In the meantime, enjoy this classic post... (part II)

Fear not, Children of the 90s will be back in full force tomorrow. I am out at a work conference, but in an effort to adhere to my regular posting schedule I am proud to present another pre-scheduled installment of classic (read: reposted) CotN for your perusing pleasure:

Goosebumps

If you thought some of these other delightful 90's commodities were franchising machines, you've yet to meet the monster of all monopolies. That's right, I used "monster" as a shockingly low-grade horror book pun. Just deal with it.

Children growing up in the 90s had a fascination with all things spooky. Shows like Are you Afraid of the Dark? and all sorts of novelized ghost stories cast a spell over young consumers and instilled in them an unquenchable hunger for all varieties of horror media. The king cresting this horror wave was R.L. Stine, a virtual book-miller churning out book after book laced with a satisfying mix of satire, humor, ripped-off story lines, suprise endings, and fright.

R.L. Stine wrote innumerable pieces of young adult fiction, but most memorable and exhaustive were those in his Goosebumps series. In an age where book series dominated the youth literature marketplace, Stine was among the few series creators who actually authored all of his own books without the use of ghostwriters. I guess you could call R.L. Stine the leading ghostwriter. Okay, even I can't handle that one. Moving on.

Goosebumps books were a gratifying balance of things of that our parents did and did not approve. On one hand, we were reading chapter books and unquestionably though unintentionally gaining some sort of literary adroitness. On the other, we were scaring ourselves silly with undiluted, unwholesome trash that was prime fodder to give us bad dreams and night terrors. It was like tricking your parents into thinking you were learning something, while deep down you knew you were up to no good.

R.L. Stine openly acknowledged that many of his Goosebumps plot lines were lifted from old-school horror exploits such as the Twilight Zone. Thankfully, as children in the mid-90s had limited or no knowledge of the existence of 1960s sci-fi television series , they eagerly absorbed
these plot lines as fresh and new. Regardless of the story origins, the books were fairly un-put-downable. Stine was the master of plot twists, particularly at the end of a story. Even once we had read enough books in the series to recognize when we were being tricked or misled, we always took the bait and were outraged to find all of our supposedly sacrosanct suppositions had been for naught.

The best (and let's be honest, worst) example of this is Goosebumps #26: My Hairiest Adventure:


While of course the major underlying premise of these books are their absurdity, this one ostensibly reigns supreme and unleashes some fairly ridiculous plot meandering (if you haven't read the book or simply can't yet recall, that "unleash" is another marvelous pun. Really, I swear.) In short, a group of kids find an expired bottle of self-tanner and naturally decide to engage in a group lather session. Soon thereafter, they discover that they are sprouting hair all over their bodies and (mistakenly) believe the tanning solvent is to blame.

Suddenly, he starts seeing dogs all over town sporting the same hair/fur and eye colors as his previously human companions. Not only is this a bit spooky, it certainly explains why we had to read page-long description of Lily's clear green eyes and sandy hair. To think I'd erroneously speculated that Stine had developed a crush on his charming 7th grade female character.

Long(ish) story short, our lovable and assumably human protagonists aren't really kids at all...they're (wait for it!)...dogs! Yep, dogs. The details are so ridulous I don't think I'll extrapolate any further and rather just pause that with that Stine-esque chapter-end cliffhanger and leave you to your own book-finishing devices. Suffice it to say, we were surprised, if not a little confused.

Such was the way of Goosebumps. Just when we believed we had it all figured out, Stine would throw in an alien friend or a giant blobular monster to throw us off the trail. The real beauty of these books were their window to escapism; they did not need to be grounded in reality or even make sense. We loved them unconditionally, and were even willing to accept dozens of unwarranted sequels.

Of course, like any profitable 90s franchise, books were never enough. Some of our favorite stories were adapted for TV by the now defunct Fox Kids network:



That's right, because what's more ominous in a series intro than manuscript pages flying dramatically out of an author's briefcase? We all understood that it was based on the book series, but thankfully producers chose to drive the point home with outlandish literality. Not to mention that the dog's glowing eyes look suspiciously like they were sloppily drawn in Microsoft paint. This baby's got Fox written all over it.

Despite the low-budget TV series, board games, and video game adaptations, the tried and true Goosebumps formula was in the books. While as adults we can certainly recognize the chintzy stories and plot twists, we can still appreciate our childhood worship of these books as sacred. Their adeptness at simultaneously entertaining us and scaring us out of our minds always kept us hungry for more.

So lay back, grab your tattered old copy of Night of the Living Dummy III, and take yourself back to a simpler time. A time when you were able to suspend your disbelief at the implausibility of not one, not two, but three families falling for the same dummy-comes-alive trick all over again. So long as each chapter formulaicly ends with someone letting out a bloodcurdling scream for no reason other than to set up a cliffhanger for the following chapter, all is right in the world.

Amazingly comprehensive reviews of Goosebumps books:
Blogger Beware

In the meantime, enjoy this classic post...

Children of the Nineties is at a work conference, and despite desperate pleas to the contrary is not entitled to personal computer time. In the meantime, please enjoy a pre-scheduled classic CotN repost from earlier this year. As I only had three or four readers at the time, it's probably (okay, almost definitely) new to you.

Enjoy, and I will return to shower all of you bits of with 90s nostalgia goodness on Thursday!

Nickelodeon Slime

As a (sort of) adult, I have to wonder what on earth our parents were thinking as they watched our inexplicable outpouring of glee and good cheer at the sight of one of our contemporaries being doused in a sticky green semi-viscous compound on national television. To us, it made perfect sense. Speak out of turn? Get slimed! Perform poorly on a game show challenge? Get slimed! Fail to Figure it Out? Get slimed! Happen to be standing outside Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando, Florida during the filming of a filler intermission commercial segment?

