as the "keep 'em or dump 'em round). The "picker" would force the remnants of his or her dating pool to a) performing an outlandishly ridiculous challenge such as dancing sexily while donning a rubber rooster mask or b)answer a sexually-laced question a la The Dating Game, such as "If I were an ice cream cone, what would you do to me?" Subtle, I know, but somehow we managed to break through these ironclad metaphors.


Unfortunately for the Dumpees, they were then draped in dumpee finery: toilet seats, sandwich boards displaying the word "loser", a "dumped" sash, or some other equally embarrassing article. If that shame was not quite enough, the dumpees were paraded past the Picker in hopes of being redeemed. If an expelled contestant was remarkably attractive or particularly scantily clad, occasionally the Picker would bestow unto him or her the coveted Golden Ticket, redeeming them for further play.

In the third and final round (what I like to think of as Singled Out's answer to Legend of the Hidden Temple's Steps of Knowledge) contestants would again answer 50/50 questions and with each correct answer progress a step closer to their potential dating prize. Whichever contestant was the first to reach their coveted date was the winner, and the two were physically arranged back-to-back to create a needlessly longer suspenseful 3/8th of a second before the big reveal. Once revealed, the show awarded the new couple with some semi-lame but admittedly free prize date package, and the potential young lovebirds were sent on their way.

To illustrate, I was planning to present a clip from the original show but was then struck by a far superior idea. For any of you who grew up as fans of ABC's Friday night TGIF programming block, this one's for you. In a late episode of Boy Meets World, Eric actually appeared as a somewhat dishonest contestant on a college edition MTV's Singled Out. The clip even features the real Chris Hardwick, who makes a few cracks about his and Eric's ubiquitous 90s parted haircuts.



The actual show pulled in some major guest stars as well. Okay, so maybe not so major, but they were certainly guest stars--my favorite of whom was Salute Your Shorts's Michael Bower, a.k.a. Donkey Lips. I've had a soft spot for Bower ever since Dina tried to give D-Lips the major brush-off at Camp Anawanna's big dance. I'm not saying I'd want to be Singled Out by him, but he was certainly a guest star of interest.

As the growing fame of Singled Out's hosts quickly outstripped the growth of the show, Jenny McCarthy expressed her desire to move on to greener pastures. Okay, so the pastures were still located at MTV studios and involved her performing in some form of eponymous sketch comedy series, but they were greener nonetheless. Jenny was swiftly replaced with a new Playmate model, Carmen Electra, for the short remaining duration of the series. While Carmen was undeniably in the same attractiveness realm as her Playmate predecessor, she lacked some of Jenny's flair for shameless respect-compromising comedy.


Irrespective of the host switcheroo, this show was boastfully successful thorughout the duration of its three year run. Though the games live on for a brief few days annually at seedy Spring Break destinations, it's a bit sad to consider that today's generation of young people will grow up never once having had their mind contaminated by this entertaining garbage. Sure, they've got The Hills and Real World season 21, but it's just not the same. Never will they know the thrilling rush of waiting for two people to suspensefully whip around and face one another, meeting their dating fate.

Then again, this is a generation that un-ironically watches MTV's current dating debacle Next, so it may not be worth putting up a fight for reinstatement.

Check it out:
MTV Singled Out's Guide to Dating Book
Singled Out: The Dirt on the Dates on VHS
A creative professor's Singled Out math problem

Children of the Nineties' Favorite Things

We don't usually do this sort of thing over here, but out of love for Miss Gidget's blog, I'm willing to make an exception. With a 90s twist, that is.

Fidgeting Gidget tagged me in this meme today, with the following rules:

1. Mention the person who nominated you (above).

2. List six unimportant things that make you happy (I've chosen to supplement the "you" in this piece of the instructions with "children of the 90s,' but you get the general idea).

So without further ado, I present to you 6 things that make children of the 90s happy today:

---------------------------------------------------------

1. Reruns

Sure, it's a bit troubling that the network block that aired black-and-white sitcoms in our youth is now showing Home Improvement and The Fresh Prince, but obviously they've adjusted their retro-meter a bit.

2. Pandora

Perfect for listening at work, Pandora is a free online radio service. 90s children can plug in their favorite old groups and Pandora will do the work in recovering similar songs and artists. Just be warned that you may end up with a station embarrassingly entitled something like "Backstreet Boys radio."

3. 90s Throwback t-shirts

I dare you to take one look at this image and not immediately picture yourself sporting a shirt with the above while watching the Full House episode where DJ mistakenly is caught with a beer. Tempting, I know.


4. Oregon Trail iPhone App

What better way to be notified you've died of dysentery than on a 2'' x 3'' screen?

