Mentos

When you watch one of these commercials that is burned into everyone's brains for all eternity, you sort of have to wonder if the people hawking this ad campaign had even an inkling it would go quite so far. Did they know that I can not for the life of me remember how to solve a simple algebraic equation, but I can sing the entire 90s-era Mentos jingle from memory? Or perhaps that I would slowly but steadily forget the names of my former classmates and teachers, but would forever recognize that opening "doo-do-do-do-do-do-doo-waaah" with unwavering accuracy? God, I hope not. It's hard to fathom an ad agency with that level of thirst for absolute power over my dwindling available brainspace.

These guys were lucky they came before the days of fast-forwarding through blocks of quick-passing DVR-ed commercials. Nowadays, it's pretty unlikely many of us even know what commercials are on the air, let alone can recite them with startling astuteness from memory. Someday we'll tell our grandchildren of the days that advertisers weren't using cheap product-placement ploys to get to us but that we consciously absorbed information from a real live ad. They'll look at us blankly, we'll hum a few bars of a jingle for effect, and a generational gap will be had by all.
Mentos commercials were the absolute campiest thing to come out of 90s TV advertising. Many may have assumed we left behind these lamely cheesy commercials in the 80s, but our brothers at Mentos stayed true to the corny tradition of hackneyed ad premises and embarrassingly light and fluffy background music. In some ways we'd like to believe that the good people at Mentos were offering us a sort of tongue-in-cheek, intentionally campy commercial, it's just as likely that they were totally and completely serious. What? Real people brandish a cylindrical roll of chewable mints when they get themselves out of a tough jam. Well, some people. I'm sure at least one person. Possibly.

The Mentos commercials were something of a 90s phenomenon as the jingles had that uncanny ability to lodge themselves forever in our brains and play on a constant, unnerving loop. The commercials all featured the same basic skeletal plot outline with a few variances in character and setting. Typically, they involved a good-looking person facing a mildly inconvenient and potentially day-interrupting situation. Luckily for these fine folks, they've got the power of Mentos behind them, like in this classic take:



Wow, I honestly had no idea that you could simply repeat the same few words again and again in a rhythmic sequence and label it a fully-composed songs. The things I don't know, huh? I suppose these ads were all about the power of suggestion, and their reliance on repetition was supposed to reinforce those messages. Or maybe, more likely, to really, really get under our skin and keep us humming the tune all day long.

In case you failed to take good notes during the above video, here's a refresher course for the lyrics. Get it? Refresher? *Holds hands up to shield face from onslaught of reader-thrown tomatoes*. I can take a hint. Anyway, the words are:

'Doo doo doo doo, doo-doo, do-Wah!'

It doesn't matter what comes, fresh goes better in life, and Mentos is fresh and full of life.

Nothing gets to you, staying fresh staying cool, with Mentos, fresh and full of life.

Fresh goes better, Mentos freshness, fresh goes better with Mentos, fresh and full of life!

Mentos, the freshmaker!

I'm sorry, what? how many times did you say fresh and/or full of life? By my count (not necessarily a reliable one, based on my suspect arithmetic skills) some variation of the word "fresh" comes up nine times. Nine times. The commercial's only 29 seconds long! That means nearly a third of the airtime is devoted to saying the word "fresh". Based on my complex algorithm equating a single word with one second, that is.

If the above ad's content didn't do it for you, don't you worry. They had plenty of other farfetched Mento MacGyvering fare to offer. Like this gem:



My favorite part of these commercials has got to be the incredible acting. Or miming, I suppose, considering the lack of verbal engagement. You have to love the way the jerk guy who parked behind her gives her that droll, "Oh, you!" look as the construction workers haul her car from its entrapment. He seems so mildly amused by the situation, as if it were a quickly resolved misunderstanding between friends rather than the more realistic road-rage induced maniacal behavior that inevitably leads to fake neck braces and gold-digging lawsuits in real life.

Or, if you prefer the jazzier remix version of the jingle, you can always go with this version of the ad:



Well, would you look at that! The lady is ingenious, I tell you. Ingenious. There's no way I could have thought of that in a stinky-breath moment. Thank God for Mentos, that's all I have to say.

If you're looking for more of a male-dreamboat featuring awesome Dawson hair and an open-front flannel shirt, then this one is definitely the way to go:



Okay, okay, I think you've got the idea. These commercials were incredibly formulaic yet remarkably successful. I suppose we all just wished the answer's to our everyday dilemmas could be so simple, or at least that we could handle them so breezily while underscored optimistically by doo-wop music.

A decade later, Mentos were back in the spotlight thanks to some enlightening viral video-ry showing us all the hidden danger of Mentos when dropped in soda. Apparently, there's something in the chemical reaction that causes a geyser-like effect, creating a dangerous pressure situation and a minty-fresh bottle rocket. Since I'm about as good at science as I am at math (that is to say, my knowledge extends no further than the notion that the earth is not trapezoidal) I'll let my good friends from MythBusters do the dirty work for me. Well, not so much dirty as sticky. And minty. Did I mention these things are fresh?



Don't try this at home, kids. Or, if you do, don't even think about telling your parents I told you to. A poor unpaid blogger like me can't afford a lawyer. Explosive chemical reactions aside, Mentos are notoriously chewy, minty, delicious, and they had a cameo in Clueless. Really, what much more could a 90s breath mint dream of?

Children of the 90s Ultimate Classroom Distractions

While today teachers are battling the ever-mounting presence of technology in their classrooms, they're certainly not facing a new demon. Sure, kids these days are lacing their iPod earbuds surreptitiously through their hooded sweatshirts and sending text messages in lieu of passing paper notes, but it's generally in the same spirit of general classroom unruliness that came with all preceding generations. Don't think for one minute that all those iPhone-confiscating teachers aren't reading those forbidden texts every bit the same as ours were reading our discarded notes.

Growing up, we certainly were never wanting for in-class stimulation. Unfortunately for our teachers, however, very little of that stimulation came from reading, writing, and/or 'rithmetic. Instead, it more often than not came from the innumerable devices and distractions we utilized in lieu of sitting still and paying attention. Some were store bought, others homemade, but regardless of their origins these distracting devices held our attention during the times we probably should have been learning something. Heck, if it weren't for Silly Putty, I might even know how to do long division. Maybe.

