Children of the 90s TV Superheroes

Every generation of children has their own group of superheroes to admire and adore. Admittedly, ours was somewhat of an eclectic bunch. If our 90s TV superheroes were forced to square off against, say, some 1970s TV superheroes, we'd probably be pretty screwed.

It's not so much that they were unskilled heroes or their powers were not useful. Okay, that may have been true in some cases (Ghostwriter, anyone?), but certainly not all across the board. Generally, though, 90s TV superheroes seemed a bit more down to earth than the heroes of days of yore. Many past superheroes had been virtually untouchable, so on top of their game that we could do no more than stand by in awe, mouths agape in bewonderment. As time went on, however, there developed a prototype for superheroes to whom we could more readily relate. By the time our superheroes were debuting on the airwaves, many of them had been reduced to mere gung-ho environmentalists and literacy-minded street youth.

Like us, many of these heroes were children or adolescents, most made foolish mistakes, and generally were highly fallible characters. Again, maybe not the type of dream team we'd put up against the classic comic book types, but certainly more endearing to the average child. These were a kinder, gentler bunch, and though many could still command some pretty impressive powers, they were certainly not without fault.

Behold, a brief assortment* of some of Children of 90s unique television superheroes:



Darkwing Duck




Darkwing Duck is a spinoff of Disney's Saturday morning DuckTales cartoon featuring an undercover superhero who goes by the alias Drake Mallard. Darkwing Duck is fairly adept at undercover crime-fighting, but he does manage to have the inflated ego and fumbling befuddledness lacking in many of our shinier superheroes. Darkwing is most directly a parody on the earlier Batman comics and show, with many of his attributes and behaviors echoing the Batman character. He doesn't seem to have any real superpower other than being a general protector of good and defender against evil. I know I say that like it's no big thing, but I mean that he never mutated and developed any sort of totally awesome superhuman powers. He's more of a super Samaritan.

In poking around into Darkwing Duck's background, I did come across a rather humorous bit of information. His trademark catchphrase, "Let's get dangerous!" got a bit lost in translation during international syndication. To Indonesian viewers, he declared "Let's charge the danger!" To the Russians, "Well, clear prop!" The Dutch heard, "Let's get nice and risky!" The clear winners, however, were our French viewers, to whom Darkwing Duck declared "This song is creepy!" I don't get it either.


Quailman (Doug)



I know, I know, a middle schooler's daydream fantasy sequences don't necessarily constitute an actual superhero, but for a sideline story Quailman's premise was pretty well-developed. He was, though, an apt superhero role model for children as most of his imaginary dilemmas were based on the actual middle school struggles of the Doug Funnie character. Quailman's main powers were those of patience, intelligence, and speed, leading us to believe we could pretty much do what he did with enough virtuosity. Well, until he broke out the Quail Eye and stupefied his adversaries. Either way, the alter ego was essentially Doug wearing a cape, underwear over his shorts, and a belt on his head. If anyone's still looking for a Halloween costume, I'd say call the search off right now, strap on a belt headdress and over-underwear and you've got yourself a look.



Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles


Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Intro

S.O.B.|MySpace Videos

You've got to hand it to the original masterminds behind Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, these things were specific. I'd love to have sat in on a brainstorming session about these guys. Certainly the premise is creative, but it's also insanely intricate. We all just accept is a sensible fact because we grew up with it, but any outsiders would tell you in an instant that the notion of a group of sewer-dwelling, pizza-chomping, rat-led giant turtles named for Renaissance artists is completely absurd. They would, of course, be right.



Captain Planet and the Planeteers



Ooh, environmentalism. Now that's a badass power. I imagine Al Gore had a hand in this somewhere. This show is education-disguised-as-entertainment (edutainment to those crafty insiders) at its finest. The Planeteers are not only environmental protectors but as a group are also incredibly multi-cultural. Furthermore, our heroes even travel by solar power to cut down on pollution. How much more pious of superheroes could you get? Captain Planet laid it on pretty thick though when he told us "The power is yours!" Nothing like a combination Saturday morning cartoon/public service announcement to get me going.