You get the idea.

As children, we had no questions about the nature, existence, or purpose of slime. The act of sliming was, plain and simple, probably the image we were most frequently exposed to from ages 5-12, and we saw nothing wrong with that. We consumed Nickelodeon like water--only we preferred it greener and oozier. Slime was a fact of our reality and was to be taken at absolute face value as a legitimate icon of our favorite (though at the time, only) children's television network.

The notion of slime originated with the late 80s children's sketch comedy classic, You Can't Do That on Television! Every time an actor on the show uttered the otherwise inocuous phrase, "I don't know," suddenly and unaccountably a significant amount of sticky green goo would rain down from the heavens onto the unsuspecting victim. YCDToT cast members lovingly recalled that the original formulation of slime was deemed highly toxic and that it may have been a poor idea to risk lives for the sake of children's sketch comedy, even if it did star a young Alanis Morisette.

The proposal of the mysterious green glop was apparently so well-received by show producers and executives that it was soon redeveloped to be at best minimally non-lethal. Concocted from an original secret formula of flour and lime-green Jello, slime burst onto the scene, nontoxic and slimy as initially envisioned. God forbid the slime hypothesizer compromise his holy green vision. It should also be noted that it is a well-known fact that everyone thinks green Jello is disgusting, so the blame for its continued and persistent existence on grocery store shelves can be laid squarely on the shoulders of the slime theorists.

As we can deduce from the following clip that we can only assume to be completely serious, it seems that at the time of its inception in the mid-80s slime was highly controversial topic amongst children. As you watch the following Nick Special Report, please take notice that the proportion of feathered hair to head is inversely related to one's support for slime action.



What started as a one-shot gag soon spread (as slimes tend to do) to an ongoing element of the show. After the show's cancellation, Nickelodeon was determined not to let this otherwise non-sequitor lame-excuse-for-a-lack-of-punchline die out quietly. Plus, they had already bought all of that lime Jello. Thankfully they had the foresight to add both oatmeal and shampoo to the slime, apparently adhering to the 1990s Sassy magazine school of food-as-hair-product recipes in their quest to make the slime more wash-outable. The ominpresence of slime tied in nicely to the inherent messiness of pretty much every game show Nick churned out in the mid-90s. Shows like Double Dare, What Would You Do?, and Super Sloppy Double Dare capitalized on the audience's existing emotional ties with slime to capture their hearts and soil their smocks. Did I say yet that the aforementioned mess-based game shows were hosted by a germ-phobic obsessive compulsive? Obviously the slime people weren't the only ones at Nickelodeon with a sadistic sense of humor.

At some point, the demand for slime grew so high that Nick Studios actually erected a green-spewing slime geyser outside their Orlando-based studios. While of course we can only imagine that as a non-naturally occurring substance this geyser was simply for show, what it stood for made up for its lack of purpose.





Imagine for a moment that there were indeed dozens of people employed by the slime industry in the mid-90s; there were scientists and formula-testers, the guys that hung the roof buckets, engineers to build the pouring mechanisms, someone to flip the slime-dumping switch. This had obviously gotten out of hand. Instead of reigning it in, however, Nickelodeon just kept on milking it. Slime was featured heavily in the late-90s Nickelodeon game show Figure It Out, was used liberally and continuously at the Kid's Choice Awards, and squelched into the 2000s with a commercial break feature aptly titled "Slime Time Live." Yes, slime was here to stay, and there was nothing we could have or would possible have wanted to do about it.

See, we all embraced slime (well, as much as is physically executable with a mucilaginous goo) as emblematic of all that we knew and loved of our magical Nickelodeon network. It was idiosyncratic and spoke to us in a way that separated us from our parents; we understood it, they did not. For a magical moment in time, slime represented us, our collective childhood tied together by the universal experience of growing up watching the realization of this running green gag. To our parents it was simply a mess to clean up, but we knew it was our mess and hence deemed it worthy. Nickelodeon slime, if nothing else, stood for a turning point in children's entertainment when kids were (in our eyes) in control to run wild in their self-created world and revel in its distinct non-adultness. Kids had formed a secret club, and the repeated viewing Nickelodeon slimings made you a card-carrying member. Nickelodeon created a world where it was both fun and safe to be a kid, and we welcomed that wholeheartedly. It was the most kid-friendly neon-hued sludge we had ever seen, and we adored it. Well, that is until Gak flatulated onto the scene.

But that, my friends, is a story for another time.

*thanks to Aly S for the topic idea

Check it out:
Nick's Slime Across America

Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harding

Just think, kids growing up today will think a photo of Michael Phelps with a bong constitutes a legitimate full-blown Olympic athlete scandal.

Amateurs.

In the 90s, Olympic athletes did scandals right. It was an all-or-nothing type of game. They weren't playing around. In fact, it wasn't even necessary to try to sabotage rival athletes, what, with so much prime competition on your home court.


In 1994, the world of US Olympic figure skaters became embroiled in a vicious battle between teammates. I know, I know. Olympic figure skating? Those girls in the sequined spandex? They seem so friendly, their bleached smiles so genuine. Unfortunately, beneath the happy veneer of the US women's team lurked a dark and dangerous tension.

Nancy Kerrigan had quickly become America's golden girl--she was young, pretty, poised and talented. She had all the makings of a perfect All-American Wheatie's box photograph. Americans couldn't seem to get enough of the up-and-coming skater, and she appeared destined for Olympic success.

Not everyone was so happy about the Kerrigan hype, though. Fellow US Olympic skater Tonya Harding was obviously displeased with playing second banana to Nancy. Looking back, it's frightening they let this maniacal fame-crazy sociopath skate around with the equivalent of twp frequently sharpened switchblades affixed to her feet. I'm not sure if you've ever been jumped by someone using an ice skate as a weapon, but they're not kidding around with those toe picks.