Not all of these are exclusive to children of the 90s, but we certainly carried on a tradition of undercover classroom tomfoolery that would make even the most deviant of past generation students smile. We may not have grown up with all the technology available to today's young students, but we certainly made up for it in imagination and misused innovation. Here are just a few of the many, many classroom distractions that so often kept us from learning the math and science our nation's young people so sorely needed:


Fortune Tellers


I know, I know, these things go way back. Some may know them by their alias/alter-ego Cootie Catchers, these babies date back from the middle of the last century, with generations of schoolchildren everywhere entertaining themselves with their origami goodness and fortune-telling powers. The concept behind them was simple, though the construction was nothing short of a marketable skill. Typically, certain folds were decorated with numbers, letters, or colors, while the inside creases were scrawled with fortunes.

Granted, these fortunes came from the crayons of grade-school kids, so they were sometimes less than insightful. You'd be lucky to get a "Someone has a crush on you" or "You have cooties" result. Startling accurate though, these were. This self-diagnostic test was the first to pronounce me cootie-ridden, which I was luckily able to treat with another round at the paper fortune teller. Thanks, Cootie Catcher.





Rubber Poppers




These toys were deceptively simple, so it's a wonder that they were able to wreak quite as much havoc as they did on classrooms. Typically purchased for a nickel at a toy store or in a quarter machine at the supermarket, these things did little more than create an irritating disturbance wherever we brought them. You would turn the little convex thick rubber popper inside out, wait patiently with bated breath and dread-filled anticipation, and finally watch it pop itself back into shape. Usually this process involved a high vertical jump, the better of which could sufficiently damage an overhead lamp or skylight. It's pretty clear why teachers didn't want them around, but their appeal to impish children was undeniable.



Laser Pointers



Laser pointers were first manufactured in the 80s, but they became increasingly portable and conveniently keychain-based in the 90s, making them a coveted item for mischievous children. The pointers were intended to highlight text or images in a presentation, but they were quickly adopted for far more deviant purposes. You couldn't go to a PG movie back in those days without spying that familiar achingly annoying red dot on the screen, usually gracing the general region of the star's privates. In class, children found pleasure in shining a little red dot on their classmates, despite warnings that direct eye contact could have stare-at-an-eclipse-type repercussions. It's no wonder so many schools quickly issued bans on the pointers. I imagine many schoolteachers grew frustrated with constantly seeing a red dot centered sniper-like on their crotches.




MASH



Aside from note-passing, more organized written games were also pretty popular classroom distractions. Most notably MASH was a popular choice for its uncanny future-telling ability. It stands for Mansion, Apartment, Shack, and House, denoting the preset options for dwelling accommodations. Luckily we had the power to fill in the blanks in the other categories, but it seemed we were always forced into adding some pretty bad choices to the mix. These things were fairly right on if I do say so myself. After all, how else could I have predicted that I'd be living in a Shack in Samoa with a poodle named Jeeves married to the kid who sat in the back of the class picking his nose? That kind of stuff just doesn't foretell itself.



Origami-Style Note Folding



As we moved through the grade ranks, we became more and more interested in secretly passing notes during class instead of listening to our instructor drone on about Tuck Everlasting or multiplication tables. There was far more to enjoy in the process than just marking the "yes" box on a "Do you like me?" note. We cultivated incredibly intricate folding methods that rivaled traditional Origami's complexity and tradition. Soon everyone knew how to fold in tight packages, often featuring a pull-tab for the convenience of the readers. Of course, these things made a great deal of noise when opened, completely forgoing their intended role as a secret note. At the very least, though, they helped us develop the fast fine motor skills we now use to download apps on our iPhones.



Metallic Gum Wrapper Decoupage



Who says not paying attention in class is for dummies? Some of us slackers had a certain ingenuity that you just can't get from book-learnin'. That is, we were able to develop new and exciting uses for mundane, everyday materials while simultaneously feeding our gum-chewing addiction. There was no more satisfyingly monotonous and tedious task than methodically peeling the metallic outer layer from our gum wrappers and carefully sticking it to our notebook-fronts. It was something of an art, really, only with more under-the-fingernail pain. It did, to its credit, produce a fair deal of shiny, shiny notebooks.



Slap Bracelets



Are they jewelry or a toy? Or better yet, a weapon? It's tough to say, but one thing was for sure: slap bracelets were an unquenchable and distracting fashion statement. Many schools banned the metal-rodded coated bracelets, crying out against safety. Yes, a few kids sliced their wrists open, but it's more likely our schools were a tad more concerned with the more mundane everyday irritation of that "thwack!" sound in round-esque repetition throughout the schoolday.



It may not have been quite on par with what our teachers wanted us to learn, but you can't say there was nothing to gain in our classroom tomfoolery. In fact, the retention rate on many of these classroom irritants is far greater than many of our school-sanctioned class subjects. After all, I couldn't reduce a fraction to save my life, but I can still fold notes with the best of 'em. That's just results.

America's Funniest Home Videos

I don't know about you, but I consider myself to have a sophisticated sense of humor. A refined sharp ear for only the cleverest of jokes. A real discerning ability to enjoy the most elite brand of drollery.

But I still think it's funny to see a guy get hit in the nuts with a baseball.

What can I say? It's somewhere in our human nature to find others' unanticipated moments of undeserved physical pain to be wildly funny. Some of us may try to hide our amusement at such juvenile antics, but when it comes down to it it's these little incidences of comical injury that really tie us together in this human tapestry of life. Or something like that.

Plus, when they punctuate it with some sort of farcical "boing!" or "splat!" sound effect, it definitely hits home. Well actually, it misses home and his that guy at third base squarely in the swimsuit area, but that's really not the point. The point is that it makes us laugh, regardless of whether or not that guy can someday be the father of future children.

From its roots as a primitive one-hour special in 1989, the original version was hosted by Full House's Bob Saget. Sure, the material and inter-video skits were incredibly cheesy, but they were usually pretty funny, too. We had our catchy 90s theme song followed by a short Bob Saget monologue and then all the sidesplitting videos we could take. Complete with narration and Saget's funny voices, no less. Childish? Yes. Were we children? Yes. A perfect fit.



Aside from the video debauchery there were also a number of running scripted gags of the incredibly cheesy, family-friendly variety. For any of you remotely familiar with Bob Saget's personal stand-up material, it's safe to say this is in an entirely different realm of content. There was a running bit in which an off-screen and thus unseen producer would hand things to Bob as if like magic, and he'd make marginally humorous comments to him like, "Glad to see that rash is clearing up." And that was the good stuff.

Despite the corniness of it all, the show was very entertaining and became a runaway hit. It didn't hurt that there were exorbitantly excessive cash prizes offered to winners as well. Weekly winners were awarded a whopping $10,000 and were granted entrance to the $100,000 contest at the end of the season. All in all, not a bad deal for catching your cat walking on his hindlegs with a cardboard box on his head.

