A Momentous Day...

Today was a momentous day in Children of the 90s history: I got my first celebrity comment from someone about whom I wrote a post. Well, at least as far as I know. Who knows if any rogue Furbies have been lurking in my midst.

That's right, folks, you read it here. Twitter verified. Brad from LFO did indeed leave me a comment on my post about, well, LFO. As is fitting. (PS, they're going on tour! If you're into that kind of thing. Check it out here. While you're there, feel free to stop by.)

Of course I do a lot of jabbing and mocking around here, but let me just say that no matter how hard of a time I give you I will always be incredibly starstruck and/or in awe if you choose to respond. That said, I'd like to issue a call to any other 90s-era celebrities who may be reading this right now. Don't be afraid. Come forth from the woodwork. I am willing to offer any sort of shameless plug or promotion for whatever you happen to be pushing now. All you have to do is ask.

Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey

Image via Amazon.com

The ballots are in and the votes have been tabulated. It's official: children love talking animals. There's just something special about anthropomorphic house pets that really drives them wild. And who can blame them? They're undeniably adorable.

The Disney Corporation is well-aware of this fact and has been milking it since its humble steamboat-driving mouse beginnings. Disney's 1993 remake of its own 1963 movie (The Incredible Journey) was no exception. Based on the novel of the same name by Sheila Burnford, the 1963 version featured our furry friends sporting the somewhat less-appealing monikers assigned to them by Burnford: Bodger, Luath, and Tao. Disney must have recognized that the ever-shortening attention spans of 90s children would likely oppose these unfamiliar names and thus replaced them with the snappier Shadow, Chance, and Sassy.

Poster from the original 1963 film. Image via movieposter.com

People of all ages seem to have an uncharacteristic response of sympathy to animals in movies. We could all carelessly watch hundreds of people getting blown to bits in some form of super-advanced special effect explosion and never bat an eye or miss a beat on the popcorn-gobbling. Portray a dog in any form of mild discomfort, on the other hand, and the crowd will weep uncontrollably.

Homeward Bound was no exception. It had a distinctly heartstring-tugging cuteness that made us collectively "awww" over our motley crew of four-legged protagonists. We willingly oblige to completely abandon our usual veneer of disbelief and briefly believe that these animals are feeling what the voice actors claim. It was both easy and enjoyable to get caught up in the magic of the film and root for these pets the whole way through.

The movie begins with a voiceover by Chance, describing his hard-luck life: abandoned, sleeping on the streets, and scavenging in garbage cans. We learn that eventually, this lifestyle led to his imprisonment. You sort of feel bad for this voice, until the camera pans over the voice's source: a hearty American Bulldog. Surprise! Chance is a dog! I never would have guessed it from all of those movie posters and cinematic previews. That voice-over had me fooled. Then again, I was eight, so I'm willing to legitimately plead ignorance.

Chance (voiced by Michael J. Fox) was adopted by a loving family who already has two pets in tow: Sassy the Himalayan cat (Sally Fields) and Shadow the golden retriever (Don Ameche). Chance describes the family's children as belonging to Sassy and Shadow respectively, cementing our understanding of the film's pet-centric view. I spent much of the opening scenes deliberating over why little girl Hope had chosen to name her beloved cat after a teen magazine.



Shadow and Sassy are well-behaved, but Chance is somewhat of a rebel and a bit rough around the edges. The family leaves the pets under the care of a neighbor as they make their exit to San Francisco. They say their goodbyes and are off on their happy, petless way. The pets aren't about to stand for this sort of abadonment, though. Shadow immediately begins to worry about his owner, and convinces the whole gang that they should hightail it it out of there and go find their now-absent human companions.



Here's where our promised Incredible Journey begins. Shadow, Chance, and Sassy make their way into the wide wilderness, embarking on a scenic trip through a stretch of Pacific Northwestern national forest. They navigate their wild, unfamiliar surroundings and weather the less-than-hospitable outdoor conditions. They continue to do adorable animal things, like scoop for fish in the river and cower in the presence of truly terrifying grizzly bears. Really, cute stuff. Here's where I learned some of my most valued childhood lessons, namely that "Cats rule and dogs drool." Or at least it provided me with a mantra of self-reassurance when my parents brought me a cat in lieu of the dog I begged for.

The movie takes a tear-jerking turn when our pal Sassy is swept away by the river and thrust into the pounding falls. Even as a child, this scene made me cry. Shadow and Chance, how could you? You just let your prissy feline friend be smushed by 10,000 pounds of beating water. For shame. Luckily, Sassy is rescued by some class of forest ranger and is quickly nursed back to pre-waterfalling health. She hears her friends barking and scurries off to meet them. Sure, this chance encounter is unlikely, but we're talking about a gang of domesticated animals off on a wilderness adventure. We can concede the smaller improbable situations when we accept the larger one.

As you can imagine, innumerable hilarious hijinks ensue, such as the see-saw style catapulting of a rogue mountain lion. Pure wildlife comedy gold, I tell you. But then, the unthinkable: Chance is attacked by a pesky porcupine. I will forever remember the sage Shadow instructing him, "Whatever you do, don't lick yourself!" Despite being all quilly, Chance soldiers on and the group continues on their way. They somehow manage to rescue a lost child, but in the midst of the celebratory reunion are sent to an animal shelter.

Image via EW.com

Long (incredible, really) story short, Sassy escapes and frees her canine companions. Just when everything seems to be looking up, Shadow falls into a pit. Despite valiant rescue efforts, Shadow is resigned and asks the others to go on without him. By this point, of course, the whole audience is sniffling. A dog dying on film is like onion-chopping for moviegoers: you can pretend all you want that it doesn't effect you, but your eyes are going to water uncontrollably whether you like it or not.

The pets' family is back home and very down about the loss of their furry friends. Then suddenly, like magic, they hear a bark in the distance. Chance come rollicking in, followed by littleSassy. The oldest son is dejected, realizing his dog isn't coming home. In a moment of admittedly corny by nonetheless heartwarming movie magic, Shadow slowly limps over the hill and is reunited with his beloved owner. All is well in the world.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for happy endings. It just goes to show you: if you really love your animals, you'll leave them with irresponsible neighbors with questionable pet-sitting credentials, the pets will escape and embark on a quest into the abyss, they'll encounter hilarious and dangerous obstacles, and will then come prancing on back to you full of wisdom and experience.

At least that's the way I understood it.

LFO

In honor of yesterday being the first day of summer, I thought I'd kick of this sweltering season with a refreshing burst of non sequitor boy band absurdity. The 90s were a heyday for boy bands and girl groups; teenyboppers fell over themselves and swarmed the TRL studios in droves to catch a glimpse of these highly calculated, well-managed, overly-primped and coiffed ensemble acts. One of the greatest mysteries of the 90s is how a decade that began as so musically rebellious so quickly morphed into a veritable bubblegum pop teenage circus*.