Ghostwriter



Speaking of impressive powers, I have to say I'm shocked to see literacy didn't make the cut on any of these other shows. What, you don't think reading and writing skills are superpowerful? Think again. Our again incredibly culturally and racially diverse group of preteens went about their lives solving mysteries through the use of (gasp!) their reading and writing skills. I can not tell a lie, I played along at home with my Ghostwriter pen, too. My solutions, unfortunately, were rarely accurate. I blame the fact that I never actually communicated with Ghostwriter himself.


Alex Mack



Alex Mack was just an average teenager when a freak encounter with some suspicious spilled chemicals renders her superpowerful. She's a classic example of a "they're just like us!" emerging class of superheroes. Sure, she could melt into some amorphous metallic liquid, exercise telekinesis, and issue bursts of electricity with a wave of her finger, but otherwise she was just your average junior high student struggling to find her place. Okay, well I guess the mysteriously evil chemical plant wants to kidnap her and turn her into a human guinea pig, which might not fit into the daily lives of most middle school kids, but you get the point. She wore overalls and backwards baseball hats and had crushes and public embarrassments just like the rest of us.


Mighty Morphin Power Rangers


Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Intro

S.O.B.|MySpace Videos


The MMPRs were a legitimate pop culture phenomenon in the 90s, with kids everywhere clamoring to get their hands on their share of merchandise and memorabilia. Essentially, a group of five sassy teenagers are charged with protecting the Earth. I'm almost positive that's who we'd entrust it to if it really came down to it. Teenagers can have some serious attitude. Their wise leader gives them the power to change into Power Rangers, meaning they get some kickass weapons, cool costumes, and access to Zord hangouts. All in all, not a bad deal. Plus, they came with corresponding colors! What more could you ask for? I personally always thought of myself as the Pink Ranger type. This association quickly became an indicator of personality types amongst the under-12 set.


The Tick



Like Darkwing Duck, The Tick had a largely satirical premise. The Tick is the ultimate parody, featuring a strong-jawed, muscularly defined superhero who is incredibly enthusiastic, a bit dim-witted, and prone to giving long, droning motivational talks full of inane points and comparisons. His trademark cry, "Spooooon!" is also a nonsequitor, originating from a flash of inspiration one morning while eating his cereal. He has a variety of superpowers, such as the inability to be physically hurt in painful situations, but my favorite was always his "drama power". This basically boiled down to the Tick becoming a better superhero as his surrounding situation became increasingly dramatic. Brilliant. I think many teenage girls possess this power, as well.


Sabrina the Teenage Witch



Following the cancellation of Clarissa Explains It All, Melissa Joan Hart stumbled into another successful television franchise in Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Par for the 90s superhero course, Sabrina thinks she's just an ordinary teenager until she learns on her sixteenth birthday that she's actually a witch. You'd have thought the talking cat may have tipped her off, but it might have been a bit too subtle**. Every plot seems to revolve around a balance between being a teenager and restraining the abuse of power, but it's cute enough to let the repetitiveness go a bit. And when she poses in the mirror during the intro? Teen sitcom gold.


We may not have had the most enviable superheroes, but they were certainly a fun and eclectic bunch. Perhaps they weren't the best and the brightest or the most talented, but they were...wait, where was I going with this? They're starting to sound pretty lame. Oh, right, the gap between ourselves and our TV superheroes narrowed, making them into characters that we could both relate to, idolize, and find humor in. And really, if you can't laugh at your superheroes, who can you laugh at?



*A Children of the 90s Sampler Pack if you will, I've even removed all the gross coconut-filled ones for your convenience.
**I know, I know, that part came later. It's a joke.