While the content of the videos varied, they could typically be broken down into some neatly defined categories:



The Babies



Children can be amusing, I'll give you that. Never mind that it's borderline exploitative to videotape your kids doing something funny in an effort to score some cold hard cash, people were rushing for their camcorders at every hiccup. Nowadays YouTube is flooded with this stuff, but in the earlier days of video recording it was more of a contained practice. Nothing quite like profiting from your child's embarrassing behavior. Just remember to hide the DVD release evidence now that the kids are grown--I can't imagine they'd be too pleased about their incredibly public bathtime vid.



The Disruption of a Major Life Event



Yes, it can be pretty funny when a major life event (wedding, bar mitzvah, baptism, graduation) goes awry, but I can't imagine those people whose $1000 wedding cake was toppled over by a renegade cyclist feel the same way. Unless they won the $10,000 prize off of it. Then I'm sure they're more than willing to let things go.



The Animals



Animals do the darndest things. Mind you, this was ages before Lolcatz and Cute Overload and all that (animal-themed) jazz. At the very least these people had something to show for being chased by an ornery, human-hungry ostrich. Besides the resultant scars and emotional trauma, I mean.



The Injury Ward


Also known as "Guy Gets Hit in Nuts With Baseball Bat", injuries were pretty common AFV fare. Laugh at others' misfortune? Don't mind if I do.



The Prank (aka the Set-Up)



Speaking of cheap tricks, The Set-Up was probably the cheapest. Once word got out you could make a cool ten grand for a funny video, people everywhere began manufacturing their own humorous situations. If it seemed a little like unfair play, that's only because it was. Sure, it may have made us chuckle to see them scare the pants off of grandma with some remote control toy, but it just wasn't the same as if they'd earned their candid moment like everyone else.


The departure of Bob Saget of course did not mark the end of the show. Later incarnations starred John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes (1998-2001) and Tom Bergeron (2001-present) of Dancing with the Stars fame. Somehow, though, it just isn't quite the same. Maybe we're older. Maybe we're wiser. Or maybe, just maybe, our loyalty Bob Saget's clean fun-for-the-whole-family humor just won't allow us to be won over by some sub par replacement host.

Then again, maybe it's all those viral videos out there. Tough to say.

Trapper Keepers

Children of the 90s note: I don't want to hear it from any of you naysayers that Trapper Keepers belong to 80s children. Can't we share? Many of us 80s babies were 90s children, you know, and we loved our Trapper Keepers with every bit the same ardor as you did. Case closed. With velcro, no less. That stuff sticks.

There's nothing like overpriced school supplies to give kids an unneeded boost of self importance. Really, anybody who was anybody had a Trapper Keeper. Well, anybody who was anybody aged five to fifteen who grew up during the 80s and 90s. I highly doubt any high powered lawyers were toting around a Ninja Turtles-themed binder in their briefcases.

School supply shopping is always an ordeal, but Mead stepped in and gave us a few more things worthy of our throwing ourselves tantrum-style on the floor in the middle of OfficeMax. These things were more than worth completely humiliating our parents in a highly public place if only it meant that we would soon be toting a Trapper Keeper full of coordinating folders in our backpack.

Buying designer-esque school supplies was the only reason to get excited for going back to school in the fall. Picking out each shiny folder, the multicolored pens, and best of all our very own brand-spanking new Trapper Keeper complete with Velcro closure sporting our favorite design or character on the front. They may have been five bucks at the store, but the market value amongst children was off the charts.

This is probably the quintessential late 80s/early 90s school supply commercial. The humor is so cheesy they might as well package it with crackers and call it a Handi-Snack

It was the ultimate status symbol for a kid reentering the school year. God help you if you started at a new school and were caught unaware of the fact that Lisa Frank ballerina bunnies or Sonic the Hedgehog were the only designs to have. Those with the lesser abstract-patterned Trapper Keepers were left to wallow in their quiet school supply induced shame, kicking themselves for coveting the paint splattered cover in lieu of the more contemporary character designs.

Trapper Keepers were the ultimate school accessory and supposedly taught us organizational skills from a young age, though mine was always bursting at the seams with untidy clutter. They were generally pretty functional as far as elementary school supplies go, giving our parents less of a reason to veto their purchase on that all-important back to school shopping trip. They typically featured specially fitted folders, a handy pencil case, and a wraparound closure to encase all of our schoolwork in a neat little package. Don't even get me started on the satisfying sound of pulling open the Velcro tab. These babies were nothing short of a kid's dream.

Now in an age where kids are now sporting actual designer school supplies (Louis Vuitton pencil cases, anyone?) it's almost laughable to reminisce about a time when a run-of-the-mill product available for a few bucks at WalMart commanded respect and awe from our classmates. Kids these days (using this phrase is the first sign of adulthood) with their iPhones and Ed Hardy tee shirts are unlikely to appreciate the value of a simple pleasure like a Trapper Keeper. We, on the other hand, knew their worth. You know, as our Trapper Keepers had to keep our papers in order as we trudged to school on foot. In the snow. Uphill both ways.



In any given classroom during the 80s and 90s there were undoubtedly a vast spectrum of designs and styles on display. Trapper Keepers were all for gender stereotyping, offering typical boy- and girl-specific fare. For the girls, we had our dolphins, our kittens, our puppies, and all other types of aww-inspiring images to nicely complement our burgeoning sticker collections. For the boys, we had video game themes, sports team logos, masculine cartoon characters, cars, or extreme sports-type designs. Sure, there were crossover abstract designs that were pretty gender neutral, but dammit if I wasn't going to get a kitty cover like the rest of my female classmates.

These homework holders may seem benign, but mischievous kids were always able to find ways to provoke school administrators into banning these covetable caches. With a bit of destructive disassemblage, we could easy build desktop self-enclosing Trapper Keeper cubicles behind which to write notes, play with contraband Silly Putty, and engage in other banned activities. Other schools considered the binders to be more of a distraction than they were worth and because they created unnecessary class distinctions. All over something you could purchase all Wal-Mart, no less. Those were the good old days.



Nowadays, you can find Trapper Keepers again stocked in store shelves but they're certainly a different model than the ones we so craved. The satisfying sound of pulled Velcro is no more, as the new TKs feature a quieter, more demure magnetic closure. They have customizable covers under which you can slide your own photos or design. Heck, they don't even come with the signature Trapper folders, which have since been replaced with bland dividers. Maybe I'm reading into it a bit too far, but wouldn't that make it just a Keeper? I'm about to cry false advertising.