Not all boy bands were assembled by sleazy record producers at open casting calls seeking "The Bad Boy" and "The Sensitive One." Sometimes, for reasons probably better left unexplained, these types of musical groups saw fit to form organically. LFO (short for Lyte Funky Ones, if that's any clue to the secret of their long lost street credibility) was one of these bands. The group formed in 1995, which meant they spent a good 4 years failing to crack the ever-enigmatic fortress of formulaic pop music. It's hard to say which is worse: that they never had a doubt about the self-perceived brilliance of their musical output, or that they suffered tumultuous periods of uncertainty but managed to persevere for the sake of the greater good.

After their years of wandering parched in the proverbial music desert, music markets inexplicably decided to offer these boy bandits (boy banders?) a nice cool drink. Sure, they had encountered marginal success on the UK Billboard charts, but they could at best be classified in the late stages of obscurity. By the late 90s, they had finally managed to garner some attention with the accidental leak of their inane demo song, "Summer Girls."


Summer Girls is clearly a very polarizing song. If you zip on over to Amazon.com, you'll see most reviewers give the single either one or five (out of five) stars. These dispensers of judgment speak passionately on both sides of the energy-and-time-wasting debate. One five star reviewer enthusiastically writes, "THE BEST SONG FOR A&F LOVERS!!!!!!!" The liberal use of both all-caps and generous exclamatory punctuation certainly expresses their support for both LFO's single and the bitchin' Abercrombie-wearing lifestyle. Well played, reviewer.

On the other side of the Summer Girls battle, a verbose and angry anti-LFOer contends, "I mean, it would be one thing for this song to simply exist in it's own suicidal dimension, not dragging anyone to the hungry abyss with it; but it insists on pressing itself upon our nation, seizing the nubile minds of our youth in its evil maw and condemning them to a lukewarm existence with candy-coated ideas of life." (And I thought I wrote tirelessly long sentences. That one boasts an incredible 59 words. That's a fourth of an eighth grade book report, right there. Congratulations, Captain Spare Time, for this landmark achievement in wordiness.)

So perhaps that dark, angry reviewer took it a tiny bit too far in demonizing the song's "evil maw" and its captivating trance over the young and impressionable, but the sentiment is clear. A lot of people really, really, did not like this song. It represented all that was empty and vapid about teenage pop music in the late 90s. On the other hand, in some sort of colossal teenybopper inside joke, a serious contingency of people swore this song was brilliant. The jury's still out on this one, so I'll leave it to you to be presiding judge:



It goes a little something like this:

Yeah, I like it when the girls stop by
In the summer
Do you remember?
Do you remember
When we met that summer...

What can I say, I like the way this is going already. rhyming words with themselves is an art form, I tell you. An art form!


New Kids on the Block had a bunch of hits
Chinese food makes me sick
And I think its fly when girls stop by for the
Summer, for the summer

I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch
Id take her if I had one wish
But shes been gone since that summer,
Since that summer

In case you have yet to notice, the song uses completely unrelated examples and reads like a poorly-written advertisement for Abercrombie and Fitch. We get it, you like the store's women's clothing selection and its consumer base. Was this love really worth penning a song over?


Hip-hop mama laid spic and span
Met you one summer and it all began
You're the best girl that I ever did see
The great Larry Bird, jersey 33

When you take a sip, you buzz like a hornet
Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets
Call me willy whistle cause I cant speak baby
Somethin' in your eyes went and drove me crazy

When we get past the chorus, we get to see just how nonsensical the song really is. I don't know about you, but I'm fairly certain that "hornet" and sonnet" do not rhyme. A travesty, indeed. If you're going to use completely non-related lines, why not at least make them rhyme properly. Is that so much to ask?


Now I cant forget you and it makes me mad
Left one day and never came back
Stayed all summer then went back home
Macaulay Culkin was in Home Alone
Fell deep in love, but now we ain't speakin'
Michael J. Fox was Alex P. Keaton

When I met you I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

Alright, I like the way this is going. Hello, 80s and 90s randomly inserted pop culture references! It is nice the way this Rich fellow occasionally intersperses it with something marginally relevant to the song.

New kids on the block had a bunch of hits
Chinese food makes me sick
And I think its fly when girls stop by for the
Summer, for the summer

I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch
I'd take her if I had one wish
But she's been gone since that summer,
Since that summer

The chorus obviously needs no further editorialization. I'm pretty sure it speaks for itself.

Cherry Pez, Coke, Crush Rock, Stud Boogie
Used to hate school, so I had to play hooky
Always been hip to the b-boy style
Known to act wild and make a girl smile
Love New Edition and the candy girl
Remind me of you because you rock my world

You come from Georgia where the peaches grow
They drink lemonade and speak real slow
You love hip-hop and rock & roll
Dad took off when you were 4 years old
There was a good man named Paul Revere
I feel much better baby when youre near

You love fun dip and Cherry Coke
I like the way you laugh when
I tell a joke when I met
You I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

At least in this one we get a brief history lesson. If ever asked who went from town to town on horseback announcing that the English were coming, you can just hum through Summer Girls to recall the answer. This Rich also really, really likes Cherry flavoring. Cherry Pez and Cherry Coke? Surely you jest, Rich. How could one handle such intense sugary fruitiness?

Chorus (let's skip this one, for all of our sanity)


In the summertime girls got it goin on
Shake and wiggle to a hip-hop song
Summertime girls are the kind I like
Ill steal your honey like I stole your bike

Boogaloo shrimp and pogo sticks
My mind takes me back there oh so quick
Let you off the hook like my man Mr. Limpet
Think about that summer and I bug cause I miss it

Like the color purple, macaroni and cheese
Ruby red slippers and a bunch of trees
Call you up, but whats the use
I like Kevin Bacon, but I hate Footloose

You came in the door I said it before
I think Im over you, but Im really not sure
When I met you I said my name was Rich
You look like a girl from Abercrombie and Fitch

I was about to write this one off completely until they made that Mr. Limpet reference. Sold!

Also, I may have to disagree with you on Footloose, Rich. Respectfully, of course.


Okay, so perhaps that's all we can take of that, but you must admit there's a certain...charm to their inanity. Sure, it's a gimmick, but sometimes gimmicks sell. Indeed, this was not the last we saw of LFO. They also brought us the equally intelligent "Girl on TV":



And yes, the Girl on TV in the video is Jennifer Love Hewitt. This song was somewhat less tangential, but it was still definitely pushing our boundaries of lyrical tolerance. I'll admit, in a moment of middle school weakness, I did possibly have a soft sport for this song. A small one, though. Cross my heart. Tiny.

Regardless of their apparently controversial music (on Amazon, that is), they had more staying power than you may have assumed. After all, whenever Summer Girls comes up on shuffle on my iPod in the car, all the passengers miraculously seem to know all the words.

Don't judge.




