Memorable Late 80s and Early 90s Board Games

All images via boardgamegeek.com

In the 80s and 90s, a funny thing happened. While classic boardgames and their reformulations still reigned supreme, things got a little experimental down at the ol' toy production offices. It seemed as if any and every idea that anyone had ever conceived in a bout of confusion or insanity could be swiftly and cleanly (sort of) translated into a game soon available for purchase at your local toy store.

Some of these ideas were more innovative than others, implementing newfound technologies and novelties into a board game concept. Others erred slightly on this side of lazy. Either way, children consumed them with relatively equal enthusiasm and zeal. Put it in a commercial during Saturday morning cartoons or a block of solid Nickelodeon programming and it's nearly inevitable that kids will go begging for it.

Here are just a few of the crazy ideas that inexplicably came to fruition from the late 80s to early 90s. Don't say I didn't warn you--some of these commercial jingles can lodge themselves pretty firmly in your brains.


Thin Ice



Not to be confused by its 1968 ice-breaking board game predecessor Don't Break the Ice, Thin Ice used indefinitely cheaper materials. For one, instead of solid, sturdy ice blocks, we were dealing with a flimsy piece of Kleenex. That's right, every box of Thin Ice came complete with a little pocket pack of facial tissues.

The game set-up involved two stacked rings, one a water-filled marble chamber and the other the home of the tightly-stretched tissue. Using comically oversized tweezers (designed to look like Eskimos, if that makes any sense to you), the players would take turns taking a water soaked marble from the lower chamber and gently placing the dripping sphere onto the tissue layer. The player for whom the tissue breaks is the loser, meaning winning really only takes place by default. It was sort of like Jenga, only completely different and involving a soggy Kleenex cleanup component.

The commercial jingle was pretty baffling as it featured an incompatible surf-themed tune. There was no attempt to connect or cover for the disparity between the jingle and the premise of the game. We were left to ponder it along with our parents, who wondered why they could have saved their fifteen bucks and simply given us their old marbles and a pack of soggy tissues.




Monster Mash



You can't rag on these games for lack of creativity. Lack of common sense and grounding in reality, perhaps, but creativity and innovation was certainly present. Monster Mash was actually a fairly clever game, complete with a newfangled "monster maker" apparatus. Simply depress the button on the top of the monster maker, and the eye, mouth, and body images would shuffle quickly, producing numerous varieties of cuddly purple monster.



Each of these monster formulations had an image on a corresponding playing card, laid out on the floor in front of the players. Each player had a hand shaped suction cup-tipped "thwacker" (yep, a thwacker) with which to slap (well, thwack) cards. In each turn, a player would press the button on the monster maker and it would jumble the images to produce a novel monster. The first player to secure the appropriately matching monster card with their thwacker wins the round. The player with the most cards at the end of the game wins! Crazy, no?

I was able to finagle the original 1987 ad but as usual with these late-80s games, the quality is admittedly poor. Very poor. You can definitely gather the overall memory-jogging idea of it, though:




Shark Attack



Mm, nothing like terrifying children with crazy-eyed, enormously toothed killing machines. Actually, the automated shark was pretty slow-moving, but the suspense was definitely there. Back that baby up with some of that Jaws theme music and prepare to see some serious shark-induced tears.

The game was fairly simple. At the outset, each player selected an adorable little fishy that more likely than not would end up as cruelly chomped shark grub by the end of the gameplay. The game included dice with colored dots on each face representing a colored fish. When your color came up, you were allowed to move your fish a measly one spot out of the reach of the hungry, laboriously circling shark. The last fish left uneaten wins. I'm going to go out on a limb here and venture that this game ended in tears for many of its youngest players.

The commercial features a predictably annoying jingle with prime cheesy 90s lyrics:




Pizza Party



Introduced in 1987, Pizza Party was a new spin on the classic Memory game. The concept seemed to rest on two simple but undeniable truths about children: they have an undying love for both delicious pizza and goofy anthropomorphic characters. Slap a face on that mushroom, a sly grin for your pepperoni, and kids will eat it up. Hopefully not literally as the pieces were made of cardboard, but I'm not going to say I haven't seen it tried.

The object of the game was to be the first player to successfully fill your entire slice with a single topping by selecting by memory from upside-down toppings in the center of the gameplay. Ah, to teach children the joy of monotony and...what's the opposite of diversity? University? That doesn't seem right. I may have to get back to you on that one.

In the above picture, the full pizza is assembled in all of its delicious board game glory. I personally always thought the pepperoni and the mushroom sort of had something going on, what, with all those flirtatious sidelong glances. Regardless of inter-topping romances, the game was probably best remembered for having an incredibly irritating, repetitive jingle. Though YouTube and its retrocentric users have failed to provide me with any high quality footage, someone did helpfully upload the video taped off of their TV. Please excuse the quality. Of the picture, that is, that jingle comes through loud and clear and is certainly inexcusable.





Grape Escape



You have to love the tagline: "The squish 'em, squash 'em, squoosh 'em game!" Perhaps somehow vaguely linked to the wine-making experience, Grape Escape features pliable clay grapes attempting to make it through the game without meeting certain grape fate at any number of grape torture stations. The game came complete with different colors of clay to denote different players and adorable chubby grape molds with which to form your game piece. If your grape was smushed, you had to form a new grape and start from the beginning.

The object and premise of the game are pretty shaky, but it wisely banks on the notion that children garner pleasure from destruction and mayhem. It probably didn't do a whole lot for conscience-building, but then again they were only play-doh grapes. A little overzealous masochism never hurt anyone. Right?

The over-the-top reactions of the children of the commercial are truly priceless:



The game is also admittedly; similar in concept and materials to its fellow 90s morbid clay-squashing game, Splat!:




So there you have it. While the late 80s and early 90s board game producers were not necessarily churning out the most educational and thought-provoking of board games, they certainly demonstrated that they had a knack for understanding children. Mayhem, destruction, being eaten, slapping things, eating oily foods...they had our number all right. Perhaps it's not the most flattering reflection of our generation, but we certainly had a good time.

Happy Independence Day, Children of the 90s

Image via CafePress.com

I hope all you children of the 90s are out there enjoying your 4th of July weekend. And to all of my non-American readers, I hope you're enjoying our ethnocentric view of the world. Still going strong.

In the spirit of US Independence day, I present to you the following clip from the 1996 blockbuster hit, Independence Day. Let's just hope this July 4th goes a bit better than that one.