5. DVD Releases

Your favorite childhood shows, now available at a retailer/website near you. If your favorites aren't out there, there are petitions galore on the internet imploring the good people at Nickelodeon and MTV to give us our DVDs.

6. Return of Union Jack Fashion

Okay, so maybe Paris Hilton doesn't specifically embody the fashion sense many of us would like to emulate, but she is wearing that hat. For all of us who saw Spice World multiple times in theaters, this is certainly a promising development.

------------------------------------------------------------

3. Tag six blogs, state the rules & notify them with a teeny comment on their blog.

A Daily Dose of Dani
Magchunk
Curiosity
Trying to Make it all Work
Buried the Lead
My Life in a Blog

Blue M&Ms

In the 90s, democracy was a dying enterprise. Voter turnout had sunk to new lows, and Americans seemed generally apathetic and disinterested in the political arena. Citizens began questioning what effect could their single vote possibly have on the larger problems facing America. Disillusioned with the perceived ineffectiveness of their role as an individual in a vast democracy, many began boycotting elections altogether.

Unless, of course, we were voting for key M&M colors. That was a completely different story.

In 1995, the world changed forever. Okay, so maybe it was just the candy world, and it was really just a color switch, but to some this symbolized a reignition of the democratic spirit. With the surrounding years' non-presidential national elections pulling in numbers in the 35-38% range of all voter-age citizens, the people had spoken. Or rather, had not spoken; US voter rates were in a slump. Those running for office should perhaps have employed the higher-ups at the Mars Corporation on their campaign staffs, as these employees had devised a brilliant solution to rising anti-voting sentiment.

Children.

Yes, that's right, children. As American Idol would find nearly a decade later, eliminating age restrictions and allowing multiple votes conveniently available over a toll-free phone line seems a surefire way to encourage voting.

What real difference can children make? Can a candy vote really arouse interest to the point that people will take to their phones to make their voices heard?

A lot. And yes.

In 1995, a decision was made. The Mars company was to cease production of tan M&Ms. Scary but true, tan M&Ms were once allowed to cohabit our bags with the more delicious-looking colors. Luckily, the people at Mars/M&Ms saw the errors of the 50+ years of tan-producing ways. Reasons for the switch were vague and unclear; were people speaking up against tan M&Ms? Were they upset that tan was essentially a knock-off of the coexisting brown M&M? Were they concerned about their melanoma risk? No one knows for sure.


Whatever the reason, a decision was made and a massive marketing campaign launched. In a second's time, tan M&Ms were a thing of the past. Suddenly, according to a multitude of M&M-related election propaganda, it was up to us to pick a new color. Really, us! We could be a part of history. Well, candy history. If such a an area of study exists. Well, either way, it seemed like a pretty legitimate endeavor in which to partake.

Suddenly, the playground was in an uproar; which color were you going to vote for? The options were finite (pink, purple, and blue) and the constituency fiercely divided. Unfortunately, M&Ms major gaffe was picking a majority of gender-biased hues for their new color options. It became the cool thing to pick blue, because we were all fairly certain it was going to win. None of the boys in the four-square court were up to being outed for placing a vote for purple or pink, and so it went.

All it took was a call to the toll-free 1-800-FUN-COLOR hotline. You're not mistaken, that's too many numeric letter equivalents, and some of us had a quiet moment of shame in realizing the line was already ringing as our dialing went on and on. It seemed like a relatively straightforward enough procedure, but the controversy over your vote was deep-seated. Editorial pages were flooded with comments on the color controversy; no forum or open space was safe from color-specific propaganda. Many elementary school classes in a half-hearted attempt to educate our nation's youth on the value of democracy conducted their own in-school votes. This probably did not play a major role in spurning interest in democracy, but in candy instead. Though politicians may not have been overly grateful for these diluted civic lesson, many dentists certainly felt it's sweet impact.

There was also the inexplicably hardcore "no change" movement, for which people sent impassioned emails and letters to friends, begging them to call in and select the "no change" option. Staunch in their conservative traditional M&M values stance, this small but vocal contingency sought to spread the word that it was possible to retain the tan M&Ms if you would just listen to them and do everything in your power to halt all progress at any cost. While there is no conclusive evidence to this end, many prominent scholars theorize that these people are now the ones writing the voiceover scripts for "The Gathering Storm" commercials.

Over 10 million votes were cast. I'm sorry, I don't know if you caught that one. 10 million. Really. We can't pull together a decent crowd to decide who will hold the fate of our country in his hands, but dammit if we're going to be stuck with pink M&Ms. I mean, that's just priorities.