*And yes, I recognize that there was plenty of high quality alternative music that was popular in the late 90s. We're talking a shift in th etrends of mainstream youth culture, and is thus not meant to be a judgment of quality in any way. (obviously)

Captain Planet and the Planeteers

For some reason, magic rings are pretty common cartoon motif. I suppose the appeal is pretty universal: you wear on your hand not only the irrepressible power to do your magic bidding but also your membership card to an exclusive superhero club. Unfortunately there's got to be some sort of superhero hierarchy out there, meaning not all superheroes are created equal. Magic ring or not, it's pretty safe to say that Protector of the Environment doesn't quite rank up there with the coolness factor of Batman or Superman. Hell, even Mighty Mouse may have had something on these guys.

Captain Planet was the animated response to an increasing push for social relevance and educational programming in children's television programming. This brand of thinly-veiled cartoon education, dubbed "edutainment", was pretty forthcoming in its attempts to teach us all sorts of pertinent facts and figures regarding the environment and our role as informed citizens of Earth. Think of it as an animated superhero version of An Inconvenient Truth, but with fewer powerpoint presentations and more mystical Earth spirits.

In the true spirit of the 90s, Captain Planet and the Planeteers were painfully multicultural. As emphasis of the inherent value of diversity grew in the American cultural marketplace, TV producers became more and more eager to appear politically correct in their entertainment undertakings. It was no longer enough to abide by the time-honored principle of tokenness. No, children today needed not just a vaguely ethnic friend here and there but rather a full gang of worldly companions. In an painstaking effort to make it even more realistic, the American one is by far the most ignorant and least informed. Who says cartoons aren't a mirror to society?

It all starts when the spirit embodiment of the Earth, Gaia, wakes up and is pissed to see the horrible squandering of resources and pollutive tendencies of contemporary man. There's pretty much only one thing she can do: conjure up a slew of magic rings, send them to some kids around the world, and hope for the best. Gaia's convenient Planet Vision alerts these youths as to the most devastating pollutants and disasters cropping up around the world, to which they must mobilize and act. Each Planeteer controls an element: Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and...Heart?

These kids, while marginally powerful, are not altogether qualified to confront the worlds' mounting environmental crisis. Just as the Mouseketeers could always call on Mickey for reinforcement, so too could the Planeteers summon their more powerful and well-known pal. With the power of their rings combined and and a rousing cheer of "Go Planet!", the meager Planeteers could conjure up their leader, Captain Planet.



If you think I come up with some groan-inducing puns, you should go back and take a gander at some of the god-awful punnery that Captain Planet emits. Perhaps it's smog related, but something is clearly clouding his judgment with these cheesy jokes (Clouding? Smog? Come on, throw me a line here.) Captain Planet is pretty powerful, as far as superheroes go, but he's got his limitations. Just as Superman had Kryptonite, our man CP has pollution. Scary, isn't it?

The Planeteers, while less powerful, had a few tricks up their respective natural-fibered sleeves. In the intro, we find that we too can be Planeteers. As a child, this was so exciting for me I practically tripped over own burgeoning compost heap in a maniacally frantic effort to sort my recycling or purchase a sweatshirt made out of used water bottles. Just imagine, me, a Planeteer! It's almost too much to bear. As my role as a Planeteer was not sufficiently well-documented in the series (I blame my lack of multicultural qualities for this obvious snub for camera time), our more prominent ring-bearing Planeteers got quite a bit of airtime:

Kwame

Played by Lavar Burton, host of Reading Rainbow and star of the Roots miniseries. Talk about socially conscious, Burton was edutaining us from all fronts. Kwame possesses the power of Earth, which allowed him to create earthquakes, mountains, and other not-so-exciting plate-tectonic and topographic landforms. From Africa, Kwame came across his magic ring while planting trees in the Savannah. He acts as sort of an unofficial leader to the group, and always gets to be the one who shouts, "With our powers combined...!" Which when you think about it, was probably one of the best jobs on the show.

Linka


Voiced by Kath Soucie, another 90s voice actor extraordinaire. With voice acting credits like Phil and Lil of Rugrats, Lola Bunny from Space Jam, and Futurama's Cubert Farnsworth, Soucie was a veritable voice chameleon. In this case, she voiced Linka, our communist Soviet Planeteer, later replaced by the vaguer "Eastern European" Planeteer following the USSR's demise. She is incredibly stereotyped to the early-90s mounting fear of Soviet education surpassing that of the US, with superior math and computer hacking skills. Cute, no? Linka has the power of Wind, allowing her to create gusty breezes, tornadoes, and to some extent, offers her the power to levitate.

Ma-Ti


Our South American Planeteer did not boast quite as well-known voice acting credentials, but Scott Menville did play Kimmy Gibbler's boyfriend Duane on Full House which certainly gives him points in my book. Ma-Ti lives in the rainforest with his grandfather, a local Shaman. In case you had yet to notice, the Planeteers' creator took great pains in making the diversity as painstakingly obvious as possible. It was never acceptable for a South American to live in a major city, or an Asian to be scientifically non-inclined. These Planeteers took their embodied stereotypes highly seriously. Ma-Ti had the power of Heart, which was clearly the crappiest element. It wasn't an element at all, if you want to get technical. He could converse with animals, occasionally read minds, and affect others emotionally, but you have to admit that when compared to the other Planetary (Planeteery?) powers this one seemed a bit consolatory.

Wheeler


Voiced by Joey Dedio, who earns my seal of 90s credibility for voicing the over-the-top drug dealer in Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue! Wheeler was our American friend, and in typical typecasting fashion he is a salty, short-tempered Brooklynite. He wielded the power of Fire, which was admittedly cooler and more useful than many of the other elements. In retrospect Wheeler's role as an American was a bit insulting to actual Americans, though not altogether untrue. He came across as overly privileged and ignorant, and was forced to serve as comic relief to his smarter, more able global counterpars.

Gi



The Southeast Asian member of the group, Gi was voiced by Janice Kawaye. Proving my American ignorance in a manner not unlike that of my Planeteer pal Wheeler, I must admit I'm pretty clueless about Kawaye's other voice credits, which include such
shows as Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi. Gi is an aspiring marine biologist, and hence posesses the power of Water. She can control water to do her bidding, unless of course it is (gasp!) polluted. Gi is also unsurprisingly highly knowledgeable in science, which is not so shocking in this realm of absolute, unerring stereotyping.

With their powers combined, they could summon the reliable Captain Planet, a blue-faced, green-mulleted muscular superhero.



His intentionally hazy powers mean that he can pretty much perform whatever sort of magic necessary to fit the situation. Convenient, indeed. I always sort of thought he had something going on with Gaia, too.