What a great tie-in, right? Too bad President Bill Pullman's prophecy of July 4th becoming a world-wide celebration of independence from tyranny and oppression didn't come to fruition. Then again, we never had to battle evil aliens. I guess all in all, it's sort of a wash.


If that's not enough of a 90s fix to hold you over until Monday's full post, then by all means please enjoy this clip from Eddie Izzard's 1998 show, Dress to Kill. It's one of my favorites. Though it doesn't speak to independence per se, he does teach Americans a thing or two about their own gloriously self-serving colonialism.*



Have a great weekend, everyone!



*Sure, if we want to splice atoms here, those colonists were technically British at the time. However, as I once taught high school AP US History, I give myself a free pass on factual bendiness. It came with my teaching certificate.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School Books

Children have a certain knack for appreciating the bizarre and unusual. While adults are quick to question and doubt, children have always embraced the silliness with open arms. That's probably why looking back fondly at the oddball books and cartoons that used to entertain us often reveals them to be totally and completely insane.

The Wayside School series by Louis Sachar is a prime example of this type of endearing strangeness. While our adult selves may wonder what sort of drugs he was taking and where we can get some, our inner (well, at the time, outer) children lapped up his unending creativity and originality. To kids, things don't need to make sense. Not everything requires a logical explanation. Things can be zany, wacky, madcap, and other corny adjectives as well.

Wayside School was certainly a place all its own. Built sideways, the school mistakenly ended up with 30 floors with one classroom each rather than one floor with 30 classrooms. There is, however, no 19th story. In Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Chapter 19 reads: "19. Miss Zarves---There is no Miss Zarves. There is no nineteenth story. Sorry."


In the introduction to Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Sachar helpfully offers:

"It has been said that these stories are strange and silly. That is probably true. However, when I told stories about you to the children at Wayside, they thought you were strange and silly. That is probably also true."

As a child, I was fully sold after reading that introduction. In my book (yet to be published, nowhere near the towering fame of Wayside School), Louis Sachar was a brilliant author. He truly tapped in to the way kids think, and threw it back at any adults that may be reading along with tongue-in-cheek humor that could be enjoyed by readers of all ages. The overall message was, yes, these stories are completely absurd, but we're all strange in our own ways. Silliness should be celebrated, not repressed. After all, that's what makes kids kids. Otherwise they'd be adults, who we all know to be terribly dull and boring.




The first installment of the Wayside School books was published in 1978, meaning an expansive 11 years passed between release of the first and second books*. For condensation (in time, not moisture) and relevance's sake, let's delve into the 1989 title Wayside School is Falling Down. As the book is made of 30 loosely interconnected chapter, I have chosen a few to share with you today. I've even thrown in a handy "moral of the story" to enhance the story's applicability to you today:


Chapter 1: A Package for Mrs. Jewls

Thank heaven for kindly, sweet-faced Mrs. Jewls who replaced the tyrannical Mrs. Gorf in the original Sideways Stories. Mrs. Gorf had a penchant for zapping children into apples, so pretty much anyone below the meanness threshold of fascist dictator would have been welcomed graciously. Sure, Mrs. Jewls thought they were all monkeys for awhile, but overall she meant pretty well. For an inane fictional character, that is.

In "A Package for Mrs. Jewls", Louis the yard teacher claims to be Mrs. Jewls and accepts a package on her behalf. It should probably be noted that that Sachar neatly inserted himself into the stories, basing the Louis character on his own experiences as a playground teacher. Anyway, so this amalgam of the real and fictional Louises takes special care with the package as it is marked with numerous warnings of fragility. After lugging the enormous box up thirty flights of stairs, Louis breathlessly opens the box to reveal a shiny new computer.

The kids whine and resist, saying that the computer will speed up their learning and make more work for them. Mrs. Jewls objects, saying the computer will help them learn. She proceeds to push the computer out the window. After it smashes violently to the ground, she announces "That's Gravity!"

Moral of the story: If you're having a rough day at work, perhaps your office-mates would enjoy a good lesson in gravity. After you've read your daily installment of Children of the 90s, of course.

The real Louis (author Louise Sachar), who we can only assume has never carried a computer up 30 flights of stairs. Image via randomhouse.com

2. Mark Miller

Benjamin Nushmutt is a new student joining the wacky thirtieth floor class. Without provocation or just cause, Mrs. Jewls incorrectly introduces Benjamin as Mark Miller. Too timid to correct a teacher, Benjamin/Mark lets it slide. Unfortunately, by the time Benjamin musters the courage he is afraid she'll think him strange for not pointing out the mistake sooner. Benjamin adjusts to being called Mark and assumes the Mark Miller persona. Later in the book his efforts to come clean about his real name are acutely thwarted, though we do eventually meet the real Mark Miller.

Moral of the story: When you tire of your current personality, feel free to try another on for size. Particularly if you have a last name with the non-musical garblings of Nushmutt.



3. A Bad Case of the Sillies/A Wonderful Teacher

In these two stories, Allison (the only seemingly normal child at Wayside) mysteriously finds herself on the nonexistent nineteenth floor, home of Mrs. Zarves' classroom. Mrs. Zarves even-crazier students consist of Virginia (a 30-something who has never heard of a bathroom), teenage Nick, Ray Gunn (Bebe's made-up little brother), a cow, and the real Mark Miller. Unluckily for Mark Miller, everyone inexplicably keeps calling him Benjamin Nushmutt.


Moral of the story: If Seinfeld can have Bizarro Jerry, Benjamin Nushmutt can certainly have his Mark Miller. You may now freely assume that you too have a perfect opposite/evil twin somewhere out there.


4. Mush

Miss Mush is Wayside's school cook, whose most popular dish ("nothing") is in such high demand that she is always running out of it. She prepares her signature Mushroom Surprise, though no one knows exactly what the surprise is. The only person who ever eats Mushroom Surprise is Louis. Ron mans up and takes a bite, only to find that the surprise is that you immediately fall in love with the first person you see. Surprise! It's his teacher.

Moral of the story: If you ever are dining out and happen to run into JTT or Britney Spear circa 1999, feel free to dish out the Mushroom Surprise. You won't regret it. Unless, of course, it turns out to be Britney circa 2008. Then you're pretty SOL.



Who says reading for enjoyment can't be educational? The next time you hear someone make a statement like that, simply take a page from the Wayside books and call them a mugworm griblick. That'll show 'em.


*The series also includes the equally humorous 1995 Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger, which is totally worthy of a full-scale examination that I don't have the time or space to provide.


*Oh, and they recently made a Wayside TV series that I'm sure if I watched, my imagination would automatically shrivel, die, and retreat. Hence it will not be covered in this post


Ooh! Read some Wayside Stories online with Google Books!