To make matters worse, a couple of years ago Mead released a model that would play music from your iPod. Really? What has this come to? I was happy just to have a picture of a panda doing some housepainting on the cover. Now these kids are using them as speaker systems? What exactly is this world coming to where a kid can't enjoy a simple school supply simply on the merit of its design alone? These kids can have their crappy new models. I'm digging up my old Lisa Frank prototype. At least then I can remember Trapper Keepers for the way they were.



Check it out:
The Surfing Pizza's Ode to Trapper Keepers

Handi-Snacks

Some mysteries are better left unsolved. For example, it baffles my mind to ponder exactly what part of the cheese becomes the semi-gelatinous room-temperature no-refrigeration-required goo in the Handi-Snacks conveniently compartmentalized tub. The more I think about it, the more my brain yearns to burst from its enskullment and lay twitching on the floor, exhausted and defeated. Luckily, I've never given it that much thought.

Dunkable snacks were all the rage in the 90s. Dunkaroos cornered the sweet sector of the market, but the savory had yet to be conquered in a snack dunking tour de force. Luckily, Nabisco (later Kraft) was there to step in and show us the way to salty dunkable goodness. With mystery cheese. Really, just incredibly mysterious. I'm starting to get a headache again contemplating its very existence, so I think I'll just go on pretending that's a natural state of cheese. Okay, good, good. I'm back at cheese-pondering baseline again. Whew. Close one there.

Handi-Snacks were a pretty ingenious concept. Parents were increasingly busy and demanding more and more of food manufacturers to produce the type of lunchbox fillers that required little to no preparation. The morning rush and ensuing time crunch forced working parents to reconsider their nutritional standards and opt for easy available prepackaged options.

Things like nutritional content and edibility quickly took a backseat to the incredible ease of taking a few ready-sealed packages, throwing them in a bag, and declaring it a fully assembled lunch made with a parent's loving albeit neglectful touch. When it came to lunch time, instead of finding a sweet note and a well-filled sandwich, we were usually left with a moderately sized pile of plastic packaging that held mysterious and delicious contents within its airtight plastic. We're talking the kind of stuff that could survive some serious nuclear fallout. This food may not have had much to do with anything edible found in nature, but it certainly had the power of perseverance.



Handi-Snacks were streamlined for ease of accessibility. The concept was brilliantly simple. Each individually wrapped packaged housed two compartments: a cracker den and a cheese hangout. Somewhere in the vicinity of our crackers lay the one necessary implement to cheese spreadage: the little red plastic stick. I like to think of the little red plastic stick as a sort of magic soft cheese spreading wand. Or, you know. Just a little red plastic stick. Whatever.

As a child I craved these things with a zealousness that would make proselytizing missionaries pause and say, "Now, really. Don't you think that's a bit much?" These things were like a snack time drug to me. I needed my fix, and I would stop at nothing to get it. Whether it was a frenzied cafeteria trade for some off-flavor Snack Packs or discreetly tossing them into the supermarket cart when my mom's head was turned, one thing was for sure: I was going to get my Handi-Snacks.

The brand later expanded to include other delicious flavors and varieties. We had our breadstick version, though I use the term breadstick lightly. Er, heavily. These things were rock solid. They in no way resembled a breadstick and any insinuation of a relationship between the two would certainly infuriate any legitimate Italian gourmet. Whatever the case, these little breadstick-shaped crackers were nothing short of a dunking revelation. Or at least, that's the way my 7-year old self perceived their greatness.


The brand also came in a pretzel variety, satiating our salt cravings and prematurely clogging our virile young arteries. These too were packaged alongside the mystery cheese that for the above described reasons shall be investigated no further. Let's just say it may not have been cheese cheese, but they were probably related in some way. Somehow, though, I doubt a dairy cow would have recognized it as her byproduct. Just sayin'.


There was also a peanut butter cracker combination, which to its credit was a bit easier to stomach when considering its appropriately tepid temperature. This formulation was fairly short-lived, however, as it was not as well-received. The people had spoken and they wanted their disgusting cheese, dammit. Far be it from Kraft to deny them the spreadable cheese fix they so sorely need.

Handi-Snacks dropped the ball a bit when they attempted to break the Dunkaroo empire and offer sweet dunkable snack products. The cookies and cream variety was less than appetizing, though that of course did little in the way of stopping me from begging my parents to purchase it for me at every supermarket turn. Pretty much anything sweet that showed up on my snack radar was fair game for grocery store begging. I didn't even have to like the product, it just needed to contain a proportion of sugar that far exceeded the recommended daily dosage. It was a simple system, actually, though I can't imagine my teeth have written me any heartfelt thank you notes since.


In a sort of gross turn of events, Kraft morphed the Handi-Snacks brand name into a catchall for all sorts of their newer products: run-of-the-mill pudding cups, gelatin snacks, and even a Baskin-Robbins crossover pudding brand. Perhaps the rebranding was warranted in some way I've failed to comprehend, but let me be the first to say that when I think Baskin Robbins, I tend not to think lumpy, unidentifiable and unsourceable cheese. But then again, maybe that's just me.

A League of Their Own

All my life, I always sort of wanted some sort of personified or anthropomorphic moral compass. You know, like a little devil or angel on the shoulder type of deal. Someone who would show me right from wrong and would tell it like it was. The problem was, I never really wanted a Jiminy Cricket.

I wanted a Jimmy Dugan.

After seeing A League of Their Own at a retro-standby drive-in movie theater in 1992, I was pretty certain that I needed someone around to tell me whether or not there was going to be any crying in baseball of if someone looked like a penis with that little hat on. Although, to be honest, even more than that I just yearned with all my being to be a Rockford Peach.

I've never played baseball, but this movie was more than enough to convince me that it could very well be my calling. Or, at least that it could have been my calling had I been a tough-talking short-skirt donning tomboy-type coming of age during the World War II era.



I've got to say, I'm not always a John Lovitz fan, but that trailer really makes it work. When he offers Kit and Dottie 75 dollars a week and they tell him they only make 30 at the dairy and he goes, "Well, then, this would be more, wouldn't it?" Brilliant. And when he asks, "Are you coming? See, how it works is, the train moves, not the station." Pure sarcastic genius. See? This film has magical powers to make everything sweet and funny and family-friendly. Aww.