Tonya was certainly talented and was not without her admirers. Harding was the first female skater to successfully execute a triple axel during competition. She was, however, a perpetual self-fulfilling prophecy of eternal victimhood. She and her devotees felt that there was a definite favoritism for Kerrigan over Harding, and some Harding-ites went so far as to suggest it was because Harding was from less affluent background. However, as Kerrigan herself came from a blue-collar background, this seemed like a fairly faulty argument. Whatever the reason, a seething rivalry brewed between the two US Olympic teammates.

The tension came to a head just before the 1994 Olympics. Kerrigan was mysteriously attacked by an unknown assailant. The attack was well-honed and deliberate, injuring her knee. The intent was clearly to hinder her skating ability, though few people could fathom why someone would do such a thing.

Of course, the whole thing (conveniently excluding the attack itself) was caught on film and played on continuous loop on news stations worldwide. Kerrigan's cries of "Why me?" were frequently (if perhaps a bit cruelly) mocked in the coming months.



Henceforth referred to as "The Whack Heard Round the World" (or my personal favorite, "The Battle of Wounded Knee II) the incident actually had a secondary impact of majorly boosting the interest and ratings in Olympic figure skating. People were quick to point fingers at Tonya Harding, who seemed notably unshaken by the incident.

Harding's ex husband, along with a few sketchy co-conspirators, were the culprits behind the attack, though it took months to unravel the whole story. This obviously did not bode well for Tonya's already waning image, and though she was (just barely) allowed to compete in the '94 winter Olympics, she finished an embarrassing eighth to Nancy Kerrigan's second.

Luckily, there seemed to be some karma at play. Kerrigan got to keep skating and maintained her place as a national hero (with a few minor scandal blips along the way) and Tonya struggled to live off of milking her notoriety for the next 15 years. She did all sorts of embarrassing things for a quick buck, most ridiculously competing in Celebrity Boxing. Now, you would possibly think that someone trying to adjust their image would play to the crowds and try to lay low and strive for a gracious, demure public image.

You would be wrong.



Better yet, as if her F-list status could not be carved any more deeply in stone, she boxed Paula Jones. Two crazy chicks vying for attention and public sympathy, and here they are duking it out on a terrible reality show.

Harding was also recently a guest on Oprah and opens up about, well, all sorts of crazy. It's hilariously obvious that the Big O doesn't believe a word of Tonya's sob story.



Good one, Tons. You really cleared that up. Because you like to hunt and fish and sit around the bonfire with friends, you...are justifying what, exactly? It's too bad she can't afford a publicist to properly train her for this interview, because she comes across absolutely sociopathic. All this proves is that not only is Tonya a terrible liar, but is also likely dumber than a box of rocks.

As if all that weren't enough, she also made quite a ruckus over Obama referencing her http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/03/05/tonya-harding-slams-barac_n_172233.html during his campaign, when he remarked "Folks said there's no way Obama has a chance unless he goes and kneecaps the person ahead of us, does a Tonya Harding." Geez, between referencing Tonya Harding's KneeGate and Jessica Simpson's weight gain, Obama certainly is adept at planting seeds of publicity for washed-up celebrities.

But I digress. The moral (immoral, really) of the story is that if you find yourself the second choice for America's love and affection, you can always call out a personal favor for someone to go and bust their kneecaps. It's just that easy! You could pair it with a catchy tagline, like, "Bustin' kneecaps--not just for the mob!"

Hey, that's not half bad. Wasn't I just saying Tonya needs a publicist...?

Space Jam

For generations, kids have grown up delighting in the fun and whimsy of Warner Brother's Looney Tunes. They're silly, they're quotable, they're animated...and apparently highly skilled at basketball.

So perhaps it seemed like an unlikely scenario that our old cartoon standards were tearing up the court, but in 1996, that's exactly what they set out to do. Even to highly imaginative children, it seemed seemed improbable that Bugs Bunny and the gang were going to excel basketbally. That is, until we found out they were enlisting the world-famous skills of none other than 90s basketball superstar Michael Jordan.

Rewind a decade or so, to a time before Michael Jordan was just the guy engaging in cheesy banter with Charlie Sheen in the tagless Hanes tees commercials. Once upon a time, Michael Jordan was every kid's hero. He was the Jordan of our Air Jordan sneakers, our favorite Dream Team player, and the man who brought fame and success to our beloved (at least in my corner of the world) Chicago Bulls. That was, until he pretended to play baseball. But that's a story for another time.

Kids everywhere looked up to Michael Jordan. They believed he could do anything. In fact, they almost believed (wait for it, wait for it)....

He could fly.

(And don't you worry. We'll get to that Quad City DJs song in another post. You didn't think I could leave that one alone, did you? Did you??)

So when we all eagerly lined up at movie theaters, settled in with some buttered popcorn, and heard R. Kelly's lyrical interpretation of a young Michael Jordan believing he could fly, we were right there with him. MJ had been a kid. We were kids. Remember, this was before we knew that R. Kelly liked kids, so it was still acceptable get caught up in the fantasy. Ours, that is. Not his.

Space Jam was a child's dream. It's hard for me to imagine any contemporary basketball star calling up his agent and saying, "You know what I really want? To act in a feature film with cartoons. Make it happen." Call me cynical, but it seems doubtful Lebron or Kobe would be up for such shenanigans (although, to their credit, they have appeared in those Most Valuable Puppet commercials). No, this was a different time, and Michael Jordan was a different player. It had all of the ingredients of child-friendly greatness.

The plot begins as a tongue-in-cheek play on Jordan's real-life rocky transition from legitimate basketball hero to semi-respected minor league baseball player. Meanwhile, planets away, these weird little space bugs (Nerdlucks, if you will) are dispatched on a mission to kidnap the Looney Tunes to serve as in-house entertainers. I know what you're thinking, it makes perfect sense. Now bear with me here, because it gets even more logical as the plot curdles...er, thickens.