Sideways Stories

Wayside School is Falling Down

Wayside School Gets a Little Stranger

From Humble Beginnings: Before They Were (Animated) Stars

A funny thing happened to cartoons in the 90s. While once relegated exclusively for the mindless enjoyment of children, in the 1990s a new breed of animated series emerged with decidedly adult content. TV producers took the basic premise of the animated series and morphed it into a viable means of conveying grown-up themes and humor. These weren't your mother's cartoons. Or perhaps more accurately, they were.

Adult-geared cartoons flourished, and many of these series had long and fruitful runs far outstripping their initial potential. In fact, some of these shows continue to churn out new episodes today, though their adherence to original standards is ultimately questionable. Mind you, what we are about to delve into is a brief smattering of 90s adult cartoons and is by no means intended to represent the full canon. It does, however, represent part of the spark of the novel idea.

Nowadays, blocks of grown-up-geared cartoons air frequently on FOX or Cartoon Network's Adult Swim; if anything, the concept has gotten a smidgen tired. Back in the mid-to-late 90s, however, the concept was but a twinkle in the animators' eyes. The idea was just beginning to bud, and the craftsmanship was at best on the shoddy side. The underlying goal, however, was solid: to bring entertainment to an older audience using animation. Depending on your age at the time of their release. you may have enjoyed or misunderstood these cartoons. Either way, I think we can all agree that a lot has changed since their initial episodes.




The Simpsons

The Simpsons premiered on the Tracey Ullman Show in 1987, though its format was far from the smoothly drawn HD-TV Simpsons of today. The Simpsons began as a series of one-minute shorts focusing on a decidedly dysfunctional family.

Observe, the 16th short from the Tracey Ullman Show:



Sure, it's mildly amusing, but it's hard to believe that this meager offering evolved into a monstrous franchise spanning over 20 years. Obviously the Simpsons had a long way to go before achieving its immense popularity. Incredibly, all of the main character's original voice actors continue to perform their same roles. How's that for job security?




South Park

Though nowhere near as long-running as The Simpsons, South Park still boasts cartoon longevity running on its 13th season. When it premiered on Comedy Central in 1997, it was received as crude, juvenile, foul-mouthed, and dark. Critics noted the sharp contrast between the cute, innocent appearance of the characters and the filth that emanated from their poorly animated mouths. South Park was the first weekly TV series to receive the TV-MA rating, indicating it's intention of reaching mature audiences only. Depending on your definition of mature, this maturity was definitely open to interpretation.

In 1992, Matt Stone and Trey Parker produced the first ever South Park Short, The Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs. Frosty. The film was presented at a student student film screening at their then-place of higher learning, University of Colorado. Though very, very rudimentary, the characters are shockingly similar to their current forms. They even have a "Oh my God! You killed Kenny!" sequence, only the Kenny in question later becomes the episodic Cartman.


Spirit of Christmas: Jesus vs. Frosty:


In 1995, with a slightly bigger budget, Stone and Parker produced a second Christmas short at the personal request of a FOX executive. It soon became one of the first viral videos, eventually catching the attention of Comedy central and prompting the initial discussion of the series.

The Spirit of Christmas, 1995 version: Jesus vs. Santa:


The actual pilot episode (shown below in its entirety, if you're into that kind of thing) is entitled "Cartman Gets an Anal Probe." Cute, right? Though many of us would hardly bat an eye over this today, at the time of its release it was pretty envelope-pushing.


more movies at www.miloop.com




Family Guy

I'm sure I'll be burned at the proverbial stake for my heathenry, but I am ready to admit that I have lost interest in the new Family Guy episodes as of late. Pardon me for not worshiping at the feet of the great MacFarlane, but I don't find it particularly funny anymore. It's gotten so gimmicky, it's forgotten its initial, truer, lighter gimmickiness. Okay, so maybe that's a bit confusing, but I promise there is some sort of sense buried in that statement somewhere. After all, I used to be a pretty dedicated fan during the DVD era.

Family Guy is a series that has been through innumerable phases and reformulations. In fact, the animated short that eventually became the series was not Family Guy at all but rather The Life of Larry. Life of Larry featured a slovenly middle-aged man named Larry, his wife Lois (I think we can all see where this is going), his son Milt, and his talking dog Steve. If you watch the short below, you'll see that the animation and character style is distinctly different, but the jokes do get recycled into later Family Guy episodes. I guess some jokes are just too good to waste.


Life of Larry (1995):

I will admit I find it pretty funny when Seth MacFarlane says, "Oh, hi there. You scared the crap out of me."

MacFarlane created a second Larry short, Larry and Steve, for Cartoon Network a year or so later:



The Family Guy pilot came a few years later (see clip below). If you're a fan, you may recognize it as a more crappily-animated version (with a few differences) of the 1999 premiere episode, Death Has a Shadow. As you can probably gather, the characters and flow differ pretty significantly from the current version:









Futurama

From the creators of the Simpsons, Futurama was a satirical science-fiction cartoon focusing on the life of Fry, a nebbishy pizza delivery guy who falls into a cryogenic freezer in 1999 only to be revived in the year 3000. Let me just clarify that Fry deserves our utmost 90s respect as he is voiced by Billy West, the man who brought us Doug Funnie, Roger Klotz, Stimpy, and the voices of Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd in Space Jam. Now that's a 90s resume right there.

Fry and his distant relative Professor Farnsworth (along their robot, alien, and mutant misfit friends) start a shipping company called Planet Express. Over 2000 years, Fry evolved from delivery guy to...delivery guy. What a journey. The pilot is very set-up heavy as the premise of the show is fairly complicated, but if you stuck with it for awhile there were certainly payoffs. Now is probably also a good time to mention that Comedy Central recently ordered 26 new episodes of Futurama set to air in 2010. Set your phone calendar alarms, people, this is going to be big.

Clip from Space Pilot 3000, the Futurama pilot episode:






Daria

I know, I know, Daria was aimed at teens more than adults, but as my favorite cartoon ever I've made the executive decision to place it on this master list. I was in middle school and high school during Daria's run and just toeing the waters of sarcasm, so Daria really spoke to me on an "it's okay to be irreverent, rude, and brutally honest" kind of way. In short, Daria was my kind of girl, though significantly ballsier and more anti-social.