But, hey, we're getting ahead of ourselves here. The movie certainly had its fair share of great one-liners, but it was more importantly an all around sweet and generally wholesome film that was fun for the whole family. A League of Their Own is a fictionalized version of the formation and run of the real-life war-era All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Following the American entry into the second World War, baseball executives feared that a lack of eligible ball-playing men would crush the immense popularity of the sport. To circumvent the anticipated windfall, they theorized that the creation of an all-women's league would be enough to sufficiently bolster their earnings in the absence of a strong male league.

They also had a pretty kick-ass victory song, which I imagine in real life featured about 100% less Madonna standing around the locker room in her bra. Oh well, sometimes we have to stretch history a bit to make it more interesting. And to enjoy Madonna's figure before it morphed into the Incredible Hulkhood of current fame, of course.



While the premise is based on the actual league, any truth-telling in this movie pretty much ends there. All of our characters are fictional (read: more interesting than real people) and unfortunately for the real Peaches, they never got to play under the coaching expertise of one Jimmy Dugan. Too bad, too, as I'm sure the real Rockford Peaches would have been far more successful if they were forced to come face to face daily with his humorous tirades.

The movie opens with the decision to form the AAGPBL and the appointment of a PR professional and talent scout to get things off the ground. Scout Ernie Capadino (John Lovitz) heads out to recruit and encounters "doll" Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis), whose good looks he's certain the league can manipulate for publicity and male fanship. She's less than thrilled at the prospect of leaving her serene married farm life, but her sister Kit's enthusiasm eventually leads to Ernie persuading them to sign on as a package deal.



With the two recruits in tow, Ernie stops to check out an outstandingly talented but less-than-comely prospect in Marla Hooch. Kit and Dottie demonstrate a good show of pre-bra burning era women solidarity by refusing to play unless Ernie picks up Marla, as well. See how heartwarming this is already? They're even taking the ugly girls. How precious.

When the group reaches tryouts in Chicago, they're lumped in with all the other recruits and are eventually picked as Peaches. Picked, get it? Okay, okay, I can see where my punniness is underappreciated, I'll move on. The three meet up with their new teammates, including wisecracking Brooklyn natives Mae Morbadito (Madonna) and Doris Murphy (Rosie O'Donnell). The girls are forced into learning proper manners and other matters of deportment to prepare for their new role as public figures. Oh, and they also are assigned some butt-baringly skimpy (well, for the time) skirts in which to play baseball. Go figure.

Here we meet the great Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks) a washed up alcoholic former baseball star who is less than ecstatic about his new gig coaching a gaggle of giggling girls. Things are going too stellarly at first, making the executives question their decision to form the women's league. A cutesy photo shoot with Life Magazine earns the girls some publicity, though, and they're well on their way to minor female athletic stardom. It's quite a dream come true, I imagine, to be kind of famous but totally disrespected and discredited by your fans. Really, we can only hope for such a sense of fulfillment in our own lives.

We get a peek into Jimmy's tough love coaching style and some of his personal theories on coaching, namely that there is absolutely no crying in baseball. Never. Don't you forget it.



We get some light character development around these parts, which I'll leave to your own research. The girls are working hard, building skills and working as team, though they do still seem to have quite the flair for taking advantage of their leisure time at swing bars:



Suffice it to say at this point Kit and Dottie aren't getting along too well, and they push to make Hottie Dottie a real star and trade Kit to some third-rate team. As you can imagine, she's not quite thrilled with this development. They finally meet again face to face in the final game of the women's World Series, and let's just say it ain't all that pretty. I'll try to leave out the spoilers as best I can, so just leave that final game to your wildest imaginations, hopefully supplemented with some vague recollection of the film.

The movie closes with a reunion of our girls many, many years later, sometime around the present (well, then-present) day. The Baseball Hall of Fame is opening a wing dedicated to its female players and the whole gang's back together for a brief but memorable reunion. We even get to see some of the real players (now elderly) in this scene. They're adorable, by the way.

Animaniacs

For years, every time I saw that glimmering Warner Brothers logo at the beginning of a TV show or movie, I was certain that the brothers Warner in question were none other than Animaniacs stars Yakko and Wakko. I was fairly positive. I mean, they came out the logo-emblazoned tower in the intro, right? Obviously they were the masterminds behind this multimillion dollar corporation. Really, who else would it be?

How was I to know of Polish immigrants Harry, Jack, Sam, and Albert Warner (nee Hirz, Itzhak, Szmul, and Aaron Winskolaser) whose pioneering exhibition work in the early 20th century earned them a rightful place in movie-making history? The only Warner Brothers I'd ever heard of were Yakko and Wakko, and of course the Warner sister, Dot. TV wouldn't lie to me. Would it? After all, these guys claimed to be animaney, totally insaney, in a show that's maney. Sounded pretty credible to me.



Animaniacs provided 90s children with an endless array of slapstick humor and sight gags sure to encourage all sorts of danger imitative behavior. Immediately on the heels of the success of Tiny Toon Adventures and character cameos in the full-length feature film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the studio released this animated variety show intended to pay homage to many of the early animated greats. Not unlike Tiny Toons, the characters were crafted after the classic animated stars from the genre's earliest era. Wakko, Yakko, and Dot were ambiguous in species and resembled the stars of bygone black and white cartoons.

The premise of Animaniacs was undoubtedly complex for a cartoon, not too mention confusing for even the savviest of seven-year olds. Either way, I'll do my best to recount it as I recall, with a fair bit of research filling in the admittedly vast mental blanks. The title Warner brothers and sister were supposedly created in the 1930s to add a bit of spice to the traditional Looney Tunes fare. They managed to become veritable cartoon all-stars despite the fact that their show was both unconventional and completely insane. '

The trio was so crazy and wreaked so much havoc on the studio that the Warner Bros studio authorities eventually locked them in a studio water tower. In the 90s, however, the three managed to escape and continually sneak back into their hidden home. The studio unleashed upon them a Dr. Otto Scratchansniff to allegedly dezanitize the crazy group. A Warner Bros Studio security guard, Ralph, was also charged with reconfining the siblings after each subsequent escape. Pretty complex for a kid's cartoon, I'd say. I still don't totally understand it, though it was rather entertaining.

In the spirit of preceding cartoon variety shows, Animaniacs featured a number of recurring sketches and characters. While the series had a host of minor and lesser stars, let's explore our major animaniacal players:


Hello Nurse!

Not so much a skit but a running gag, "Hello Nurse!" was not only a well-worn Animaniacs catchphrase but also specifically denoted the presence of the vixen blonde studio nurse. Typically when in her presence, the boys would shout, "Helllllllloooo Nurse!" and jump into her arms. The gag was also used with a variety of other characters, such as in the presence of a hefty muumuu-ed lady to which Yakko exclaims, "Hellllloooo large nurse!" See, it works so many ways. How versatile.