Captain Planet's tagline, "The Power is Yours!" emphasized a worthwhile if cheesy take on personal responsibility to global environmental issues. Things certainly got a little (read: overtly) PSA, and by a little, I mean a lot. Observe, a call against joining gangs, vandalism, graffiti, littering, and pretty much anything else you can think of:



Obviously, the intentions were good but the edutainment factor often came off as more skewed toward the educational than the entertainment. Regardless, it was entertaining, if a bit corny. In his constant reminders that the Power is indeed ours, at least we got to feel marginally powerful, albeit in an environmentally conscious, distinctly unsuperhero type of way. At least we got to hear his never-ending pollution puns. For however ignorant the Planeteers assumed us to be, they worked tirelessly with Captain Planet to clear the air for us on all things environmental.

(insert groan here)



Check it out:
Captain Planet's TV Tropes

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead

It's a tale as old as time, at least according to 90s juvenile movie tropes: for some reason or other (usually either some parental oversight or colossal change of plans) leaves one or many children utterly alone to do as they please and wreak havoc on their once-stable environment. While to anyone remotely grounded in reality can easily assess that this situation would inevitably end in starving, general run-amokery, and eventual outing to authorities, in movies it always seems like such a gas. What's that, the kids are completely unsupervised and without money or other necessary resources? Classic!

Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead is probably one of the most explanatory and descriptive movie titles to date. While other studios were issuing more subtle, nuanced movie titles, execs at Warner Brothers knew kids and teenagers had a short attention span. "Kids are pretty slow, so let's see if we can explain this entire plot in a single sentence and then assign that as the film's title. Deal?" The title managed to encapsulate the entire plot in six simple words. No ticket purchaser could claim they didn't know what they were getting into. It was right there on the stub.

The movie itself was yet another manifestation of the ultimate kid fantasy of autonomy based on the false notion that being an adult is carefree, easy, and cheap. We certainly get a sense of this from the preview, when two of the male Crandall children deviously announce, "Dishes are done!" after shooting them in the air clay-pigeon style. No one would alert the authorities on that one, right? Just a couple of kids sniping on a neighbor's roof. Kids will be kids.



Contrary to the happy-go-luckiness of the preview, Don't tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead actually explored some of the potential monetary woes that a group of unruly, unemployed teenagers would potentially encounter. Namely, that they can't afford food. Sure, it's all fun and games when your babysitter dies (or at least so this movie would lead us to believe), but how do you intend to stay under the radar of child services when you don't have the means to keep yourself fed? How, I ask you?

But perhaps we're getting a tad ahead of ourselves here. Let's start at the very beginning (as an incessant childhood viewer of The Sound of Music, I can pretty safely verify that that's a very good place to start). The plot was relatively simple: prior to the start of the movie, Mrs. Crandall announced to her brood of zany and sometimes incorrigible children that she's planning to spend her entire summer in Australia, sans her five lovable little hellions. Naturally the kids are psyched, particularly teenage Sue Ellen (played by Christina Applegate), or at least we're led to believe this on the basis of her being the main character. The older kids are making all sorts of ruckus-rousing plans for the summer, while the younger ones grumble about their mom's abandonment.

What Mrs. Crandall conveniently fails to tell them was that they were not, as assumed, to be staying alone for two months. Right before their mother is set to leave, Sue Ellen answers a knock on the door to find a little old lady who introduces herself as "Mrs. Sturak, the babysitter." Even though all of us with ticket stubs or blurb-splattered VHS cases in our possession know the eventual fate of Mrs. Sturak, Sue Ellen is pissed. When confronted, Mrs. Crandall offers, "She has a lot of experience." Sue Ellen huffs, "Of course she does. She's 200 years old." Burn! Oh, Sue Ellen, you brassy, sassy 90s teen fashion magnate. What will you say next?

Image via moviescreenshots.blogspot.com

Of course, the minute Mrs. Crandall exits stage left, supposedly kindly Mrs. Sturak turns into a terrorizing tyrant. It looks like it's going to be a long, hellish summer. Until the prophecy of the movie title is fulfilled, of course.

As I child, I found Mrs. Sturak's death scene to be pretty dark. I say this mainly because even though I loved this movie and watched it endlessly (literally, until the tape began unraveling) the title seen in which the crazy Mrs. Sturak kicks the bucket always scared the bejeezus out of me. Now, of course, I realize that Sue Ellen's brother's pothead paraphernalia and pseudo-pornographic images giving Mrs. Sturak a heart attack make the scene pretty funny, but at the time I thought he was some sort of satanic worshipper. Ah, the pangs of innocence. I was all riled up because Mrs. Sturak smelled some not-so-fresh bongwater.

Naturally, everything that happens from this point on is intensely and completely ridiculous. For some reason (read: no reason) they can't just call their mother and tell her what happened. No, it would be best to act criminally insane and purge the body. So they do what any logically thinking, level-headed kids would do in this situation: stash the body in a trunk and quietly drop it off at a local morgue. Thankfully, they had the good sense to attach a note: "Nice old lady inside. Died of natural causes." Of course, it's not till after all this body-ditching is over that they realize Mrs. Sturak was in possession in all of the money their mother left for the summer. Very smooth indeed, Crandalls. Very smooth indeed.

While everyone still has high hopes for their summer sans authority, this pennilessness puts a bit of a damper on their plans. As the oldest, Sue Ellen grudgingly accepts an admittedly crappy fast food job. This is clearly an ill-fated plan, and prissy Sue Ellen quits soon thereafter. Luckily for Sue Ellen as the ingenue, she manages to form a relationship with remarkably hot coworker Bryan during her short tenure as a hot dog jockey.



Seeking cushier employment, Sue Ellen applies for a receptionist position at a local fashion firm. Though in retrospect Sue Ellen's wardrobe choices are highly suspect, at the time she was quite the fashion plate and this seemed like a logical fit. Of course, Sue Ellen is a mere high school grad, so she lifts some buzzwords from a resume-tip book and forges the resume of an accomplished 28-year old. In a whirlwind of increasingly unlikely events, Sue Ellen's resume garners so much positive attention that the Senior VP offers her the Executive Administrative Assistant job she'd promised to her old receptionist (who is conveniently Sue Ellen's new boyfriend's sister. Obviously). I smell some inner workplace tension brewing.



Of course, Sue Ellen doesn't know how to do anything except steal from the petty cash supply. In fact, that's pretty much all she does. Her brood is getting hungry, so she pilfers some petty cash for groceries. Unfortunately, her increasingly selfish siblings each squander the salary in some silly sense. They've still got not money, and Sue Ellen is on the verge of being in huge trouble for totally depleting the petty cash fund.

Meanwhile the company is hovering on bankruptcy. The clothes are hideous and in turn, no one wants to purchase them. Her problems compounded by trouble in romantic paradise, Sue Ellen is feeling pretty SOL. What happens next is pure cheesy 90s movie moments at its best. Our girl SE has an epiphany, and singlehandedly undertakes the task of redesigning the fashions to save the company:

Sue Ellen saves us all!