Or rather, in long. In the full-length episodes, we get a well-rounded picture of Daria with all of her character traits and flaws. In the pilot short, however, we get just an eensy taste of the sarcasm to come. As the Daria character premiered on Beavis and Butthead, the pilot short represented the transition from secondary character to star of the show. The show's creator's wanted to pitch the Daria series as completely separate from the juvenile lowbrow humor of B&B and thus sought to emphasize Daria's more biting wit and intelligence in the short. It's by no means as fleshed-out as the actual series (both literally and figuratively, as the pilot was done with crude animation in black and white), but you can gather the general idea:




The 90s showed us that animation geared toward more mature (age-wise) audiences was both a viable and worthwhile enterprise. You have to admire the enduring nature of these series: South Park and The Simpsons are still on the air, and Futurama and Family Guy both did so well in DVD sales and syndication that they were revived from the depths of cancellation hell. Now if only Viacom would see fit to release the Daria* DVDs, all would be right in the 90s cartoon world.


Hint: You can, however, watch the episodes online here. Just between you and me.

Magic Nursery Dolls

Disclaimer: To all of you male readers out there, I promise there will be some chest-thumpingly testosterone-filled posts coming up soon. I assure you, it's not all baby dolls and flounce here at Children of the 90s. Some brusque masculinity will be coming right up, pronto.

Magically, the Puppy Surprise post from a few days back garnered so much unprompted discussion of Magic Nursery Babies that I felt compelled to further examine their existence in their very own full-length post. See? You spoke, I listened. It's fun how it works like that. Unless I don't like your idea, that is. Luckily, though, this one is a winner. Bravo, readers. Bravo.

In toy production as in warfare, your most important strategy is the element of surprise. If the surprise can involve some scale of sorcery, well, then all the better. Children's awe and amazement is fairly easy to obtain: simply present to them something that defies their expectations, and wait for the temper tantrums begging parental spending to begin.

In 1990, the Mattel Corporation had a few such magic tricks up its sleeve with which to woo both children and toy retailers alike. Behold, from a 1990 New York Times article on the great unveil of Magic Nursery Babies at a retailer toy fair:

"With a wave of her silver wand, a fairy princess wearing a sparkling pink gown and tiara opened the mirrored portal known as the Magic Door. Inside was the Magic Nursery, a room decorated in spare-no-expense style, with soft lighting, plush pink carpeting and white lace."

In the center of the room stood a group of about a dozen middle-age men, all dressed in dark business suits. Like a religious sect reciting ancient prayers, they were chanting in a deep, solemn tone.

''Love is magic,'' they said in unison. ''Love is magic. Love is magic.''

[. . .]The group in the Magic Nursery was watching a demonstration of Mattel Toys' Magic Nursery doll, one of more than 6,000 new toys on display. As the men obeyed a saleswoman's command to keep up their chant, they stared at a baby doll's dressing gown that had been immersed in a bowl of water. Suddenly, the gown vanished, leaving behind a waterproof bag containing a frilly dress for the doll. The retailers erupted with ''oohs'' and ''aahs,'' responses that hovering Mattel executives hoped would translate into signatures on order forms."

While usually I enjoy speculating on what tipping point of craziness put ridiculous 90s toys on the shelves, in this case I don't have to. This is an actual account of the initial Magic Nursery Baby demonstration. Let me be the first to say, this is absolutely insane. There, I said it. Middle-aged men in business suits chanting cultishly, "Love is magic" is above and beyond any absurd toy pitches I could have dreamed up. I admit, the trick is pretty impressive, but the chanting errs on the side of totally and irrepressibly creepy.

"Love is magic," was the mantra of the Magic Nursery Babies. According to Mattel lore, if you chanted this mysterious incantation while swirling your doll's dressing gown in water, you could conjure an informative packet containing valuable and pertinent information about your latest doll acquistion. Oh, and an outfit! Mainly an outfit. See for yourself:

I especially love the little girl who hugs the baby doll maniacally, exclaiming, "I'm your magic nursery mommy!" Her level of enthusiasm troubles me. Also, does anyone else as an adult get a little creeped out when they say, "Let's find out!" and begin undressing it? I do sort of like the implication that the only thing differentiating a boy or girl baby is hair and a dress, though.

Just imagine, in the late 80s teams of researches and scientists slaved laboriously over Bunsen burners and graduated cylinders. They worked tirelessly to formulate the chemical reactions necessary to bring us these Magic Nursery Babies. The country's best and brightest weren't all tied up researching vaccines and medical treatments; some were churning out dissoluble baby doll dressing gowns. While their peers were out there, day after day, bettering mankind, these guys really wanted to focus more on doll cheeks that responded to kisses. You know. For the kids.

I will be the first to concede that the trick is undeniably impressive. How do they do it? Where are they hiding this mysterious packet, and how does this sinkful of water unlock this mystery? The details are pretty hazy, but the response was clear. Children loved them. They could not get enough. Better yet for Mattel, kids had no inkling as to whether their doll was to be a boy or a girl. Hence 50% of the time, the kids wouldn't get what they wanted. Even if, say, only 30% of parents are complete suckers, it's still a 30% increase in return customers to appease screaming children.

The baby's gender was not the only surprise the Magic Nursery had in store for us. Additionally, we all had a one-in-thirty-six chance of our baby being a twin. Let me repeat that. A one-in-thirty-six-chance. Those are terrible, terrible odds. Either way, we were all fairly certain that when push came to shove, we'd probably be getting a twin. Unfortunately for our parents, most of us were very wrong.




Also, the twin thing was pretty anticlimactic. Your dissolving dressing gown's resultant packet would proclaim your baby twinned, and you could fill out a form and send it into the manufacturer, wait 8-10 business days from point of receipt, and eventually receive a second doll by mail. Children, by nature, are not especially patient creatures. By the time that twin gets there, it's pretty likely they'll already have abandoned its brother or sister in favor of a new toy.

Mattel must have known our enchantment with these babies (under the "Love is Magic" spell) wouldn't last forever, and quickly shoved into production other Magic Nursery Prototypes:



Magic Nursery Pets were pretty much the same thing, only with animals and a condensed TV commercial time slot. I imagine these were slightly confusing to children, though, as they imply that the only thing differentiating one animal from another is its ears. Somewhere down the road, one of these Magic Nursery Pet-owning kids will be in a biology lesson on evolution, raise her hand and ask bewilderedly, "But what about the ear pulling? Where does that factor in?"

Later incarnations brought forth a new slew of tricks: babies with eyes that open or close when ice cubes or warm water was applied, twins or triplets that could be bought as sets, "my first haircut", a choice of newborn or toddler dolls. Even with the newer models, these dolls were essentially one-trick ponies. The most exciting part happened when the doll was first opened, meaning everything from that point on was sort of a letdown. Either way, that one magical moment of swirling the dress in water and chanting, "Love is Magic", was pretty impressive, whether to a child or room full of middle-aged businessmen.