2ge+her

I'm all for satire and parody. There's nothing quite like issuing well-placed subtle jabs and barbs at a mockable target. While at times parody can be forced and rigid, in other cases it's almost impossible to not make fun of a phenomenon. Such was the case with boy bands, giving MTV the perfect satirical opening with which to unleash their made-for-TV movie, 2ge+her.

You really have to give MTV credit where due. As a major source of the hype and hysteria surrounding the boy bands of the late-90s, MTV was not above poking fun at their own bread and butter. Who better than the people constructing the boy band craze to parody their own product? With their insider expertise, they were that much more qualified to offer us a frighteningly accurate tongue-in-cheek portrayal of their bestselling output.

Boy Bands such as *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys were serious moneymaking enterprise in the late 90s, and their penchant for taking themselves incredibly seriously just begged to be parodied. They were far more of a heavily manufactured and well-orchestrated product than a musical act. Sure, they released songs and put on concerts, but you'd be hard pressed to find any respectable musician claiming boy bands as peers. Their squeaky-clean image, pretty boy looks, and high-pitched vocals weren't doing them any favors on street credibility either.



2ge+her was the first MTV made-for-TV movie, a fledgling attempt to capitalize on the cliches and tragically comedic industry standards that put money in their executives' wallets. Though the details were exaggerated, many of the plot points hit remarkably close to home with actual boy band behavior and management. If badly executed or poorly received by fans, MTV could have easily shot themselves in the proverbial foot. After all, they were essentially telling tweens and teens--their target market--that the albums and video their network was peddling were indeed little more than well-polished tripe.

It was a risky business, with MTV teetering on the fine line between satire and flat-out mockery. Luckily, the satirical elements were funny enough to lighten up the darker themes, allowing even the most rabid fans of boy bands an opportunity to step back and laugh a bit at the inane world of prefab music acts. We watched as our tragically humorous heroes were assembled, branded, and marketed by industry managers. While the band was a blatant farce, it was an interesting theme-within-a-theme situation that put 2ge+her dangerously close to their real-life counterparts in their road to success. After all, so-called "real" boy bands were similarly cast, molded, and marketed, leading us to wonder which scenario was indeed more grounded in reality.

MTV utilized much of their own clout as the experts in pop music to offer credibility to the film. The movie opens with a mock MTV news segment that looks and sounds exactly like the ones featured daily by the network. Well, save for the fact that it features the fictional news of music sensation boy band "Whoa" whose hit single "Rub One Out" is ruling the airwaves. That part seems a bit off, right? Maybe it's just me. Other than that, it's spot on.



The movie recognized the usual lineup of cliches favored by boy band managers, with each member appropriately pigeonholed into a character mold and marketed as a two-dimensional musical personality. 2ge+her did not disappoint on this front, featuring some of our standard boy band fare in a new, more comical light. Behold, our heroes:


Mickey Parke: The Bad Boy




You can tell he's bad because he speaks pseudo-ebonics and pretends to rap. Wait, is that the passive near-racism of the milky white boy band world rearing its ugly head? Hmm. Might be.



Jason "QT" McNight: The Cute One



In a dark incident of art imitating life (the term art is used loosely here), part of the QT character's shtick was that he was beloved for being not only adorable but also terminally ill. Tragically, the actor who played QT was actually battling cancer and passed away a couple of years later.



Chad Linus: The Shy One


"Shy" is apparently in this case synonymous with IQ-deficient and a little bit sensitive. In an endearing sort of way.



Jerry O'Keefe: The Hearthrob

The Hearthrob represents the requisite eye candy, but also usually the strongest member vocally. The character truly aspires to be a singer and is relatively dreamy, so it's safe to say he's been appropriately typecast.



Doug Linus: The Older Brother


Poking fun at the fact that most boy bands had one member in their mid-20s, Chad's balding brother Doug is tottering somewhere in the realm of his mid-thirties (though he does hope his braces make him a tad more relatable with the young folk). Oh, and did I mention in he's played by Kevin Farley, Chris Farley's younger brother? That in itself deems him worthy of comedic excellence.