All the Crandall kids clean up the house and agree to pitch in to throw a huge fashion show launch at their house. Everything is going swimmingly, until of course in typical 90s movie fashion incredibly obvious things go awry. SE's heartthrob Bryan shows up. Mrs. Crandall is home from Australia. Sue Ellen's forced to own up to the fact that she's a huge liar, and thief, and oh yeah, only 17. While in real life, all sorts of horrifying pending legal action would ensue, everything here works out perfectly. The fashion company is pleased, Mrs. Crandell calms down and is impressed by Sue Ellen's hard work, Bryan and Sue Ellen have a romantic reunion. Sue Ellen's boss even offers her a real full-time job, but Sue Ellen maturely decides to (wait for it...wait for it...) go to college instead. All together now: awwww.



Cut to the last scene, where the guys from the morgue are chilling at Mrs. Sturak's tombstone, musing over how sweet it was for her to leave them all that cash. See how everything worked out for everyone and no one was ever angry or suspicious in the countless situations that warranted it? That's the beauty of 90s movie idealism. Anything can, and inevitably will, happen.

Image via moviescreenshots.blogspot.com

Sure it's glossy and unrealistic, but it was actually a fun movie. Everyone even managed to learn a lesson, so movie-going parents didn't mind so much all of the rest of the initial conflicting bad messages their impressionable kids were being exposed to. The magic of these types of 90s movies was the convenient, simplified ending in which everyone lives happily ever after. Sure, it's not realistic, but it is entertaining. After all, no one wants to see Sue Ellen's ass dragged to court or the kids convicted for disposing of poor old Mrs. Sturak's body. No, no, all's well that ends well, and that's just the end.

Check it out:

Watch the whole movie on YouTube! (in 10 parts)

Chicken Soup for the Soul

Regardless of how soul-savingly wonderful or retina-burstingly abhorrent you find the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series to be, we can all agree on one thing: Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were probably laughing all the way to the bank in the face of the 140 publishers who initially refused the manuscript. 16 years and 100+ books later, people are eager as ever to lap up every last drop of sentimentality with a spoon. These feel-good heart-tugging tales were meant to induce feelings and inspire, though for some the only feelings inspired was an unrelenting nausea.

The 90s had a surprisingly high market quotient for touchy-feeliness, considering all the angsty cynicism (a la Nirvana) and vapid materialism (a la Clueless) people attribute to 90s culture. Perhaps there was some mysterious point of contact which allowed the angsty to express their wealth of feelings and the superficial to pat themselves on the back for their insincere sentimentalism. Whatever the reason, there was a pretty serious market for all things high-faloutin' and pseudo-spiritual.

This impulse for inspiration manifested itself in several forms: Touched by an Angel, the rise of televangelism, Lurlene McDaniel young adult novels. Perhaps the most lucrative exploitative franchise capitalizing on this trend was The Chicken Soup for the Soul series. The series' name implies that we are somehow naturally sick, and the only soothing remedy is to buy this book. That's a sound marketing strategy if I ever heard one (Get it? Sound? Heard? Okay, think I'm alone on this one). I'm going to come out with a new line of books next year entitled, "Buy this book or you will inevitably get an incurable mutation of swine flu ." It seems pretty straightforward, and I bet I could make a bundle on it.

Sarcasm aside (briefly), the books arguably had some inherent merit beneath their drecky facade. The stories were indeed positive and uplifting and made good on the title's promise of a soothing read. However, it was less about the value of the stories themselves than the ensuing warm fuzzy feeling many of us got from reading this book. See, the book had that sort of incredibly-easy-read-to-make-you-feel-good-about-yourself quality to it. By feeling touched by the stories, we could all personally feel as if we were good, moral, spiritual people who were eager to be inspired and called to action in a quest for positivity. Despite the passivity of our actions (sitting and reading an overrated bestseller) we could all breathe a sigh of relief that we were indeed, as we had always suspected, good people.

The Chicken Soup for the Soul Condolence Sympathy Basket from www.recover-from-grief.com. Yes, this exists.

Before you go on the offensive and defend these books (or would that be the defensive?), let me be the first to admit that I ate these up as a kid. I absolutely could not get enough. For some reason, I was unwaveringly certain that these books possessed the tidbits of timeless wisdom that were the secrets to unlocking a life of happiness. When I turned 12, someone gave me a copy of Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul as a gift. I remember earmarking chapters I thought to be particularly poignant, such as "Things Girls Love about Boys" and stories about kids with (insert life obstacle here) overcoming adversity.

After devouring volume after volume, I had that wonderful unearned feeling of being a better person without ever having to leave my room. Why, in the span of two hours, I had been empathetic, altruistic, sympathetic, and accepting. The tears in my eyes were evidence that I was indeed a living, feeling person who cared about others deeply. Right?


Maybe. One of the strongest selling points of these books was that inspiration is an incredibly vague term. I doubt most readers immediately mobilized and began rescuing helpless sick puppies or volunteering at the local soup kitchen (for the stomach, that is, not soul) directly after reading any of these books. The best part was that it allowed you to be completely undeservedly self-congratulatory. Bravo, me. Bravo!

Of course, I'm clearly devilishly advocating the situation. The original book was overwhelmingly well-received by readers and critics. Most people were willing and able to look past the corniness and feel truly touched by these moving (albeit cliched) stories. There was something comforting in the predictable heartwarming-ness of each story. Sure, we knew it was sappy and possibly some of these miracles were a tad on the contrived side, but our willingness to briefly suspend our disbelief could allow us to embrace a story's happy ending.

Hansen and Canfield were brilliantly entrepreneurial in their approach and saw the potential in the not-yet fully tapped market of sappy sentimentalism. Lucky for them, all they had to do was think up countless topics and corresponding subtitles (including but not limited to Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul, Chicken Soup for the Fisherman's Soul, and even Chicken Soup for the Soul Celebrates Cats and the People Who Love Them.) The editors obviously subscribed to a "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ideology. Using basically the same essential formula, they managed to crank out book after book in the style of the original but catered to specifically market to a particular demographic.

Then came the kookier side. Books weren't enough. No, we needed Chicken Soup for the Soul calendars, Chicken Soup for the Soul Pet food, and Chicken Soup for the Soul vitamin supplements. There's nothing quite like manipulating your audience into buying a bunch of worthless crap to send a positive message of spirituality and inspiration.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Trimworks Supplements. Please note the package featuring a woman hugging a scale. It's likely she has OD'ed on the lovey-dovey feel-goodness of CSftS

Over time, the initial bowl of soup has evolved into a fully functional factory churning out can and can of the same product. This model was fitting as this was exactly what Hansen and Canfield were peddling: canned spirituality. Love it or hate it, the Chicken Soup Series was a formidable franchise from 1993 stretching through the better part of this decade. Ultimately, whether you're a firefighter, doctor, or French-African widowed quadriplegic philosopher with a taste for five-alarm chili, there is inevitably a Chicken Soup for the Soul book made just for you. Go forth and be soothed.