Mrs. Doubtfire

Sometimes, we have to give credit where credit is due. Some feats are so trying with such apparently insurmountable obstacles that their ultimate achievers deserve the utmost in respect and recognition. Thus was the case of transforming the hairiest man in the world into a moderately convincing elderly British woman. In the words of one of Robin Williams' on-screen transformers, "The man has a five o'clock shadow at 8:30 am." These makeup people and professional arm waxers certainly deserve their due.

Mrs. Doubtfire, based on the 1993 novel Madame Doubtfire, was an ambitious undertaking. Sure, audiences had eaten up Tootsie a decade before and publicly declared their love for movies starring cross-dressing men, but you know what they say: it's a hell of a lot easier to turn Dustin Hoffman into a woman than it is with Robin Williams. Though the two movies invite obvious comparisons, Mrs. Doubtfire separated itself in a major way by marketing to children. Sure, a man in drag is funny, but a man in drag to children is hilarious. Well played, director Chris Columbus. Well played indeed.






The movie is one for which audiences were willing and eager to suspend their disbelief and allow themselves to get caught up in the touchy-feely heartwarmingness of it all. We can all recognize that the plot is absurd and unrealistic, but that's why it's a movie. There's no "based on a true story" anywhere about it. It's based on a fictional story. It doesn't have to be real. It just has to be entertaining.

Cresting the wave of popularity of William's voice acting successes in animated films such as Aladdin and Fern Gully, Mrs. Doubtfire's opening scene depicts Williams (as Daniel Hillard) doing in-studio voice-over work for an animated short. Though his performance as a opera-singing caged bird is near-inspired, he clashes with the creative director and leaves the set, thus severing ties with gainful employment.

Largely unaffected by this minor hiccup, Daniel defies his wife's wishes and throws his son (played by Matthew Lawrence) a crazy 12th birthday bash, complete with full zoo and other reckless means of child enjoyment. Daniel's wife Miranda (Sally Fields) comes home to find the house a mob scene, with everyone jumping around to that House of Pain song. Tired of being the bad-cop to Daniel's super-fun cop, Miranda asks for a divorce. Due to his flaky employment and lack of steady income, the judge allows Daniel the miniature visitation time slot of Saturday evenings. Needless to say, Daniel is pretty bummed.

Lucky for us viewers, this sad sack-ness doesn't last for long and antics quickly escalate into insane debauchery. Daniel learns that his ex-wife is seeking a housekeeper and is insulted that he can't be trusted to care for his kids. Instead of handling this in a rational, adult way, Daniel goes for the crazy, voice-talent approach. He intercepts Miranda's newspaper ad and changes the phone number to ward off legitimate inquiries from qualified housekeepers, and proceeds to call Miranda numerous times with different frustrating-inducing traits. Eventually he calls in as the soothingly sweet and highly qualified Mrs. Doubtfire, pilfering the name from a newspaper headline ("Police Doubt Fire Was Accidental").

What happens next can only be described as a clinically, almost criminally insane quest for Daniel to disguise himself as a sweet old lady. In an extremely convenient plot point, Daniel's brother is actually some form of special-effects make-up guru who is just perfect for this job. Although he probably should have considered disguise options before committing to an interview, Daniel hastily retreats to his brother's home and asks, "Can you make me a woman?" His brother is more than happy to oblige, and also happy to waste mountains of time and expensive resources making him look like Barbara Streisand and other near-misses, purportedly for our pure entertainment value. They even through in some Fiddler on the Roof in a sequence where Williams appears dressed exactly like my grandmother in a rainstorm.

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His brother just happens to have all of the necessary accouterments on hand, right down to the jeweled Victorian brooch. Euphoric high fiving, hip-bumping, and chaotic dancing ensue, and Daniel's brother and his partner declare Daniel fit to convince his ex-wife and children that he's a 70-something English nanny full of worldly wisdom, nutritious cooking expertise, and disciplinary goodness.

Of course, requisite hilarity ensues in typical 90s montage fashion. All sorts of what-can-go-wrong-will-go-wrong situations unfold, such as the hilarious prosthetic-breasts-aflame-in-cooking-gone-awry moment. Unfortunately for Daniel, Miranda becomes smitten with her hunky co-worker (Pierce Brosnan). Sure, it's rough on him, but just try to tell me you could platonically share office space with James Bond without asking him to be the father of your children. Just try!

Image via ew.com

Daniel's son walks in on him in the bathroom, and is justifiably frightened to find that their sweet old lady housekeeper is actually a man. With his cover blown, Daniel 'fesses up to his son and older daughter and implores them to maintain the secret. Meanwhile, Daniel shows some on-air promise while goofing around at his crappy TV studio film-reel filing gig and his boss invites him to dinner to discuss potential opportunities. By pure cinematic coincidence, Miranda asks Mrs. Doubtfire to join the family and her beau at the exact same restaurant at the exact same time. I think we can all see where this is headed.

Obviously, instead of doing the grown-up thing and either a) lying to someone to change the conflicting plans or b) telling the truth, Daniel opts for elusive option c) attempt to change back and forth and eat two dinners as two different people at the same time. Obviously it goes amok, and Daniel's cover is blown as his disguise comes unglued and he is exposed as the father of all frauds. Or frauds of all fathers. Take your pick.

Daniel pleads his case in family court, but to no avail. In a singular sane moment of clarity, the judge revokes Daniel's custody and allows him only supervised visitation. Daniel is devastated, but somehow manages to pick up the broken shards of his life and relegate his creative energy into a new show, Aunt Euphegenia's House, starring himself as Mrs. Doubtfire. Miranda sees the show and in typical movie fashion, immediately reconsiders and allows joint visitation. It just goes to show you: if you're crazy enough to housekeep your children in drag but entertaining enough to bring that character to TV, everything will work out just fine. Really.

If that description was too long and unwieldy for your tastes, don't you worry your pretty little head about it. Someone (not me) put together this handy condensed version of the film. For your viewing and summarizing pleasure, Mrs. Doubtfire in under a minute flat:




Oh, and don't forget to tune in to the next installment of our multi-part series on mid-90s cross-dressing themed movies starring Robin Williams when we examine The Birdcage. What can I say? These were his drag queen years.

Children of the 90s One Hit Wonder Mash-Up: 1993

1993 was a highly varied year for one-hit wonders, with a great span of genres coming to the forefront of popular music. These songs ran the gamut from whiny to contemplative to club-thumping without skipping a beat (well, occasionally the club-thumping ones did, depending on the DJ).