Blue won by a landslide, with over 50% of votes cast in its favor. Eager to ride the crest of this marketing wave to its final washup, the Mars corporation quickly released a series of self-congratulatory ads highlighting the inherent desirability of Blue as a character. Already utilizing Red and Yellow as official "spokescandies", advertisers hastily inserted the enviable Blue character into the ad campaigns.






Ah, yes. There's nothing quite like self-induced asphyixiation to make you feel like one of the gang. Despite Blue's undeniable coolness, his manners with our old standards was a bit questionable. Stil, their desire to be like him reaffirmed our feeling that we indeed had made the right color choice and set the framework for susceptibility to future peer pressure.

Red and Yellow were persistent at their attempts to illustrate to us just how cool our Chosen One really was in this follow-up ad:



Really, BB King? I didn't realize M&Ms could pull such prime guest stars. It's still up in the air as to whether or not Red and Yellow's self-described "blues" were on par with anything King ever recorded, but I suppose it's all in the context.

The novelty of blue has waned slightly since the more recent 2002 global color vote (winner: purple, though they have mysteriously disappeared from our bags) and the hordes of customizable colors available at M&M World and online. Now that you can superimpose a photograph of yourself onto any color M&M you can imagine, the excitement over blue M&Ms may pale somewhat in comparison.

Regardless of current M&M progress, we can look back to our own unexplained passion for selecting a new shade of candy-coated chocolate. Though we may mourn for the defeated colors, our concerns are largely unwarranted; after all, these customizable colored candies have gone on to lead rich, chocolatey lives of coordinating colors for wedding parties, baby showers, and bar mitzvahs.

And if there's still a shred of insecurity about their loss, well, that's where the hard candy shell comes in.

Thank You for Being a Friend, Bea

Today is a sad day for any of you 90s kids who grew up watching the Golden Girls. Bea Arthur died today at the age of 86.

Though she did a great deal of noteworthy theatrical work and was also renowned for her role of Maude in the sitcom of the same name, to us she will always be the sharp-witted Dorothy Zbornak on Golden Girls.

Whoever put together the following Dorothy Zbornak tribute was obviously very taken by their own ability to use all the different transitions available in Microsoft Office, but their heart is in the right place and they certainly chose some gems so I'm willing to overlook their technical shortcomings. Bea Arthur's distinct humor will certainly be missed.

Bea Arthur 1922-2009

Ace of Base

Ah, 90s Swedish pop. Nothing says grunge backlash like rave-soundtrack European techno. Turn on one of their many hits and you can actually see the glowsticks waving. If the word Eurotrash had yet to enjoy significant circulation, Ace of Base certainly played a major role in inserting it into mainstream vocabularies. It was bad news for any of you out there aching to don a cropped turtleneck and a leather vest, play synthesizers, and produce dramatic slow-motion sepia-toned music videos. Ace of Base had already cornered that market.

There's something to be said for a band that can achieve international fame while filed under the Eurodance category at record stores. Ace of Base's upbeat, club-friendly songs created a new link between the Swedish and American pop music in the early 90s. Determined to prove they were more than just an ABBA knockoff, Ace of Base churned out English-language single after single to the international music market.

Ace of Base songs were incomparably catchy. God forbid you ever heard one on the radio, because your brain would probably never rebound from the strain of constant and continuous internal play. Their heavy use of synthesizers in lieu of what some may refer to as legitimate instruments pounded residual reggae-inspired technobeats into our ears for hours after the cassette tape had clicked off. If any of you out there were at any point exposed to Ace of Base (you can test yourself for potential airborne exposure using the videos below,) there is no doubt that the opening techno bars will bring back floods of un-expellable lyrics.

The group didn't only have extremely captivating, beat-heavy songs; they also produced what can only be appraised as the quintessential 90s pop music videos. Their videos frequently utilized exceedingly dramatic cutaway shots, black and white photography, and the most advanced special effects the 90s had to offer us. In many cases, it seemed as if their video producers had sat down at the editing booth and applied every available piece of special effect technology to the videos. Hazy smoke over every shot? Why not? People floating in bubbles? You got it! Rotating ankh computer graphics? Sign me up!

In case you have not been sitting around watching old Ace of Base music videos for the last 15 years, I'd be happy to point out some of the finer points of their more popular videos. I invite you to come with me on a chronological whirlwind tour of cheesy 1990s Swedish pop music sights and sounds:


All That She Wants (1993)



Is it just me, or is she playing with some Star of David jewelry in the first shot? Well, never mind the potential religious jewelry implications. The real focus is on the wonderfully literal storytelling technique the band employs to illustrate the major plot points of their song toward the beginning. She literally opens up her eyes and it's safe to say that she's thinking, "Oh, what a morning!" Thankfully they were able to leave some segments en metaphor, or else we may have had our lead characters dressed as hunters and foxes, talking gently to one another.