Pinky and the Brain

This sketch gained such popularity and such an intensely loyal following that it was later spun off into its own animated show. The Brain is aptly named for his smarts, whereas his sidekick Pinky is not much more than a moronic lackey kept around to do the grunt work involved in taking over the world. The Brain would usually ask Pinky, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" only to be subjected to an utterly imbecilic and muddled response. Needless to say, their attempts to take over the world were less than fruitful, though they did provide a good deal of satire and entertainment.


See, it's educational!



Rita and Runt

These two put on a whole lot of show-stopping musical numbers through a veritable array of historical settings. Rita was a street savvy New York-accented cat and Runt was a dim-witted Rain Man-esque dog. The catch was that Runt hated cats with a deep fervor but was generally too slow to realize that his best friend Rita was indeed of a feline persuasion. The musical numbers were fairly impressive, largely due to the fact that Rita was voiced by Bernadette Peters. Due to the financial strain of maintaining Peters on cast and the mounting issues surrounding creating original musical numbers for each episodes, the two faded from the Animaniacs repertoire somewhere around mid-run.






The Goodfeathers

Goodfeathers...Goodfellas. Pure comedic parody gold, right? Okay, so the pun is a tad groan-inducing, but the shorts were pretty cute. A takeoff of the movie Goodfellas, the Goodfeathers were a gang of New York pigeons just trying to make it. Oh, and fighting their rival sparrow gang. And courting Girlfeathers. All in all, not awful satire. Kids weren't all that likely to get it, but at least it gave their parents something to chuckle over.





Buttons and Mindy

The premise of Buttons and Mindy was incredibly simple and formulaic. Mindy's anonymous parents ("Lady" and "Mr. Man") would leave dog Buttons to care for their daughter. Sounds responsible, right? Mindy (voiced by Nancy Cartwright of Bart Simpson fame) was forever wandering off and causing trouble, to which Buttons would rush to her rescue and bear the brunt of the responsibility. I really just loved Mindy for her coinage of the phrase, "Okay, I love you, buh-bye!" She gave kids everywhere the verbal ammunition necessary to forever irritate their parents.





Slappy Squirrel

Uncommon for a kid's cartoon, this short's star featured an elderly star. Slappy was a anthropomorphic octogenarian squirrel living with her chipper nephew Skippy. Slappy skits utilized a lot of well-worn comedic territory such as the Vaudeville-esque skit below, thus introducing an entirely new generation of children to some very old but still funny bits.




Animaniacs ran a couple of seasons on FOX and finished off the remainder of its seasons on the burgeoning but now-defunct WB network. The show was not-only long-running but also aired in syndication for quite awhile following the end of the show, meaning a serious cache of kids grew up on this stuff.

There was also one direct-to-video movie release, Wakko's Wish, which can still occasionally be seen playing on TV sometime around Christmas time. While you can catch the first two and a half seasons on TV (with the remaining episodes pending release to DVD), feel free to use up all that pent up 90s childhood energy to campaign for DVD release of the full-length film.

That's all I got for you today, folks. In the ever-wise words of one Mindy Sadlier, "Okay, I love you, buh-bye!"

Awesome Lunch Box Beverages of the 90s

Image via slant,razorfish.com

Nowadays, it takes a lot of dough to impress our friends. $200 jeans, $100,000 cars; it's awfully tough to attain something covetable. Back in our younger days, however, it was as easy as whatever you had packed in your brown bag lunch. As kids, money wasn't much. We wanted some functional currency. Something we could really barter would, something that had tangible value to us.

That's where school lunches came in. If yours happened to contain a Lunchables box or Snack Pack, congratulations. You were well on your way to your way to lunch trading royalty. It was more than just food, though. The 90s brought an onslaught of sweet beverages that were marketed specifically at youth. These drinks became the stuff that supermarket temper tantrums were made of. Our parents may have aspired to feed us healthily, but they could only hold out so long.

These may not have been the healthiest of offerings, but that didn't stop us from coveting them with ever thirst-unquenched fiber of our beings. Many of them had pretty vague and questionable contents, making them the perfect product for kids. We didn't question, we simply consumed. And if it helped garner us some cafeteria credibility, well then, all the better.


Squeez Its/Kool Aid Bursts


What sort of parent wouldn't want to purchase their kid a six-pack of pure liquid sugar? Especially if they came in super-sleek flexible, squeezable bottle. Everything about it just screamed kid-friendly. The twistable cap with its residual droplets of so-called juice. The faces on the Squeez-It brand bottles. The pure, pure sugar that would no doubt be coursing through our veins at a rapid rate by the time we hit math class. Seriously, I still don't know why my mom refused me these. They seem so full of nature's goodness. What? Chemicals are found in nature. Sometimes.




Capri Sun


Speaking of brands who got a lot of flack from parents for their sugar content. These pouches were like liquid crack to children. There was something so satisfying about plunging the pointed end of that little yellow straw into the pre-perforated circle in that shimmering silver pouch. The contents were indiscernible, to say the least. The ads claimed the juice to be "all-natural" but failed to tell us exactly from which fruits these juices were extracted. It didn't matter much, as we were all pretty mesmerized by the Alex Mack rip-off commercials in which active kids morphed into some silvery form of the juice. Sold.




Orbitz



Nothing quite says refreshing beverage like little balls of orbiting gelatin crowding up the bottle. Novelty drinks are one thing, but sometimes manufacturers take it a bit too far. Orbitz were the hottest drink on the market for about five minutes in the mid-90s, proving that your concept doesn't need to be a good one, just a new one. The little suspended balls of gelatin tasted exactly like, well, balls of gelatin. The concept was interesting and kids certainly found them appealing, but it just didn't cut it for the long-term beverage market.



Fruitopia


In 1994, Coca Cola saw the success Snapple was having with their fruit and flavored tea beverages and thought they'd cash in on the market. They unleashed Fruitopia, a fruit-like drink aimed at teens and young people. They created original tv ad spots featuring kaleidoscoping fruits, new-agey music, and beatnik-esque poetry. I'm not totally sure what they were going for, but I did drink a lot of Fruitopia so I can only assumed it worked on me.




Snapple


Snapple was one of the original beverage giants. There was something oddly trendy about these drinks, even though their commercials suggested otherwise. In the 90s, the thrust of their advertising strategy involved use of Wendy the Snapple Lady responding to Snapple fan mail. It was sort of cute and kitschy in a she-sounds-like-all-of-my-Jewish-relatives-with-that-accent kind of way.