Some newer, odder incarnations:

Disturbing, indeed

Two of my favorite bloggers (Al from My Life in a Blog and Nic from PinkNic) alerted me via Twitter (see? I learned how to use it!) of a horrible phenomenon affecting the contemporary cartoon character doll market.

If you grew up in the 80s and 90s, it's likely you knew about Rainbow Brite and Strawberry Shortcake. Even if you're a guy, you probably at least had a kid sister with a Rainbow Brite doll or Strawberry Shortcake tea party set. These were wholesome, innocent childlike characters.

Completely unlike their new manifestations. That is to say, they took a Bratz doll and a Hannah Montana action figure, stuck it in a blender, and set it to "extra slutty".


Strawberry Shortcake

image via babyblogblog.com

This is more than a little disturbing.They took what was essentially some form of Precious Moments figurine and morphed it into a coquettish teen giving come-hither eyes while perched suggestively on a flower. I can understand the desire to update her look (though to be honest, she wasn't exactly a beacon of coolness upon her original inception) but this borders on ridiculous.

Rainbow Brite:

images via rainbowbrite.net

Geez, even her magical horse looks more suggestive. I can understand the color upgrade, but they've pretty much zapped all of the childlike wonder out of her. While she used to be an adorable round-faced donut-sleeved child, the relaunch has pegged her as a slender cheerleader-type with waist-emphasizing belt and rainbow bangles.


Just what sort of messsage are these redesigns aiming to send to children today? People are constantly remarking on how children grow up faster these days, but you have to wonder if marketers are expediating the process a bit. Toy companies have vetoed baby fat and childlike innocence and replaced it with bedroom eyes and a snappy outift.

It's probably no coincidence that Strawberry Shortcake (and Rainbow Brite, until rights were recently sold to Hasbro) is owned by a company called Playmates toys. If that's not suggestive, well, then I'm not sure what is.

Flannel

Image via Hellocomein.com

Ah, lumberjacks. Is there any trend you can't start? First you had everyone wielding tree-demolishing axes. Then it was the log rolling. You were such a beacon of trend setting. Thankfully, your fashion forwardness did not disappoint.

Okay, so maybe lumberjacks weren't necessarily in on the whole ironic grunge wave of fashion, but they certainly did provide a wealth of inspiration. The early-to-mid 90s were an interesting era, fashion-wise. Highly influenced by the mainstream rise of grunge music and subsequent subculture, the 90s saw an inexplicable rise in woodsy, outdoorsy styles. As Seattle was the generally-agreed-upon birthplace of grunge, it was no wonder they had the whole fashion world dressing like Pacific Northwesterners. Minus the functionality, that is.

Flannel became a ubiquitous staple of youth culture identity in the 90s, flaunting a sense of moody, brooding anti-authority that so defined young people in the grunge era. Plaid, functionally warm button-down shirts provided the necessary anti-fashion vibe embodied by the irreverent point of contact between Generation X and Generation Y. Before Generation Y grew up and got all civic-minded and mainstream (and probably considerably less cool), they were still riding the crest of unshakable cynicism with their 70s-born hippie-parent-backlash peers of Generation X.

Before the days of hipster chic, the level of irony in one's clothing was not quite as well-selected. While now you can walk down a trendy urban street and see the exhaustively planned outfits of a bunch of American Apparel catalog rejects, ("See, if I pair this pinstriped fedora with these neon yellow 1970s high school gym shorts...") back in the 90s the anti-fashion was not quite so preconceived. Rather, while the 80s had provided us with ridiculous poppy, mainstream, shiny bright-colored trends, the 90s' answer was to spit in the face of these bubblegum trends and say, "Screw it all. We're wearing flannel."

General unkemptness was a popular side effect of the grunge culture. True to the movement's name, grunge followers were, well, grungy. They had dirty, stringy long hair and tended to have that pleasant unwashed look (and we can only assume, corresponding smell.) Lucky for society the actual grunge movement was pretty centralized, meaning the flannel-clad sullen-faced teens you saw in your own hometowns were likely some class of poseur. Sure, they had the flannel shirts and ripped up jeans, but they were buying the shirts 3 for 1 at Kohl's and purchasing their jeans pre-ripped. Their authenticity and intention was at best questionable. It's probably more that they just really, really liked the Smells Like Teen Spirit video than that they subscribed to any particular brand of anti-authority ideology.

Lucky for the flannel industry (there's a whole flannel commercial infrastructure, right? I assume) it it a highly functional fabric that certainly has its share of constructive uses. Though I'm sure the usefulness of flannel is far more wide-ranging, here are some of the basic functionalities of 1990s flannel-wearing:

1. It kept the heroin chic among us warm

Image via yenmag.net

Forget Twiggy, the 90s brought a whole new wave of painfully thin, strung-out-looking models. Kate Moss was an unsmiling, non-eating supposed inspiration for us all. You have to realize, though, that it gets cold being that skinny. These uninsulated waifs were lucky to have a big burly flannel on hand to fight off the 0% body fat woes.

Still true today:Flannel...now with 100% less pants!

2. The butt-less still reeling from Sir Mix-a-Lot's slurs could use it handily as padding

As seen in Bill and Ted--and yes, I'm aware the original came out in 1989

No one in the 90s would ever wear a flannel shirt on its own. No, it was necessary to pile on as many other cynical concert tees as you could muster in order to fully achieve your 90s grunginess. Sometimes, though, you just needed a break from your heat-producing flannel. Don't have a place to put it down? Use your body as a temporary hanger and tie it around your waist! A foolproof plan. Good for hiding bodily imperfections and stains, too.


3. You are so tired you couldn't possibly wait until you got home and climbed into bed.

Image via amazon.com

Luckily, your flannel doubled as pajamas. Or better yet, you could simply grab your handy seam-ripper and before you know it, you've got a new pair of winter sheets. Talk about multipurpose!


4. You would make a stellar extra on Nickelodeon's Pete and Pete or ABC's My So-Called Life


Both Petes were famous for their signature flannel looks. You'd be hard-pressed to find an episode of MSCL where neither Angela nor Jordan was wearing some manifestation of flannel somewhere on their person. These fine specimens of 90s television were spreading the good word of flannel, one episode at a time.

5. In a frequently temperature-shifting setting, it offered top-notch ventilation


Perfecting your flannel-based outfit was contingent on layering. Luckily, the open-flannel-over-t-shirt-or-thermal look allowed for intermittent breezes and important underarm and back ventilation.

6. Great for absorbing greasy hair!

How else would the members of Nirvana or Pearl Jam lay down to sleep at night without sliding off the pillow? Chalk it up to the ever-absorbent power of flannel. Go days without washing with full grease-drip protection!

7. You can pose as a Brawny Paper Towels spokesimage model, no problem

Again, that lumberjack image. When paired with your work jeans and some Doc Martens or Timberlands, you were pretty much ready for whatever challenge (or spill) nature threw at you.