Funnily enough, unlike many artists of today, the ensemble actors actually sang their own songs:


Calculus (U +Me=Us)


A breakout hit in both the movie and real life, the single went on to enjoy a good bit of radio play. It's hilariously on point with actual boy band standards, which is unsurprising as many of the group's songs were penned by songwriters with a track record working with boy bands and pop music acts. This song is fun pure and simple, a no-frills approach to parody that so closely imitates its real-life muse it's nearly impossible to distinguish from the real thing. Well, except that the lyrics are pretty ridiculous. It did come with a fun little dance to the part that goes, "You! Plus sign! Me! Equal sign! Us!" That pretty much makes up for any shortcomings.


Say It (Don't Spray It)



This song is completely ridiculous, but their earnestness in presenting it to us makes it all the funnier.


The Hardest Part of Breaking Up (Is Getting Back Your Stuff)


From their second album, "2ge+her Again", this song was off the wall absurd but still managed to reside in plausible boy band territory as they crooned, "You had my heart, my soul, my attention/but you walked out my life/with my CD collection". It also included some great spoken lines like, Man you ever break up with a girl And she keeps your stuff? Man, What's up with dat?! I dunno man, something wrong! Ya know what I'm sayin'? Something wrong with dat...." Unfortunately, these lines were frighteningly plausible as real boy band song chatter.

The movie was such a hit and the songs such a runaway success that MTV adapted the premise into a weekly series. The band appeared in character on TRL, starred in their own episode of MTV's Making the Video, and even opened for Britney Spears in concert, further blurring the lines between real life and the eerily similar echo of satirical fiction. From the group's formation and initial hype in late 1999 to the show's end in 2001, the band enjoyed relatively realistic music-world success. Pretty impressive for a group of vocally capable comedic actors.

The death of 2ge+her member Michael Cuccione (QT) marked the end of the series run, further blurring the line between Cuccione's reality and his terminally ill character. Despite the tragic circumstances surrounding the act's cancellation, the show proved that MTV not only had a sense of humor but was also surprisingly adept at relentlessly mocking themselves. If only we could get them to do the same these days with those Hills girls, maybe MTV could redeem itself. I wouldn't bet on it, though.

The Mighty Ducks

I suppose I should come right out and admit that I'm more than a little biased in my treatment of certain nostalgic material. Objectivity is a nice idea, but let's be real here: anyone growing up in Minnesota in the 1990s who even knew a person who played hockey was predisposed to fall in love with The Mighty Ducks. As a proud ex-Minneapolitan, I not only loved the movie for its hometown roots but also because my family drove daily past the arenas where the movie was filmed and if I squinted hard enough I can even see some former Pee Wee Hockey League-affiliated friends as cheering crowd extras. It wasn't exactly a tough sell for me.

Regardless of my personal inclination to adore this movie unapologetically, I still assumed that loving this movie was nothing short of a universal kid phenomenon. It had heart, stellar sports movie cliches, quacking, and even a scrappy female player who later went to star in one of my favorite movies*. Maybe I just love hockey enough to be blinded by the subject matter, but I was reasonably certain that this film was beloved by all. Call me naive, but I was shocked to learn that the film hold an 8% positive rating on aggregate movie review site Rotten Tomatoes. I know kids movies can be a little cheesy, but eight percent? Has my entire movie-loving life been a lie? I don't know what to believe anymore.

Maybe the real issue is that these adults just are so darn critical. Yes, as a currently critical adult I realize this likely veers me into hypocritical territory, but as a child I pretty much took everything released on TV or VHS as media gospel until I caught a few episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and realized these things were mockable. The Mighty Ducks, though, lived in a time before over-analyzing and before my friends and I held discerning opinions on quality of entertainment sources. We loved hockey, we loved a young Joshua Jackson, and dammit we loved ourselves some Mighty Ducks and that was that.