So these Nerdluck fellows find their way to earth, they get ahold of the Looney Tunes crowd and seek to take them back to the Nerdluck home planet, Moron Mountain. Still following? It's okay if you're not, I won't tell. Anywho, the Looney Tunes manage to convince these space critters that the only way to settle this is through a basketball game. Given their advantage in stature, it seemed like a fair bet.

Apparently these Nerdluck guys were some kind of magical, because they traveled to earth and managed to zap the basketball powers out of many prominent 90s NBA players. Lucky for us, countless big-name basketball stars were willing to embarrass themselves to this end:

Please, PLEASE tell me you recognized Dan Castellaneta, aka Homer Simpson, as that bald fan sitting next to the Nerdluck disguise. That's just too 90s-tacular to miss.

So now the Nerdlucks are big and scary and according to their jerseys, Monstars. Clever, no?

Bugs and Co aren't about to stand for this. They yank MJ through a golf hole into Looney Tune land to help them step up their game. After all, he's just a sort of crappy baseball player now, how much could they really miss him? So, several cheap jokes and athletic training montages later, here we all were at the ToonSquad/Monstars showdown. May the best man/tune/Monstar win.



Wow, just look at that dramatic Stretch Armstrong-esque ending moment. The crowd goes wild. The kids go wild. The NBA players' skills are restored and Jordan returns to basketball. All is right in the world again.

Looking back, the film wasn't all that well-received by critics, but my peers and I were utterly oblivious to this fact as children. Apparently, kids across the nation (and later, the world) agreed with us, as the film was a huge financial success. Things like plot and character development aren't of particular significance to children.

What really mattered to us was seeing our childhood heroes--animated and athletic--joining together in the bonds of...well, something. And for that single moment of cartoon/sportsman contact, it was magical.

Children of the 90s is Proud to Present...

I have a terrible confession to make. Despite all of my wonderful blog friends being gracious and kind enough to bestow generous blog awards on me, I have been as of late somewhat of a selfish award-taker. That is to say, I have done a terrible job of passing along these awards because I tend to have trouble fitting in the meme-ishness into my daily posting schedule.

Then suddenly, it hit me. I conceived of a brilliant and generous plan/scheme a la Zach Morris. Here's my moment to freeze the action and speak directly to the camera in pure defiance of the fourth wall.

I could make my own award.

Someone has to start these things, right? What if I, Children of the 90s, created my own award?

There were criteria, of course, for creating this award. For one, it needed to fully encapsulate and represent 90s cheesiness. Also, it needed some sort of horrible, cringe-worthy pun. If I was going to create it, well, then, it had better reflect all my god-awful punnery.

So, after innumerable focus groups and endless market research, I am proud to present the Children of the 90s award for excellence:

The Write Stuff.



I know, I know...this song was most popular in 1989. New Kids on the Block were legitimately an 80s-90s enterprise, and I stand by my decision to use their cheesy likeness in my award...mainly because it works with the best pun I thought up. You don't want to see the list of rejects.

Yep, I totally made that and there's no taking it back now. Display it on your profiles with pride. Oh, and I suppose it should come with some rules, so here you go:

Give it to whomever you'd like! Alright, we're good on this, yes? Without further ado, several bloggers who most certainly have the write stuff:


Fever Formerly Jakezilla, Lora's blog is truly one of the funniest out there. She covers a full gamut of topics and speaks her mind in a way that always cracks me up.


Well Okay, Sassy Britches! Love her blog, and don't miss her hilarious Birdcage-esque profile description--it's what drew me in in the first place :) Oh, and she'll teach you all about culverts.


Muppet Soul Muppet's was one of the first blogs I got into, she tells a great story and is always very funny.


Couture Carrie A fabulous fashion blog, for all of you who are into that kind of thing. I know I am.


Teasingly Diverse Just an all around great blog, check her out!


Get a Pencil and Your Casebook Thank you, Sadako, for starting this amazing blog. It's new (she also writes Dibbly Fresh) and features some of my favorites, namely Ghostwriter and Are You Afraid of the Dark?


Wild ARS Chase He had me sold not only on his abundant 90s knowledge, but first on his Snuggie photo spread. Brilliant. He's already 'fessed up his iTunes embarrassments, so hopefully the NKOTB picture won't throw him too much.

Insomniac Lolita Andhari just wrote about NKOTB today, how appropriate! She also does amazing hip hop of her own, and writes an all-around great blog.


Would now be a totally inappropriate time for some shameless self promotion? I'm leaning toward yes, absolutely, but what the heck, I'll go for the plug:

Did you know you can be a fan of Children of the Nineties on Facebook? I know, I know, control your excitement. It's tough to keep it all inside, but don't go all Jessie-Spano-on-caffeine-pills on me just yet. You're so excited, you're so excited, you're so...scared? I hope not. I know the whole Facebook fanmanship has gotten out of control, what with our news feeds crammed to the brim with useless declarations of people being fans of Sleep, Hot Showers, or Not Being on Fire. Again, that's Children of the Nineties on Facebook. Have I exhausted the number of times I'm allowed to post that link? Looks great on newsfeeds!

Oh, and you can also vote for Children of the 90s in the 2009 Blogger's Choice Awards. You know, if you ever felt the urge. No pressure.

Okay, that's probably enough of that. The real story here is go check out those blogs, they are wonderful! For all of you lurkers out there, stop by and say hi. You probably have the Write Stuff and I don't even know it yet. Thank you and good night!

All That (Part 1)

What ,you think I could fit a childhood's worth of All That sketch memories in a single post? Well, think again. SNICK was a cornerstone of Saturday night juvenile television programming, and for many years (that is, until I outgrew it) All That was its anchor.