Please try to ignore the annoying countdown part of the commercial and focus on the annoying aspects of the commercial itself.

Snapple was (and is) famous for the under-the-lid factoids, though many errors have been found in these facts. I have learned a lot from Snapple over the years, though. When Costco first opened in my hometown my mother would purchase something like 100-packs of Snapple and we'd be forced to drink it nonstop. I know, I know, there are thirsty kids in China. I'm drinking, I'm drinking.




Sunny Delight






Ah, the classics. Sunny D has been around since the 60s, but there was a marketing push for it in the 90s with ads like this:



And of course, Family Guy in the 90s made a pitch-perfect parody of the 1994 ad. You know, back when the show was still funny.



Libby's Juicy Juice

Okay, I can see that now it's Nestle's Juicy Juice. I will remember it forever forth as Libby's, though

It may not seem like much, but Libby's is something of a juice box advertising genius company. You see, the name sounds familiar to most of us based on their sponsorship of some of our favorite PBS shows, namely the Arthur series. When day after day, we saw our pals at Juicy Juice supporting our favorite shows, we couldn't help but desire our very own juice boxes. After all, it was 100% juice for 100% kids. I guess that means Sunny D is for those of us who were only 2% kids. You know, really grown up for our age.



It definitely is enough to make you nostalgic for the days when your status could be determined by what you pulled out of your lunch box. I've tried bringing Red Bulls and other flashy beverages to meetings at the office, but it just doesn't have the same effect. At least we have our memories.

90s Kids TV Game Shows

People grumble a lot about this current generation of children. They complain that they're too lazy, too unfocused, or overly dependent on technology. I, on the other hand, have a different theory.

Kids these days are suffering from a major shortage of children's television game shows.

I mean, think about it. Really think about it. We watched a lot of TV, too, but what was the differentiating factor that motivated us to get up off the couch and do something? I'm telling you, it's game shows. Watching kids on TV partaking in mild to moderately strenuous activities was enough to give us something to aspire to. Sure, their activities were strange, unconventional, and had little applicability in actual society, but they were real kids who were challenging themselves physically, academically, or super sloppily.

And to those of you who didn't have cable, well, you'll probably feel just as bad reading this post as you did back when you were taunted for being the only kid on the block without cable. Don't say I didn't warn you.


Nick Arcade



I might as well negate everything I just said up there about these game shows encouraging kids to be active. Nick Arcade actually encouraged them to be pretty darn inactive. Contestants battled virtual video game wizards in a green screen world, creating a mesh of animation and live action in a virtual Nick Arcade universe. You have to admit, that's pretty cool.


Finders Keepers



Now this is my kind of show. As the owner of an incredibly messy room that resisted all sorts of motherly intervention attempts, I was deeply envious of the kids on this show who were allowed to ransack the rooms in this fake house. Some kids have all the luck. The game was bisected into two rounds. In one round (the boring round, if you will), kid contestants identified hidden objects in pictures. In the second (the cool round), kids were unleashed in a makeshift simulated house environment finding object based on the host's clues. The best part was the bonus Room-to-Room-Romp round in which kids frantically and methodically ransacked rooms for cards that could grant them such mediocre prizes as a summer at space camp or a gift certificate to KB Toys.


Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?



Speaking of mediocre prizes, Carmen San Diego's offerings teetered on the brink of insulting. That didn't stop us from coveting the goods and being tricked against our will into learning the geography we so desperately needed. Plus Rockapella was there to provide us with their sweet, sweet in-house harmonious musical stylings. If you didn't take home the gold, though, your prize pickings were admittedly slim. We're talking Rand McNally atlases and Carmen Sandiego sweatshirts. Oh well. It's the thought that counts.



Legends of the Hidden Temple



Speaking of vaguely educational children's television game shows. Legends of the Hidden Temple was sort of educational, in a confusing, myth-heavy sense. It's kind of Incan or Mayan, or whoever it was that was heavy into talking stone head Olmecs. The game began with the moat, as partner-teams would race to cross a pool and ring their assigned gong. In the Steps of Knowledge round, our friends answered questions based on the tale Olmec had recounted for them. The Temple Games featured Guts-like stunt work. The real fun, however, came in the Temple Run. It was like ancient Incan Finders Keepers, but with incredibly frightening Temple Guards who would steal your hard-earned pendants. Tough break, kids.

You have to admit, just a little part of you wants to be a Silver Monkey or Purple Parrot for Halloween. Go on now. We won't tell.


Double Dare





Some things are better left unexplained. Like why exactly in the above clip these kids are pulling rubber chickens out of the birdcages perched on their heads. Really, who comes up with this stuff?
It was a nice touch to make Marc Summers the host, what with his cleanliness-demanding OCD and all. Whether it was Super Sloppy, Family style, or just plain old Double Dare, a lot of really confusing stuff went on. Confusing and messy. We didn't know why, but we just wanted to be a part of it.



Get The Picture



In the 90s, it didn't take much of a premise to get a game show off the ground. All you needed was Nickolodeon's buy in, Mike O'Malley signed on as a host, and you've pretty much got yourself a show. It was a sort of mix between a trivia game, picture guessing game, and physical-challenge filled excitement fest. All in all, not a bad run.



Figure it Out



Sigh. If only I'd had some sort of secret hidden talent or spectacularly interesting fact about myself. I never quite qualified as a contestant for this one. The kids on this show always won. It was pretty much in the script. We were supposed to let our Nickelodeon-grade celebrity guests make fools of themselves and get endlessly covered in buckets of green slime all so we could win our Nintendo 64s and Figure It Out t shirts and call it a day.


For some reason or other, the genre faded into obscurity by the late 90s, despite the syndicated push of reruns on the Nickelodeon cable Games and Sports channel. Like I said, these kids just don't know what they've missing. Maybe once they've ransacked a temple only to be accosted by a full grown man in full Mayan sentinel garb all while wearing a helmet and kneepads, they would know what it was all about. Maybe.

90s Movie Remakes

With all this current talk of remaking such recent films as The Neverending Story and The Karate Kid, you've got to wonder if Hollywood's just plain running out of ideas. Remakes are a tricky thing. If done in the right way they can come off as a clever reimagination of the original, but veer too far from or even to close to the original story and you've got a potential disaster on your hands.