Without further ado, the most memorable and enduring one-hit wonders of 1993:

I'm Gonna be (500 miles) (The Proclaimers)

proclaimers - I' m gonna be 500 Miles
Uploaded by jesus_lizard. - See the latest featured music videos.

Nothing's sexier than a guy with an accent. Unless, of course, it's two guys with accents. That look exactly alike. Oh, except if that accent is Scottish. I don't know about all of you, but I had to watch the movie Billy Elliot with subtitles. I've heard rumors it was in English, but I couldn't understand a damn word these Scots were saying. I suppose if you've got guys as lust-worthy as The Proclaimers, indecipherable accents aren't that important. After all, these sexpots sported the same eyeglass frames as my grandmother. Swoon!

Sure, they may not have been your typical young male pop act, but they certainly had some form of mesmerizing charm. Their uncanny ability to sing in perfect snappy staccato unison was a marvel all of its own. I didn't have to understand the words. I spent the next few years contemplating what exactly it would mean for them to haver to me. To this day. I'm still shaky on the definition. Okay, okay. I have no clue. But I can only imagine it's something to illustrate commitment in a manner relative to talking a 1000-mile stroll to fall down at my door. I'm pretty sure.

Insane in the Brain (Cypress Hill)

Cypress hill - insane in the brain - 1993
Uploaded by tetrax35. - Explore more music videos.

What better place to be insane? I really hate it when a rebellious knee or elbow of mine randomly asserts its psychoses and has to be restrained with mini straitjackets. No, the brain seems like a pretty fair location for insanity to flourish.

Cheap jokes aside, you've got to love that intro. The beat, the rap--they so shrewdly represent all that was fun and non-threatening about 90s hip hop. Also, imagine how many thugs learned such valuable biological terms as "membrane". Before this song's rise to one-hit wonderdom, people would have to refer to the location of their sanity in far vaguer terms. Following its peak, however, we could all pinpoint its whereabouts to the slightly mores specific "membrane". In the brain.

We also were exposed to such brilliant poetics as:

Like Louie Armstrong
Played the trumpet
Ill hit dat bong and break ya off something soon
I got ta get my props
Cops
Come and try to snatch my crops
These pigs wanna blow my house down
And underground to the next town
They get mad when they come to raid my pad
And I'm out in the night loose scared

Who doesn't love a good fable or fairy tale reference in their rap songs? Especially when referencing impromptu marijuana raids? Kudos to you, Cypress Hill. Kudos.


Blind Melon (No Rain)

Blind Melon - No Rain
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This is probably the first time I've ever really watched this video, and let me be the first to say that it's totally and completely insane. Everyone laughing at a tap-dancing young girl in a bee costume is undeniably a unique music video plot point. You can't accuse Blind Melon of unoriginality. In fact, their music video actually supposedly inspired Pearl Jam's song, Bee Girl. If your bizarre music video concept is enough to inspire contemplative odes, your concept is probably pretty compelling. Or crazy. Take your pick.

No Rain is an incredibly catchy song. I challenge you to listen to it the whole way through without being at the very least tempted to sing along. The music is so simple and repetitive that it actually manages to embed itself into your brain's cortical membrane (formerly the location of the above mentioned insanity. See Hill, Cypress.)

In 1993, I performed an ensemble tap dance to "Tea for Two" at my dance recital and was thus convinced that this song (due to its inclusion of the phrase "All I can do, is just pour some tea for two") was somehow related to the jazzy 1925 song from the then-hit musical No, No, Nanette. I swear, if you were 7 years old, it would make perfect sense to you to. A more thorough retrospective examination indicates this song is a lot darker than I'd originally surmised. I was also way off on the tea party quotient.


What is Love? (Haddaway)





Since we just reminisced about Night at the Roxbury a few days ago, it is certainly appropriate to take a look at its trademark tune. This is one of the most repetitive, irritating, can't-expel-from memory-even-if-you-had-one-of-those-Matrix-flashy-things songs in history. Sure, it's got a fun beat. The first time it loops. Then we get to hear it a staggering 50 more repetitions. By the end, it really gives one the urge to start vomiting Jock Jams CDs and sweating out cheap clubbing cologne to purge the song's memory from your system.

The Whoa-oh-oh-oh-ohh-oh-ohhh, oh-ohhh-oh-ohhh, ohhh-oh-ohhh, ohhhhhhhh part doesn't help, either.



What's Up? (4 Non Blondes)

Four non blondes - what's up
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The song's title really fails to do it justice. First of all, the phrase "what's up?" never comes up in the song's lyrics. Ever. Also, it brings to mind those painful oft-quoted Budweiser "WHAZZZZUP???" commercials. In all of their all-caps multiple-punctuational glory.

The general tone What's Up? was just south of Debbie Downer and only slightly north of Suicidal Susie:

Twenty - five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means
And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
Ooh, ooh ooh
And I try, oh my god do I try
I try all the time, in this institution
And I pray, oh my god do I pray
I pray every single day
For a revolution
And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar
And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?
And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
Twenty - five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

Talk about before its time; 4 Non-Blondes were the original emo. I'm just thankful I wasn't twenty-five at the time of its release and thus joining in on the contemplation of my life's lack of direction. The only revolution I was praying for was a coup against my tyrannical beginning-swim instructor.



Whoomp! There it is! (Tag Team)

Tag Team - Whoomp There It Is
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You have to be at least slightly endeared to a song that opens with a call to "Party People!" You've gotta admit, it sounds like a fun group. Something I would really like to be a part of. Other folks can have their quilting circles and bowling teams. I'm joining the Party People.

Funnily enough, the song was released a mere month after the group 95 South put out "Whoot! There it is." Yep. Whoot and Whoomp. Not only are we not especially original at coming up with titles, we're making up words to boot. I preferred the Tag Team song, particularly because I have a soft spot for responsive shouting in songs such as this:

Can you dig it?
We can dig it!
Can y'all dig it?
We can dig it!

I liked knowing when my part was coming up. It really made me feel a part of the song. Tag Team had sat down and though, "You know, little kids probably want to get in on this too. If we ask them a question, I'm sure they'd be more than happy to respond with a hearty exclamatory reply."


So there you have it. Perhaps these artists' careers didn't flourish much beyond these fleeting glimpses of success, but in the end it seems they have the last laugh. After all, you're probably going to be humming these songs all weekend long.