You know a network sees potential in a show when they commission a big name music act to create a custom-made theme song. Nickelodeon asked TLC to perform the All That theme song, which in most of our recollections consisted of a vaguely unmemorable rap and the words "all that" repeated numerous times throughout. The song was catchy though, or at least enough so to keep preview audiences watching the first episode in its entirety in 1994.

All That took the successful format of grown up sketch comedy shows such as Saturday Night Live and MAD TV and translated it (read: dumbed it down) for pre-adolescent audiences . They maintained the general outline of a cold open, some sketches, and a live musical guest. For a kid's show, All That actually managed to pull some big names. Legitimate (well, in terms of popularity, that is) musical names such as Usher and Boyz II Men performed on the show. It had all the ingredients of a veritable children's television enterprise.

But was it funny? At the time, most of us thought it was hysterical. I suppose humor is in the ear of the behearer, because thumbing through some of the jokes now makes me seriously question my sanity as a child. This probably indicates that the All That producers got what separates adult humor from children's humor; there's a reason reviewers remark with disdain that gross-out or overly simplistic comedies are "juvenile". To actual juveniles, the show was a real laugh riot.





Like I said, the show had countless memorable sketches, so let's take a look at a few notables and I promise to get back to the rest later:

Good Burger
Arguably one of the most recognizable All That sketches, most prominently because it was later adapted into a movie. How or why movie executives saw fit to morph this three minute non-sequitor into a two-hour full length feature is beyond our grasp as viewers. In the sketch, Kel Mitchell played a dim-witted and literal-minded fast food counter worker, beginning every customer interaction with the phrase, "Welcome to Good Burger, home of the Good Burger, can I take your order?"

It usually went a little something like this:



Kel certainly had some skill in the way of deadpan, and it's easy to see what drew kids to this mode of humor. Children by nature are not abstract, and hence respond best to literal jokes. That's why kids like things that other people think are stupid. Like Good Burger.

The subsequent film received incredibly negative feedback from adult reviewers. I would say, to its credit as a franchise, that you'd be hard pressed to find someone between the ages of 18 and 30 who didn't recognize Kel's opening Good Burger spiel.


Ishboo
Ah, the 90s trope of vaguely foreign exchange students. Like Nadia from American Pie Ishboo had no discernable connection to any actual country, nor did his accent particularly reflect a specific heritage. Ishboo's schtick was mainly that he did stupid things (claiming they were native customs) and everyone felt compelled to copy him to make him feel comfortable and at home:



In typical TV stereotyping fashion, apparently being overweight makes you ageless. If I were Lori Beth Denberg, I probably wouldn't be too pleased to be paired up with ol' male patterned baldy over here. Either way, Ishboo was funny to kids because he wears a skirt and makes people bang their heads on the wall. It's a bit shocking to think its star, Kenan Thompson, was the only one who went on to have a future in sketch comedy. Then again, based on the current ratings of Saturday Night Live, perhaps it's not such a stretch.


Ask Ashley
I'll say this for Amanda Bynes: she was certainly cute as a child. Amanda's spinoff show and subsequent longevity in show business points to her actually being a skilled entertainer. As a child, I always loved her Ask Ashley sketch on All That. The basic premise was that young viewers wrote Ashley with questions seeking advice in the manner of Dear Abby. Ashley appeared the picture of sweetness and innocence, and would begin reading every letter, "Dear Ashley....thaaaaaaat's meee!" It was certainly endearing, but from there things seemed to take a turn:

I apologize for the absolutely atrocious quality of this video, less-than-ingeniusly videotaped from a TV screen. It was the best I could do.

Watching now as an adult, I'm mainly just impressed that she manages to go so crazy on these people without using a single curse word. Bravo, Ask Ashley. Bravo.


Ear Boy
"He's Ear Boy, Ear Boy, his ears are really big!" If that title sequence music doesn't reaffirm the fact that children adore simple humor, I don't know what does. That was essentially the whole gag; Josh Server was Ear Boy, whose ears were indeed really big. For some reason I never quite understood (and perhaps this was due to my limited political knowledge as a child), his nemesis was Ross Perot.

The sketch poked fun at common playground nicknames used to mock people with acne, braces, or glasses by building Ear Boy a gang of cronies named Pizza Face (literally, pizza for a face), Tinsel Teeth (Christmas ornaments in mouth), and Four Eyes (she had four).



I'm tempted to judge this further and increasingly without mercy, until I stumbled upon this more recent photo of Ear Boy Josh Server.


I might just leave it at that.



Vital Information
This was one of the more frequent bits on All That, featuring Lori Beth Denberg as the initial supplier of this Vital Information for your Everyday Life (to be later replaced by a washed up Little Pete and some other kid after the show's Golden Age). Vital Information for your Everyday Life was filled with, well, Vital Information for your Everyday Life. Sort of.



These were sort of one-liners, except they usually made no sense at all. They were completely pointless, which I suppose was the point, the humor being that these items were not Vital Information at all. Her bits of wisdom included gems like

If you flush your friend down the toilet, you either got a huuuge toilet or a teenie little friend.

Well said, Lori Beth. I've got to get me some smaller friends. Or a bigger toilet.


While it may not stand the test of time, it's nostalgia factor is pretty high on the fond memory scale. If it's not making you giggle, set a couple of 9 year olds in front of the reruns for a few episodes and watch them delight in it. Sure, it will make you feel old, but it's better than having to watch the whole Good Burger movie to reaffirm your faith in old-school juvenile comedy.