Seriously, you don't have to tell me twice. My friends and I in a bout of uncharacteristic (okay, characteristic) laziness decided to rent the movie Great Expectations in lieu of reading the no-doubt worthy if undeniably lengthy Charles Dickens classic in high school. No one told us, however, just how many times this film had been remade. In our bad luck my friend picked up the 1998 Gwenyth Paltrow vehicle instead of the admittedly more boring and less sexy of any of the three previous incarnations. It was amusing, no doubt, to see Paltrow's character all dressed up in some ridiculous outfit and asserting flippantly, "But Mother, it's the 90s!" Unfortunately for us, it had really very little to do with the actual book itself. Suffice it to say none of our movie-watching gang performed too wonderfully on the exam.

But perhaps I digress. What exactly is the point here? Great cinema may be timeless, but choosing to remake a great film is a treacherous road. Succeed and you achieve the goal of exposing a new generation to a worthy classic. Bonus points if you remake a foreign film, as most of us ethnocentrites here wouldn't have a clue it wasn't an original. After all, that was pretty much the only thing I learned from watching the 1998 version of Great Expectations. Much to the chagrin of my English teacher, of course. She was all-too-quick to inform me that there was no character in the novel named Finn. Damn you remakes and your insidious name-changing. I suppose it didn't help my cause that for a paragraph or two in my essay, I accidentally referred to him as "Ethan Hawke". Subtlety isn't my fine point.

These 90s movies may not have been originals and some are far from classics, but they generally did pretty well in holding our attention. And if at the end of the day, it gave us a common notion to discuss with our parents who so loved the original, then all the better.


Little Rascals


If you can believe it, the Little Rascals (or "Our Gang") comedic shorts featuring cute and rambunctious child actors date all the way back to the 1920s.



While the popularity of the originals waned sometime around the 1940s, the brand was reinvigorated when it was picked up for syndication television in the 50s. Just a few decades later, however, the Gang was all but forgotten. In 1994, Universal Pictures put out a loosely defined remake of the shorts. The new film borrowed heavily on gags and themes from the originals, and retained many of the same characters. Oh, and in case you're wondering, here's my favorite part:



Fans of the originals were less than thrilled with the remake, but the film did reasonably well and a new generation of kids were rather taken with these miniature rascals. It may not have lived up to the standards of the original gang, but they were admittedly pretty cute.




The Parent Trap

The original was released in 1961, featuring Hayley Mills as both Susan Evers and Sharon McKendrick. This was, no doubt, pretty sharp technology for the time. The film was well-received and was even nominated for two Oscars. Though, let's be real here, they were for Sound and Editing respectively. Oh well, they're still Oscar nods, right? You can still put that on your home video case.

You know you're a real 90s kid when you hear Hayley Mills' voice even as a teenager and your mind immediately jumps to Good Morning, Miss Bliss

In 1998, Disney remade the film and introduced the world to a then-adorable Lindsay Lohan. The film was appropriately updated to entertain 90s children, giving them something over which to bond with their parents who had grown up with the original.





Romeo and Juliet

There have been quite a few releases of Romeo and Juliet, but perhaps the most widely seen was the 1968 version. I know we were forced to sit through it in 9th grade Language Arts.



Probably completely unfairly to the perfectly fine '68 version, my classmates and I had been spoiled by the 90s-ified remake and thus referred to the older film as "The Boring One". Hey, it's tough to compete with Leonardo DiCaprio, gunfights, and songs by The Cardigans. Sorry, 1968 version. We never gave you a chance.





101 Dalmations

The 1961 Disney animated version was spectacularly successful and well-received by audiences. It was so successful, in fact, that the film was actually re-released to theaters a staggering four times before they finally just came out with it and did a remake.

Sorry, guys, according to this commercial it looks like this baby may already be back in the Disney vault. Looks like you missed your chance.

While Glenn Close was pretty spectacular and terrifying in her role as Cruella DeVil, the film wasn't quite as critically acclaimed as the original. It was a financial success, however, and a pretty wise move by Disney overall.

If only the world's dalmatian puppy population had fared as well. Following the release of the '96 version, demand for adorable dalmatians skyrocketed. No one at Disney ever told us that they weren't all that great with kids. I mean, they looked so cuddly in the movie. Soon thereafter rescue shelters with bursting at the seams with returns and exchanges of dalmatians. Whoops. Maybe the film should have come with some sort of caveat.





Angels in the Outfield

The1951 picture was not nearly as family-oriented a film as its subsequent reincarnation. The first didn't have much in the way of child-age characters, and come on, the team in this version was the Pirates. Where's the pun in that? Come on.

I have to say, this original trailer is awesome. It's completely ridiculous.

The 1994 release was much more of a family movie. A sad little foster kid played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt is told by his deadbeat dad that they'll be reunited when the Angels win the pennant. See, the Angels. Clever update, right? Plus we get Christopher Lloyd as our lead angel. What's not to like?

Oh my god, how cute is little Joseph Gordon-Levitt? The correct answer is, incredibly, unbelievably, heartstring-tuggingly cute.

Little Women

I guess great stories really are timeless. Either that, or people have terrible memories. There have been five big-screen adaptations of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, although the first two were in the era of silent films. We had our 1933 release with Katharine Hepburn as Jo:



The 1949 adaptation with over-the-top theatrics, featuring Elizabeth Taylor as Amy:

I love the way the trailer claims it to be Romantic as Springtime! Merry as Christmas! Sparkling as Winter!

And finally, our 1994 feature chock full of big names as Winona Rider, Christian Bale, Claire Danes, Kirsten Dunst, and Susan Sarandon:


For a movie that's been remade so many times, you've got to admire the 1994 version for getting it right. Yes, it's sappy and sentimental, but so is the novel. It's pretty hard to make selling your hair and dying of scarlet fever into slapstick comedy.




The Nutty Professor

I'm sure this news is going to shock you, so I'm going to try to break it to you gently: the original Nutty Professor contained infinitely fewer fart jokes. It also did not spurn any insufferable fart-joke filled sequels featuring its star playing every member of his family. Here's the trailer to the Jerry Lewis original, released in 1963:



The Eddy Murphy vehicle somehow, God knows how, morphed into, well, this:


Some things are better left unexplained.



As you can see, remakes run the gamut from a welcome reinterpretation to inexplicable excuse for cross-dressing and flatulence jokes. We can only hope the forthcoming remakes of 80s and 90s films can do any bit as much justice to the movies we grew up with. After all, I don't know how I'll ever explain to my kids that no, that flying luckdragon thing from The Neverending Story is not supposed to be computer animated, it's supposed to be real and fuzzy and absolutely terrifying.