To all you former Niravana-wannabes, embrace your once-burgeoning early 90s grunginess. You don't even need too be overly nostalgic to begin this inner hug, as flannel has (for better or worse) made a comeback in a big way. So go out there and wear it proudly. Just please don't tie it around your waist this time around.

Mystery Science Theater 3000

I know, I know, LOLcatz is probably the lowest form of humor, but when I saw this picture I couldn't resist.

Often when I watch movies with other people, they tend to grumble over an admittedly irritating habit of mine. My movie-mates beg and plead with me, "Can you please stop talking and making fun of this movie? You're completely ruining it for me." I pity these people, of course, because obviously they were not Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans as kids. If they had been, they would be well aware that this so-called annoying constant verbal mockery of mine was actually making it better.

Okay, so maybe I'm no Joel Robinson, but I swear, give me a couple of Bots and a space-based movie theater that exclusively plays B-movies and I'll hit it out of the park.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K to uber nerdy die-hards like, ahem, myself) was an ingenious low-budget project that made its premiere on a local cable access channel in my hometown of Minneapolis. The concept was brilliant, innovative, and dirt-cheap to produce. The show's creators simply sought out the most terrible, unwatchable, most retina-burning feature films they could find, superimposed a couple of silhouettes across the bottom of the screen to give the illiusion of a movie theater environment, and spent the entire duration of the film mocking every conceivable element.

It had an intentionally shaky premise that made it incredibly easy for Joel and the Bots to poke fun not only at the movies, but at their own environment and circumstances as well. In one of the most literal, lengthy, and informative theme songs ever, we get the incredibly detailed and implausible series of events that led up to this B-movie imprisonment scenario:



The creators aimed for a low-budget look, at first for necessity on public access and later to stay true to their roots. The intro exemplified the tongue-in-cheek attitude of the show, particularly with the line:

"If you're wondering how he eats and breathes
And other science facts,
Just repeat to yourself 'It's just a show,
I should really just relax.'"

The theme also introduces us to Joel's robot friends (who he assembled out of the "start" and "stop" functions for the Satellite of Love movie theater, of course). The Bot gang was comprised of Cambot (allegedly recording these events and thus unseen), Gypsy, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo. They, along with Joel (and later, Mike) provided us with countless hours (really, countless, each show was incredibly lengthy) of ridiculous riffs and jabs.

Our lovable metalheads from left to right: Gypsy, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo. Image via CollegeCandy.com

The show never took itself too seriously, as the underlying concept of the show was to mock everything and anything both mercilessly and relentlessly. In the case that you were never a fan in your youth (and may I just say, for shame!), I am about to launch into my MST3K proselytizing. You've been warned.

The true genius of the show was its commitment to utmost simplicity and maximizing humor. They did very little in the way of continuity or character development in ways that watered down the full-speed-ahead-ness of its comedic contemporaries. The closest they came to any sort of plot development was in the form of brief preliminary, closing, and pre-commercial break skits like the following:



The above clip is from my all-time favorite episode, The Final Sacrifice,for which I have such a strong and fervent love that I feel the compelling need to post the entire 90 minute episode right here on my blog. Yep, I totally just did that. Please watch at your leisure.



If you've never watched the show, this is a prime specimen with which to pop your proverbial MST3k cherry. Seriously. Go ahead. Watch it. I'll wait.

Okay, presumably it's an hour and a half later, and you're now a full MST3K believer, so you'll probably far more interested in what I have to tell you. Good, good. I'm glad we could make to this point together.

The show went through many incarnations as it's network home and time slots changed over the years. Though it began on public access, it was soon thereafter picked up by Comedy Central, the show's home for five seasons of glorious unfettered riffing and due mockery. Joel Hodgson, the original trap-ee aboard the SOL (Satellite of Love) left during the 5th season and was swiftly replaced with Mike Nelson. Lucky for the show, the premise was so thin it was incredibly easy to pull off such a major switcharoo. While to other shows this may have been a critical shark-jumping moment of disaster, MST3K was able to emerge from the change generally unscathed.

Two years later, the show was picked up by the Sci Fi network (after much begging and pleading from fans) presumably based on its vaguely sci-fi Satellite of Love premise and robot sidekicks. The show's producers had to re-tailor the movies' themes in new epsiodes to better fit the Sci Fi cannon, but generally the show continued on its planned trajectory for another good few years until its unfortunate cancellation in 1999. Lucky for all of you, the geeks and nerds who adored this show are technically savvy enough to make most episodes available to all of us right here on the interweb.

The show now has a formidable cult following, which is unsurprising as it has a distinct appeal to the incredibly nerdy people who tend to be in charge of rounding up cult followings. I suppose after this brief foray into MST3K missionary work, I too can add myself to that list. The real appeal of the show is the bam-bam-bam flow of constant jokes. Sure, some of the references are thinly-veiled obscure inside jokes and others may not be as culturally relevant now as they once were, but for the most part, their mocking is timeless. Though trends and references may come and go over the years, there is one thing we can all agree on: making fun of everything.

In case you're not a full-fledged MST3K fan by now, I leave you with a few of my favorite Mystery Science Theater 3000 shorts:

Are You Ready for Marriage?



Cheating


Body Care and Grooming


Posture Pals

Children of the 90s is now on Twitter!

Yep, it's true. Children of the 90s is on Twitter, though I have yet to learn the intricate workings of this stalker-centric world of 140-character minutiae. Suggestions and advice are not only welcome, but probably necessary.

I'm not really sure what the verbage is...Tweet me? Does that sound right? Let's go with that. So, tweet Children of the 90s: http://twitter.com/Childrenof90s. The "the" wouldn't fit, so I hope none of you are offended by being classified as "Children of 90s".

1990s Product Flops

Now and then, a product comes along that for some reason is forever remembered as a bona fide flop. Sure, 80% of new product launches fail, but sometimes things fail so publicly and so embarrassingly that we have no choice other than to mock it profusely with the added and unfair hindsight retrovision of 20/20.

In some cases, these were actual viable inventions and ideas that for some reason or another either failed to take off or suffered misguided marketing strategies. Whatever the reason, these flops were the original Fail (yes, with a capital F.)

This handy example of incredibly adorable failure brought to you by the ever-reliable failblog.org

Minidiscs


Technology is a funny thing. You never really know toward which direction the tides of public opinion will gravitate. At one moment, your new technological innovation seems poised for greatness and the next, well, they're using your product to line litter boxes and horse corrals. Something that seemed like such a great idea at the moment of conception can fail to ever pick up real speed with consumers.

The Sony Minidisc is the perfect example. Looking at one now, it appears semi-ridiculously to resemble a shrinky-dinked (shrinky dunk?) compact disc. In 1992, Sony had confidence that the minidisc was the technology to overtake the scratchy quality audiocassette market. Sony was all hyped up on residual gloating from their success in their Walkman venture, and was certain that their expensive technology (around $550 for a player, $750 for one with recording capabilities) would immediately fill the void of The Next Big Thing.