Memorable Commercials from 90's Children's Television Timeslots

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

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

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

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



Muzzy



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

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

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




Better Blocks


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

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



Topsy Tail


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

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


Hooked on Phonics



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

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


Malt-O-Meal


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



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

Doogie Howser, MD

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The "Very Special" Episode

Image via NY Post PopWrap Blog

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

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

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

Blossom (1991-1995)

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

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





Saved By the Bell (1989-1993)

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

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



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



The Fresh Prince of Bel Air (1990-1996)

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

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





Full House (1987-1995)

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

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








90210 (1990-2000)

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



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



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

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

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

Bubble Tape

I don't know about you, but I prefer for my bubble gum supply to measure in feet. Sticks are for lightweights. Everyone knows that the true test of childhood victory is the ability to fit the maximum allowable denomination of chewing gum into your mouth and to successfully masticate without asphyxiating. But packages of gum are so difficult to unwrap, not to mention all that unsightly tinfoil waste. Sure, it can be fun for awhile to peel off the foil and stick it on your school notebooks, but what are you left with after that? I demand more from my gum.

Luckily, my concern did not go unaddressed. The Wrigley corporation not only recognized this gum supply issue, but also chose to capitalize it with a hefty marketing campaign directed as gum-crazed children. They recognized that kids prefer novelty products to everyday fare and went about tailoring a product to meet this need. They sat around the boardroom wondering, "Now how can we make a completely useless product for which we can utilize cold, calculated marketing strategies to convince children that they thought of it in the first place?"

The major thrust of many advertising campaigns directed at children in the 90s focused on the illustrious nature of adult disapproval. In some crazy existential marketing bubble, it was completely justifiable for a group of grown-ups to labor over advertising that outright villianized adults. Somehow, they managed to convince us as children that this was all some crazy idea that we had come up with. Never mind that the concept, promotion, production, and distribution of the product was completely controlled by adults. This was of little matter to the Wrigley people. The real bottom line was that children believed that this product in some way represented their lifestyle and needs while being generally repugnant to authority figures.

Adults likely frowned on Bubble Tape with good reason. A few sticks of gum to satiate a sugar-demanding child is one thing, but a full six feet of bubble gum is probably overkill. "Oh, you wanted some gum? Well, how about twice your height's worth? Now stick it in your mouth all at once and try your best not to die. Doesn't that sound fun?"

Bubble Tape was aptly named for its scotch tape-like dispenser. Who says office supplies can't be inspiration for food products? Alright, I've been known to say that from time to time, but can you blame me? It's pretty outrageous. This packaging allowed for easy access to a maximal amount of chewing gum, even possessing the capability to discard the dispenser entirely in favor of sticking the whole roll directly in your mouth.


Sometimes as an adult, when I try to eat a particularly unwieldy large piece of sushi in a single bite, I am eerily transported back to the chew-or-die memory of attempting to ingest a full six feet of Bubble Tape. The trauma has faded, but the awareness lurks just beneath the surface. My mother had told me (incorrectly, I should note) that swallowed gum would stick to my appendix, and I thus worried for years needlessly about my inexorable pending appendectomy. I can only begin to imagine what the fictitious surgeons would say. Come along, if you will, on a journey into my Bubble Tape-induced nightmare:

Surgeon One: Holy cow, Bill get a load of this!
Surgeon Two: Geez, what is that? A pancreas? Actually, on second glance it looks a little spleenish. Shouldn't we leave this in?
Surgeon One: Well, actually, I think it's...gum. Chewing gum. Enormous six-foot squared chunks of it.
Suregon Two: Gosh, Tim, she probably should have listened to her mother when she made up that ludicrous lie, then she easily could have avoided this imaginary appendectomy.

But why the urge to stuff all this gum into our mouths and masticate our way into all sorts of improbably dangerous medical scenarios? In all likelihood the commercials egged us on just a bit:



Ah, yes. For you, not them. Touche, ad execs. Touche.

You have to appreciate their understanding of the literal-mindedness of children through the illustration of 6 feet as actual human feet. On the whole, this advertisement makes very little sense. I accept that children-directed marketing doesn't necessarily have to make sense, but this truly is on the side of the extreme. Essentially, here's a random cluster of facts about our unsightly underoo-ironing gym teacher and equally unattractive ice cream-scooping mashed potatoes cafeteria lady. Sure, we understand that these are unsavory characters with undesirable behavioral attributes., but is their lack of endorsement really enough to prompt children to flood grocery stores en mass in search of lengthy chewing gum?

Apparently it was. There was some underlying childlike joy to be taken from the whole "For you, not them" concept. An adult requested a piece and you could flippantly say, "But, mother, haven't you seen the commercials? This gum is not intended for grown-ups. This is a product entirely intended for me." Of course, I'm sure our parents just loved these tidbits of commercial-learned wisdom. In fact, I suspect it was exactly this type of behavior that prompted my mother to concoct the gum-to-appendix lie in the first place: to regain control of the bubble gum situation by unfair use of fearmongering.

The real trouble arises now, as the "you" in these commercials are now all grown up. Actually, it's possible some of you are out their ironing your underwear right now. Do we still reserve this ad-given right to deny others the sweet six feet of confectionery goodness? Obviously this "for you, not them" argument was built on faulty logic; like it not, now we're them.

Regardless of this hole in the Bubble Tape reasoning, I say embrace your inner child. Go out there and buy spools of gum by the foot and remember a time in your life when this 99 cent piece of plastic meant the world to you. Just don't say I didn't warn you about the risk of imaginary appendectomies.

Furby

Technology can be useful in mainly outlets. Growing technology has enabled us to add efficiency to production, precision to medical procedures, and expedite worldwide communications.

It can also make Furbies.

Popular science fiction books and movies would lead us to believe that robots are up to no good, and we've yet to see evidence to the contrary. I'm always nervously eying my Roomba vacuum, convinced it has a vendetta against me for accidentally feeding it so many carpet-based bobby pins. Sure, we've seen are a few kindly fictional robots in the mix (a la Rosie from the Jetsons), but generally we're taught that these robots want nothing more than to overtake us and render us terrified and useless.