Michael Jackson, You Will be Missed

Regardless of your take on his personal life, it's undeniable that Michael Jackson was an immensely talented artist. The King of Pop deserved his title for his unending string of catchy, original hits spanning from the late 70s to mid 90s. Though his life became a complicated and unhappy one, he should certainly be recognized for his innumerable achievements. Unfortunately, we will never get to see his comeback tour. RIP, Michael Jackson. You will be missed.

I leave you with the video that once gave me weeks' worth of nightmares but I have since come to love. From the best-selling record of all time, Michael Jackson's Thriller. Feel free to dance along:

Michael Jackson - Thriller
Uploaded by hushhush112 - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

Puppy Surprise

What exactly about the birthing process do toy companies perceive to be so child-friendly? Aside from the fact that labor begets a child, that is. Children are both innocent and inquisitive, and parents have a hell of a time balancing those two conflicting natures without sadistic toy manufacturers coming in and mucking it up with biologically confusing playthings.

In the late 80s and early 90s, Hasbro came up with a glorious marketing scheme guaranteed to disappoint one in five children. "What if we had this animal doll," a Hasbro rep would suggest excitedly. "That has babies inside of it?" The guy at the head of the table would clasp and unclasp his hands, asking thoughtfully, "But how would the children extract the babies?"

A fine question indeed, guy at the head of the table. I'll tell you how. In a natural order-defying act of toy bizarreness, the good people of Hasbro developed a velcro-adhered pouch that children could simply open and close as they please. As you can imagine, this led to inevitable confusion about birthing. A whole slew of Puppy Surprise-toting kids spent years thinking that when you're done playing with a baby, you can simply shove it back into the womb. No problem here.

The "surprise" element of Puppy Surprise referred to the fact that the doll could contain three, four, or five puppies. Kids are fairly simple creatures, and are thus easy to persuade that more equals better. In fact, every child was convinced that as special as he or she was, it was only fair that their doll contained the maximum of five puppies. You can bet parents had a swell old time consoling these children when their doll (as most did) contained a scant three puppies.

Three puppies? Don't insult me, Hasbro. What can I do with three puppies? Five, now that's a fun toy. But three? Come on.



Note that sped-up fine-print speech at the end: "Puppy Surprise comes with three, four, or five baby puppies! One in five Mommy dolls comes with four or five puppy dolls." Luckily, children are terrible at math, or they'd realize they had a crappy 20% chance of achieving the maximum (or even silver medal) Puppy Surprise experience. They are, unfortunately, pretty adept at counting and thus are clearly aware when they are being cheated.

I remember a birthday party at which one of my classmates received a pink Puppy Surprise with five puppies. How was I supposed to compete with that when my spotty mommy doll had been significantly less fertile? This was the precise moment in a child's life when they learn that life is not fair. Luckily for parents, they also learn greed, envy, anger, and all sorts of other fun hard-to-quell negative behaviors. Thanks, Hasbro!

All images from here on out from the exhaustive http://timpersock.googlepages.com. I implore you to check it out. Really, I'll wait. It's the most incredibly exhaustive Hasbro Surprise toy site/shrine in existence. Enjoy!

Fortunately, if you struck out the first time, there were approximately one million alternative variations you could subsequently beg for to try your luck of the litter again. All dolls in the Surprise line had similar by-the-books adorableness achieved by the winning combination of hard plastic faces and soft, pliable bodies. The box assures us that each of our babies, just like us, are unique. Unlike us, their uniqueness is broadcast by a ribbon round the neck declaring the puppy to be of the male or female persuasion.


Hasbro churned out all variations of huggable Surprise creatures including Kitties, Bunnies, Bear Cub, and Pony. Conveniently, in Hasbro world all of these animals and their corresponding offspring were roughly the same size. Lucky for us, the fun didn't stop there! As the ever-competitive toy market necessitates, Hasbro had to milk this concept until the Mommy Surprise ran dry. Let's investigate some of the odder exploits Hasbro undertook in order to continually surprise us:

Drink n' Surprise.

To those of us now immersed in semi-adulthood, this sounds like a typical weekend. Back in the early 90s, however, you would have been far happier to wake up to this surprise the next morning. In this case, if you shoved a tiny bottle of water down your puppy's throat, you could be rewarded with a variable physical reaction. As the tag-line said, "Will your puppy drink n' wet or drink n' burp?" If only we so excitedly anticipated these outcomes in human infants.


Surprise Outfit




These lucky pups came complete with a mysterious box that could contain any type of outfit. Just imagine! Sure, you only had three puppies to speak of, but that one comes dressed as a mermaid. Makes up for it, right?

Playful Hair Surprise


In essence, you yanked on the little guys' till their hair was visible, with blue hair indicating a male and pink a female. The hair could also be re-retracted (yep, two re-s) into the body. That certainly is...a surprise.


There were oodles more there those came from, but they all generally shared the same ridiculous elements of Surprise. There was always some element of unexpectedness that lent some excitement to the toy opening process. After that moment had passed, however, the doll lost quite a bit of its luster.

Unsurprisingly, Hasbro began releasing "sold separately" packs of babies for reasons we can only assume are related to the continuous bitching from the four in five kids whose dolls contained just three babies. Though children delighted in this manner of cheating the system, there was a fatal flaw in the system. The velcro-pouch wombs were just big enough to accommodate innumerable additions to the additional litter.

At least it gave us an easily identifiable means of judging whose parents were child-spoiling suckers: the ones whose Puppy Surprise dolls' painfully bulging bellies dragged on the floor. Served them right. I was stuck with three puppies, none of whom had retractable hair or a mermaid costume. The only thing to console me? My Mommy Doll got to keep her svelte pre-litter figure. In your face, kids whose parents buy supplemental toys to appease their obnoxious children. In your face!

90s Feature Films based on SNL Sketches

It takes guts to take a one-note joke and stretch it out over a long couple of hours. Occasionally, the sketch-to-film adapters will get lucky and create a viable, self-standing feature film. More often, however, it plays like a 4-minute sketch on an enduring, unending loop.

Saturday Night Live in the 90s (or at least the early 90s) certainly had its high points. Boasting classic cast members such as Phil Hartman, Mike Meyers, and Adam Sandler, SNL provided 90s audience with consistently funny sketch material. Sure, there were a few duds in there, but it was a far cry from some of the inane sketches of today.

Banking on their peaking popularity, producers saw fit to morph several sketches into full-scale movie projects. Their aspirations were admirable, if sometimes a smidgen misguided. At times, they misjudged the public's intelligence; that is to say, that the movie-going public realized that something that is funny for five minutes is not necessarily funny for 120 minutes.