While the product itself certainly had its technological brag points, Sony failed to consider that the young musically-minded generation they were targeting did not generally posess the necessary capital means to buy it. In short: it was way out of the reach of young people's budgets, and its unfortunate release timing collided poorly with the rise of CDs. Then again, now that the CD market is nearly obsolete itself, it's not looking too sunny on that front either, so no one really wins. Okay, except maybe Apple and their 200 million iPods sold. Touche, Apple.



McDonald's Arch Deluxe

Please allow me to point out the numerous ways in which this diagram is riddled with contradictions. 1. How can a bun be defined both homestyle and bakery? How, I ask you? 2. If the sauce is so secret, how come you just told me what was in it? 3. How exactly does ketchup become "extra fancy?" Does each packet come with a miniature bowtie and monocle?

In 1996, fast food giant McDonald's felt they needed a makeover. No, they weren't seeking to cut back on use of fatty oils and unhealthy ingredients; rather, they wanted to better target an "adult" audience (I'm not exactly sure why those quotation marks are there, I assume they indicate McD's was suffering from too many cash-toting toddlers stopping in for burgers or they felt they weren't reaching their selling potential with adult film stars.) Its tagline was "Arch Deluxe: The Burger with the Grown-Up Taste."

In this case, this vague age demographic failed to recognize any value in differentiating their burgers from those that came in a colorful cardboard Happy Meals carton. There was a major commercial push to corner this so-called grown-up market, but the critical level of demand was not necessarily present. As if pouring buckets of ill-fated cash into an irrelevant and unnecessary product weren't enough, McDonald's also felt that their adult consumer base wanted (again, where they got this data, I do not know) a more sophisticated ad campaign. No more Grimace and Hamburglers for these high-class burger buyers.

These ads, however, were misguided attempts to distinguish the AD as catered to a mature palate. The TV spots featured children poking at the supposedly premier ingredients, commenting with bewilderment, "I don't get it," and referring to the burger in question as "yucky." Well played, McDonalds. Everyone knows a sophisticated adult loves for their food to be publicly declared inedible. Well played indeed.




OK Soda



Another tragic victim of unconventional advertising techniques and hazy target demographics, OK soda was a short-lived beverage experiment executed by the Coca-Cola company in 1994. The best part of the whole thing is that they went with the ad guy from the New Coke campaign. I guess they really, really, really liked this guy, because he already cost them millions of dollars in failed marketing. I imagine the Coke execs seated around the conference room table and musing, "Well, he's a good guy, let's give him another shot. Financial and publicity disaster aside, I always thought he did something pretty special for us here at the Coca-Cola company."

OK Soda was a sort of existential experiment into youth marketing. Youth Culture--particularly in the moody, grungy mid 90s--was by design inherently opposed to mainstream attempts to lure them in via hackneyed advertising strategies. The Coke marketers thought that since irony was so in at the moment, they would just overtly court the teen market in a completely unsubtle, overstated way. They even had an 800-number to which angsty teens could call in and leave deadpan, disillusioned messages which could someday be mainstreamed into a national commercial, virtually cancelling out any Generation X-style irreverent credibility of the caller.




Unfortunately for Coca-Cola, young people are usually smarter than adults give them credit for. I suppose only the coolest of the cool teenagers would have liked OK Soda on the multi-layered levels of irony that your average teen poseur failed to comprehend. That is, it's ironic to actually like the thing that adults are trying so hard to make into something ironic, which is ironic in itself. Then again, 90s teens were generally misinformed on the actual meaning of irony, as Alanis Morrisette had given them zero examples of it in her song "Ironic". Which is also ironic. Don't you think?



Microsoft WebTV



Not as well-remembered as the others, WebTV was once on the verge of being the next major entertainment technology leap. Don't let the name fool you based on your current knowledge and context of the internet: Web TV was not TV on your computer. Instead, it was computer (well, internet) on your TV.

In the late 90s, some tech giants (namely Microsoft, who acquired WebTV in a $425 million deal) believed that all that people really wanted was to check emails and browse online on their living room TV sets. The theory behind WebTV was partially derived from the same dumbed-down message you see today in those Jitterbug-brand cell phone service commercials. It's based on the notion that certain (read: old) people are frightened of new and unfamiliar technology and it has to be somehow brought down to their technologically-illiterate level.

This is, in theory, a viable marketing concept with a real, defined demographic. However, the tiny aspect Microsoft overlooked is that these people were not suddenly going to flourish on internet-shopping, banner ad-clicking, viable members of the web community. Instead, they actually became a tedious burden of call-center nightmares who failed to comprehend even the most basic of troubleshooting strategies. Then again, what did they expect? These people were used to their TVs being TVs, not computers.



So to these formerly flopping companies, we salute you for your misguidedness. Despite the relatively low long-term economic impact, these flops speak loudly to the unsavory expectations that these corporations had of us as consumers of the 90s as needlessly spending, sophisticated-burger craving, quadruply ironic, technologically deficient simpletons.

Lucky for us, most of these expectations turned out to be false, but it never hurts to get retrospectively outraged and insulted from time to time. If only Coca-Cola had maintained their 1-800-IFEELOK hotline so we'd all have a place to express it.


In case you thought I had somehow forgotten the epic failure of Crystal Pepsi, fear not: I have already devoted a full-length rant-filled post to it. Peruse at your leisure.

Breaking 90s News: Saved by the Bell Reunion on the Horizon?

Image via break.com

On Monday evening, Mark-Paul Gosselaar (my favorite dual-apostle named 90s star) appeared on Jimmy Fallon's late night talk show in full Zach Morris get-up, blond wig and all. You have to admire his ability to stay in character when that character was retired a decade and a half earlier. Despite a few easily botox-able forehead lines, you would swear we were back in 1992 watching Zach address the audience by speaking directly into the camera, calling a time-out and freezing his surroundings, and belting out Zach Attack's "Friends Forever" with the Roots.

Gosselaar even pulled out his trademark oversized first-generation cell phone to confirm Jessie Spano wanted to get in on the action. Just when it seemed this franchise had been milked for all it was worth, it seems possible a reunion could be in store.

So the question is, will his castmates set aside their undeserved pride and so-called artistic integrity? It's tough to follow up presitigious roles like EXTRA host and being completely unlikeable on Celebrity Fit Club. Hell, Ed Alonzo (magician Max of The Max) was a performer on my cruise ship a few years back, so I can't imagine these former Baysiders' agents' phones are ringing off their respective hooks.

While I'm not much of a Fallon fan, I certainly admire his commitment to restoring early 90s excellence in cheesy television programming. As long as I don't have to watch Gosselaar's new TNT lawyer drama (I'm generally opposed any MPG brunet roles on principle), we should be golden.





Check it out:
MTV article about MPG's appearance
Starpulse's follow-up interview with MPG