Under close examination of a Furby, you'll likely find this scenario morphing into a frightening--though admittedly adorable--reality.

Declared the hottest toy of 1998 season, I was probably past the target age for these fluffballs but I was fascinated by their existence nonetheless. Here I was, thinking we were years off from the technology for a fully interactive robot buddy and suddenly, it shows up on toy store shelves speaking Furbish. Parents actually engaged in physical combat to secure Furbies for their loved ones, if that gives you any idea to just how desirable an in-house interactive robot was. It seemed that children everywhere wanted one, but no one had a clue what exactly these things did.

The lifeblood of a Furby is in a computer chip embedded in its fuzzy amorphous form, and it had several relatively clever functions. The thing itself was pretty unnerving. It was cheek-breakingly cheerful and alarmingly reactive to the world around it. Never before had a toy been equipped with the technology to hear, speak, move, and most notably learn. Meanwhile, I was out there accidentally starving Happy Meal Tamagotchis left and right, and felt generally ill-equipped to deal with such a needy toy.

In the Furby Care Guide, the Furbster himself is introduced as follows:

Hey! I’m FURBY! The more you play with me, the more I do!
I love to play and can tell you jokes, play a game, sing and even dance!
Bring me home today and I’ll be your best friend!

I don't know about you, but to me that sounds horribly, terribly, wince-inducingly frightening. That whole "Bring me home today and I'll be your best friend!" part is probably the creepiest thing I could imagine a toy saying to me. The whole thing reeked of Gremlins, and I knew I couldn't be trusted with one for fear of banishing it to a microwave-explosion fated doom.

Furby v. Gremlin

In general, the idea of having any sort of playmate with an on/off switch is a bit disconcerting. There was a sort of dichotomy behind those big, bulgy doe-eyes; in one sense, the things seemed cute and cuddly, but I had visions of it summoning legions of its Furby friends and storming my house, Bastille style.

They were, after all, oddly lifelike for something so foreign-looking. It had touch and auditory censors, enabling it to react to your tickling and verbal commands. The Care Guide claims that Furbies will pick up language in a manner similar to a human child, but in reality it was only capable of absorbing English. The Guide explains:

About My Personality
I speak Furbish®, a magical language common to all FURBY creatures. When we first meet, this is what I’ll be speaking. To help you understand what I’m saying, please use the Furbish® - English dictionary found in the back of this book. I can learn how to speak English by listening to you talk. The more you play with me, the more I will use your language.

I'm sorry, but if that's not one of the scariest things you've ever heard from a toy, then you obviously have suffered some serious childhood toy-related trauma. The instructions with this thing were so comprehensive, you sort of have to wonder how any children managed to play with them at all.

In case you were hoping to brush up on your Furbish, here's a handy little Furbish-to-English guide from the Furby Care manual:

If FURBY asks you a question, say either:
Yes [ee-tay]
Ok [oh-kay]
Yes, please [ee-tay-doo-moh]
No [boo]
No, thank you [boo-doo-moh]
No way [dah-boo]
I don’t understand*
* If you couldn’t understand what I said, I’ll repeat what I last said to you. I may say it a little bit differently, with more English, so that you can understand it better. If you tell me “I don’t understand” too many times, I’ll get sad and frustrated. Sometimes it’s best to be polite and pretend you understand – at least until I learn more of your language!

That last tip is probably the most frightening. What exactly happens when my pal Furb gets sad and frustrated? Again, visions of Gremlin-style debauchery are flooding my mindwaves. That's a pretty vague threat there, Furbs. What are you planning to do if I can't adhere to your standard of politeness? And, more aptly, do I really want my child's toy to become angry and disenchanted with my kid? That seems pretty cruel, considering it's supposed to be the other way around.

The thing also came with pages upon pages of clear, unwavable instructions on how to interact with your fluffy friend. For example:

How to ask "How are You?"
Say “Hey FURBY!” [Pause until you hear FURBY say “Doo?” “Yeah?” “Huh?” “What?” or “Hmm?”]
Then say, “How are you?”
I’ll tell you how I’m feeling.
Make sure you say “HEY FURBY! I love you!” frequently so that I feel happy and know I’m loved.

Geez, this thing is needy. Don't worry, though, there is refuge. Say you accidentally raise this thing to be super irritating, even more than usual. Well, have no fear, it's resettable:

If you would like to teach FURBY English all over again,
you can erase the current memory by doing a reset.
1. Hold FURBY upside down.
2. With the ON/OFF switch in the “OFF” position, depress
and hold the mouth sensor using your finger.
3. While holding the mouth sensor, switch the ON/OFF
switch to “ON.”
4. FURBY will say “Good Morning!” to confirm the memory
has been reset.

Now there's a good lesson for kids: if you don't like something, just hold it uside down and cover its air supply till it complies. Cute.

Of course, the marketers behind these knew how to make sure your kid wouldn't be satisfied with just one Furby. No, it was necessary to shell out the big bucks to buy it a friend. The manual explains:

FURBY Creatures Can Talk To Each Other! Here’s How!
If you want your FURBY to talk to another FURBY in Furbish®, just have them hug each other! Keep their tummies pressed together until their
eyes blink and they start speaking to each other. Once they begin speaking,you can separate them – but they should remain no further than 3 inches apart, facing each other. Keep your handy Furbish®-English dictionary close by to figure out what they’re saying!

It's uncanny the way this thing can seemingly read my nightmares. THIS. SOUNDS. TERRIFYING. Sure, your Furby can be social, just smush it into another Furby, watch its eyes blink in a vacanteerie manner, and they will soon begin plotting against you. What fun!

In 2000, Furby babies were released. Watch them interact and just tell me those things are not demonic.