There are a few shots that don't quite add up, however. Despite their compelling descriptions of this woman as a maneater, in most of the shots she appears vaguely bored. It's possible that she's just concentrating on trying to hear the whispered, "All that she wants...", but this woman doesn't seem particularly vicious. Are we to assume that her application of Cleopatra-esque undereye-liner is emblematic of her desire to use 'em and lose 'em? And the way she blows out that candle. What a trollop! I'll concede to the video's credit and/or legitimacy that in the end she does pick up that guy at the bar, but I'm not yet convinced of her deviance by candle symbolism alone.


The Sign (1994)



Oh my God, it's the Sopranos! I knew they had to have ripped off their signature poster design from a 90s Swedish pop group, I just knew it!


Here's where the aforementioned random special effects montage comes into play. "Oh, so you can make a fire background, show a silhouetted person swirling around, superimpose the band members over images of themselves, and twirl ancient Eqyptian style ankhs? Management team, what do you guys think? Throw 'em all in? Alright, great! And if we could just remix them continuously throughout the run of the video, that would be super." If you had yet to notice from the first video, it's clear that the lead female vocalists were major contenders for the Overgroomed Eyebrow award. They don't give you much time to speculate on that, though, as they're always quick to cut away to interspersed shots of random people making out with no reasonable explanation to back up these visuals. If you gain nothing else from this video, I hope that you can take with you Jenny and Linn's increasingly comical calculated hand-gesture-dances for your next trip to the club.

Regardless of its social relevance on any other level, I've yet to hear this once-immensely popular song (now relegated to muzak in grocery stores and elevators) without thinking of the following Full House episode:



Don't Turn Around (1994)



If you've yet to catch on, there's sort of been a general theme tying together these videos. While the special effects employed may vary, they all cut back and forth continually between the female lead singers and the actors portraying the song. At least in this one, we get a glimpse at why the men in the band are at most marginally necessary, as this is probably the most we've heard from them in any of the singles to date. Their little rap interlude proves that Buddha and Joker (those are their actual stage names, I did not just make that up) are not the mute eye candy we may have assumed them to be in the two former music videos. This video is also fairly high into literalism, though to their credit Eurodance music is not renowned for its subtlety. See how the girl enters the same beach as her former flame, but sits several yards away? That's her not letting you know. No, she won't let you know.

The whole situation is pretty awkward, really. I mean, these two are obviously trying to avoid each other, and where do they find themselves but on the same secluded beach? Well, she really told him off by walking into the water like that at the end. I'm not sure if that's some sort of purity symbolism or if maybe he's just allergic to moisture, but he seemed to get the message.


Beautiful Life (1996)


When I yawn, sometimes I randomly emit enbubbled people, too. That special effect is completely necessary, and not only because it conveys the general whimsy associated with life's beauty (not to be confused with the movie It's a Beautiful Life, which is something else entirely. I never saw it, but I imagine it doesn't too heavily feature people floating carefreely in soap bubbles.) The nonsensical montages in this particular video are certainly inspired, though by what we may never know. It has sort of that "Look, we're flying near but not directly over mountains! Now we're wearing sunglasses and cruising through a tunnel! Now we're hovering over violent car crashes!" feel to it. That pool table sequence toward the end ain't bad either.

Again, we get to hear a few snippets from the guys in this one, though they are rather brief. Would you believe me if I told you that it was actually the men who started this group and eventually solicited the help of a band member's sisters to get things off the ground? Further examination into a live performance indicates that they possibly rock the keytar and guitar respectively, but their presence in these music videos is generally fairly unnecessary.

Ace of Base also did a spectacularly 90-fied cover of Bananarama's "Cruel Summer" and some other follow-up work, but they were pretty MIA in the US in recent years. Don't fret about the fate of our Europoppers, however, they're still all the rage in places like Denmark, Estonia, and Lithuania. Who says fame is fleeting? Perhaps it's just nomadic.

Despite their more recent and undoubtably admirable achievements, the Ace of Base of our collective memory is 90s through and through. Though other Swedish acts such as Robyn and The Cardigans gained 90s fame in the US, they never quite reached an Ace of Base level of Hype. So to any of you who still own your early-90s-era Ace of Base cassettes and can find somewhere on your premises the means necessary to play them, I say enjoy them. Despite their earlier warnings against it, I'd say it's pretty safe to turn around at this point and look back on your favorite artists of seasons past. If all else fails, it's also available on Itunes.