Let's just be thankful that the SNL movie-makers were discriminating enough to spare us some of the more irritating recurring sketches. I don't know about you, but my tolerance for watching Rob Schneider describe himself "maaaaking copiiiies!" tends to wear a bit thin. On the other hand, I would like to have gotten a glance into Matt Foley's life in a van down by the river, but we can't have it all.

Image via therecshow.com

I present to you, the extensive string of 1990s Saturday night live feature films:

Fear not, loyal readers. Inclusion on this list is not grounds for exclusion for full-length posting. It is certainly possible I have 1000 more words to say on Wayne's World.

Wayne's World (1992)

The most financially successful Saturday Night Live movie to date, Wayne's World translated well to a full-length feature and even warranted a movie sequel. Its iconic stars Wayne and Garth (played by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey) were emblematic of 90s goofballs everywhere. On SNL, Wayne's World was a humble public access show broadcast in Aurora, Illinois. In the film, the duo sells out to a scuzzy network executive.

Wayne's World is certainly deserving of its cult hit status. Without it, our glossary of humorous-but-eventually-irritating phrases would be infinitely shorter. The sketch and movie spurned such ubiquitous 90s expressions as "Schwing!" "Schyea!" and "Party On!" Most notably, however, they coined the phrase (now in comeback mode due to its use on The Office) "That's What She Said". Yep, you can thank Wayne and Garth for that one the next three hundred times you hear someone follow up an unintentionally sexual statement with it.

One of the most memorable scenes of the movie features Wayne and Garth riding in the car, singing along to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody". Just imagine how excited I was when my 7th grade chorus director let us sing this for our spring concert. Unfortunately for me, there was no headbanging allowed.




Coneheads (1993)

Sometimes, not even a million drop-in cameos by 90s celebrities can save a sinking ship (Then again, unless these celebrities were equipped with some sort of ship-hole patching equipment, I'm not sure why I would expect them to be capable of such a feat. Please excuse my tiringly literal interpretations of phrases.) Coneheads as a sketch was occasionally chuckle-worthy, but it was certainly a one-note joke. The Coneheads, a family of aliens from the planet Remulak, attempt to fit in with their human neighbors while stranded on Earth. Oh, and their heads are shaped like cones.

We get it. They don't understand the way humans do things. They speak in overly complex, highly literal phrasings. It's not that complicated or original a premise, and its probably not worthy of a film (even if it is a scant 88 minutes). There's only so far you can take a simple joke, especially one as hackneyed as this one. Sure, the movie had its moments, but in general the Conehead's evasion of the INS was (to quote Wayne's World) not worthy of our time and ticket money.


It's Pat (1994)

By far the worst-performing film in the SNL movie lineup, It's Pat took in an abysmal profit of just under $70,000. Julia Sweeney plays the intentionally gender neutrally-monikered Pat Riley, a misfit of unknown biological sex assignment. The real underlying issue with this movie was that the sketch itself was not all that funny, so it certainly didn't translate well to the big screen. Pat form a relationship with the equally andogynous Chris, and together the two dodge zany attempts to uncover their true gender identities. Heh.

In fact, the movie was so poorly received and remains so unpopular that the only video I could find of it online was the cameo by 90s band Ween (posted only due to Ween fanmanship, with no love shown to It's Pat). Internet bootleg video obscurity can only mean one thing: a movie is bad enough to be ignored, and but not enough to be so bad it's funny and can thus be enjoyed.




Stuart Saves His Family (1995)

I will admit I have a soft spot for Al Franken. Before you get all politically relevant on me, let me clarify that this squishiness is a direct result of his growing up in my hometown suburb of Minnapolis. For this and this alone, I am eternally open to liking any Al Franken output (same goes for the Coen brothers, who also boast my hometown heritage). Though by all means a financial flop, Stuart Saves His Family is not without its endearing moments.

Franken stars as Smalley, a corny 12-stepping self-helper who embarks on a joint attempt to save his ill-fated cable access show and his family. We can at least admire that this is an ambitious undertaking for a mere 95 minutes. Smalley's signature move involved self-talk while gazing into a mirror, reciting, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!" See? It has its charms.

Some (I can only assume it was The Man) disabled all embedding functions for the theatrical trailer, and there's no further video evidence of Stuart's existence. For proof, you can watch the trailer here. Otherwise, you'll just have to take my world on it.


Night at the Roxbury (1998)

Clocking in at just 81 minutes, Night at the Roxbury may qualify as one of the briefest of SNL cinematic endeavors. According to critics, however, that wasn't brief enough: the movie has a 10% Fresh rating at RottenTomatoes.com. Though the sketch itself is both easily memorable and imitable, it failed to translate well to a full-length movie. Shocking, isn't it? If people won't watch two slick and sleazy club-rat guys dance insanely to awesomely bad 90s techno pop, what will they watch?

The sketch's signature song was Haddaway's "What is Love?", to which Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan head-bounced repeatedly. I think we can all safely say this premise it not especially worthy of a full movie, and hence the film itself was pretty shaky plot-wise. Steve and Doug desperately want to party at the Roxbury nightclub and eventually open a club of their own, but face all forms of madcap obstacles to reaching their goal. I think we can all see this runs a little thin, even at 81 minutes.

At the very least, it features some great 90s tunes:



Superstar (1999)

Obviously SNL movie producers failed to learn any valuable money-making and face-saving lessons from their innumerable past cinematic flops. At least that's what we're led to believe by their decision to green-light Superstar. Molly Shannon played Mary Catherine Gallagher, an awkward idiosyncratic Catholic schoolgirl with all sorts of odd quirks, most notably a tendency to stick her fingers under her armpits and smell them ("like this!") when in a stressful situation.

In the movie, MCG yearns to be a superstar, which by her definition will land her a much-coveted kiss by supposedly hunky (but really, Will Ferrell) Sky Corrigan. For some reason I've yet to fully grasp, Ferrell also plays Mary's visions of God. Go figure. Mary Catherine's chosen path to Superstardom entails performing in the school talent show, a plot which somehow manages to cover the full length of the movie.




Perhaps not all these films were cinematic masterpieces, but they were certainly enduring in other ways. After all, you'd be hard pressed to find a club playing that song without all or most of its population jerking their head rhythmically in the signature Night at the Roxbury Style. That's got to count for something.

Post-post (that is, after post) note: I just realized this is my 100th post! How exciting. Stay tuned for more celebratory developments later in the summer, including some fun 90s giveaways :) Suggestions for giveaway prizes are always welcome!