If this isn't enough to freeze your blood in your veins, don't worry, there's more. I'm not just talking about the newer, more reactive incarnations, either. No, scientists have recently discovered real live Furbies nestled on an Indonesian island. All I can say to these scientists is, don't even think about pressing two of these babies together...one blink and we're all goners.


Check it out:
"Furby Fever" at The Onion
Full Furby Care Guide (source of above quotes)

Hey Dude

There was once a time when children's networks didn't feel they needed to dumb down their shows for a preteen audience. Unlike the Disney and Nickelodeon networks of today, classic Nickelodeon created teen-centric sitcoms that were funny and well-realized. Hey Dude was a classic example of this vein of solid comedic children's programming: it didn't rely on wacky gags or outlandish premises to drive its action. Rather, it took a simple believable premise and extrapolated from it a show worthy of our attention and admiration.

This admiration was fairly easily bought. After all, here was a group of teenagers doing what every kid dreamed of: spending a summer away from home, having a peer group of other attractive teens, and spending endless hours riding horses. It was sort of like an extended version of the Saved by the Bell summer beach specials, only it was set at a dude ranch. Essentially, the show took familiar character molds, placed them in an unfamiliar situation, and watched the humor unfold.

The show's underlying plot was fairly uncomplicated. Mr. Ernst, a nerdy but lovable New York ex-accountant and newly ex-husbanded, bought an Arizona dude ranch on a whim in the midst of a midlife crisis. Much to his son's chagrin, Mr. Ernst packed up and headed west with a humorously limited knowledge of dude ranching, whatever that is. His ranch, the Bar None, was staffed by a motley crew of teenagers assembled from across the country. Apparently, the ranch had once been owned by a reputable cowboy, and the staff was in for a hefty surprise upon the arrival of bumbling newcomer Mr. Ernst.

If that was not quite enough to draw you in, well, Nickelodeon had plans for all of you naysayers. This plan came in the form of one of the catchiest television theme songs to date. I dare you to listen to it and not spend the rest of the day replaying it in your head. Go ahead, give it a try:



What can I say, I warned you. If you're reading this incognito at work and would likely blow your cover with an impromptu outburst of loud western kid's TV show theme music, here are the convenient read-along lyrics for your perusing pleasure:

"It's a little wild and a little strange...
when you make your home out on the range.
So, start your horse and come along.
'Cause you can't get a ride if you can't hold on.
Singin' yippee kai aie ay. (Yippee kai aie what?)
Like the cowboys say. (Sing it again now.)
Yippee kai aie ay.
'Till the break of day.
(You'd better watch out for those man-eating jackrabbits... And that killer cacti!)
Hey Dude!"

Under closer inspection, this song tells us absolutely nothing of value. Sure, it's vaguely Western-themed (largely evidenced by that "yippee kai aie ay") but the lyrics themselves tell us no story whatsoever. What man-eating jackrabbits? What killer cacti? Perhaps it would take a bit more investment in the show to rope you in (yes, that is a lasso joke, please take it as such).

Luckily, we had a wide range (I'm going to keep pointing out these puns, don't even try to stop me) of characters with whom to relate:


Ted: Our protagonist for no real reason other than his general egotistical frat-boy amiability coupled with a lack of other defining qualities. Well, outside of his rather remarkable good looks, that is. He was the real glue of the show, and his premature departure from the cast was an inevitable shark-jump. Luckily, he later returned to the ranch under shaky (read: ratings related) pretenses, but it was never quite the same.

In case that was somewhat lacking on the descriptive side, you can always refer to the following Ted testimonials:




Bradley: Hold on, back up here. Brad's a girl? But that's a boy's name! Just when you think you've heard it all. Don't worry, though, she's totally rich and we can therefore assume she can buy her way out of an ill-begotten fate of name mockery. See, you can tell she's rich because she wears designer clothes...at a ranch! Boy, this Brad sure is something. Luckily for Brad, she was a pretty stellar horse trainer, or else we would really have no clue what she was doing here. Additionally, her love-hate relationship with Ted just screamed playground flirtation:

A "Hey Dude" Romance @ Yahoo! Video

Melody: Requisite goody-goody with all-American good looks (read: blonde). Sure, we may now know Christine Taylor as a relatively well-known actress and wife of Ben Stiller, but back then she was just our favorite 90s lifeguard this side of Baywatch. Melody also had a good deal of sexual tension with Ted, though none of us as children would have defined it as such.


Danny: Our small dose of diversity in this snowy white cast. I'm not sure if any of you have ever been to Tucson, but I can give you a hint that the show's ethnic balance is more than a little off. Danny is a Hopi Indian, which we know not only by his looks but also because his last name is Lightfoot. That's subtlety for you. Danny was always full of little tidbits of Hopi wisdom, because the 90s couldn't have a token non-white cast member without tying the major thrust of his character traits to his race.

In addition, there was Buddy (Mr. Ernst's young teenage son) who was mainly preoccupied with the undesirable skateboarding conditions of the desert. He was largely one-dimensional, but served as a sort of little brother character to the senior staff.

Later, a mysterious Jake, and later an even vaguer Kyle (quasi-related to ranch hand Lucy) were basically stand-ins for the Ted character after his exit from the show. They may very well have come from central casting for Teds, and served as the cousin Olivers in this unfortunate jumping of the shark. Ted's return was welcomed, but the show was already somewhat on the wane.

Regardless of any cracks in its sturdy foundation, Hey Dude ran a fairly solid few seasons from the late 80s to early 90s. Though it wasn't necessarily the sharpest or the most original, it was a little wild and a little strange, which in this case was enough to rope in a slew of little buckaroo viewers.


Check it out:
Hey Dude Episode Guide
Hey Dude Book on Amazon
Hey Dude on iTunes?