The original did seem to have a bit of that magic dust glow haloing its premise, at least to children. Yes, it's a hackneyed and oft repeated tale of a group of ragtag kids who just can't catch a break who finally find the inspiring hope they so desperately crave in the hands of a rough-round-the-edges coach. That description could fit a hundred kids sports movies, but it doesn't detract all that much from their heartwarmingness and general adorability. We may see now that these themes were perhaps not the most original, but they did continually reaffirm our beliefs that even if we were completely terrible at something, some kindly adult might come along and change our lives into those of winners.

On the other side of the fence, I imagine all of my sport coaches throughout the year rewound these inspirational locker room moments again and again, seeking cheesy motivational fodder. Who can argue with that level of cinematic results? If only we could have mustered up the corresponding heartening theme music. Then it would have been in the bag.



The familiar rehashed story focuses on Gordon Bombay (Emilio Estevez), the most bad-assed named attorney in the Minneapolis area facing drunk driving charges. See, we even start with a message. Don't drink and drive, kids, or you'll have to live out your unfulfilled dreams of leading a group of peewee hockey misfits to a much-deserved victory. Bombay is predictably sentenced to community service coaching a kid's hockey league, forcing him to revisit his own traumatic childhood hockey memories in which he blew the big game for his team. Scarring stuff.

Of course, Bombay is further dismayed to find himself saddled with an untalented motley crew of hockey misfits. There's not a shred of mutual respect between the players and their new coach, with the two sides getting off to an abysmal start. There's a clear hatred brewing between coach and team, and it doesn't look particularly pretty.



Many of Bombay's early coaching efforts are at best misguided, leading both the team and their parents to berate his coaching style and personal character alike. As is apt to happen in these types of Disney films, Bombay coincidentally is reunited with an old mentor, Hans, who seems to be in the right place at the right time at every turn to encourage the budding coach's past passion for the sport.

In typical lawyerly fashion, Bombay solicits funding from his boss, Mr. Ducksworth. Get it? Ducksworth, Ducks? I hope a screenwriter's guild award went to that guy. With financial backing, the team is able to acquire a lot of the equipment and practice space they so sorely needed, and it looks like we're heading in the right direction.




There are the requisite misunderstandings in which the team gets pretty angry over something they misoverheard Bombay say and most players choose to boycott a game, forcing a forfeit. To make things worse, Bombay is coming to the end of serving out his community service sentence only to find that Ducksworth and Co. all seem hell bent on manipulating the peewee hockey system in some sort of corrupt ploy that would never matter in real life. Ducksworth goes so far as to fire Bombay, which is of course the only logical next step in this ever-growing distance between the world of peewee hockey and reality.

Our kids are still scuffling over their mixed loyalties to each other versus the coach, ending in a quacking incident that lands them all in detention. Bombay comes to visit their detention classroom, offers some much-needed pep and encouragement, giving them a major boost of team pride.



The semi-corrupt league disputes over star player Adam (who should be zoned as a Ducks player but played for the anonymously evil rivals the Hawks) are resolved as Adam finally joins the Ducks, adding to their burgeoning confidence. The Ducks make the playoffs, win a couple more games, and all seems to be falling into place as expected in a rah-rah sports movie.

As expected, the Ducks face off against the Hawks in their championship game, setting the stage for a last minute not-so-surprising victory. Instead of chastising and berating the boys like his coach had, Bombay encourages them and they take the game per expected. It's still sweet though. All the while the romantic storyline between Bombay and a player's parent seems to be flourishing. On top of all this feel-goodness, the kids offer their encouragement for Bombay's own fledgling minor league hockey career, and while a tad over the top it still manages to warm your heart at least as much as a shot of good whiskey.

Just ignore that half of this clip is the closing credits. You're granted full permission to skip that part.

It may not be the perfect movie, but there's a reason some movie tropes are replayed time and time again. It isn't a new tale to adult moviegoers, but through the fresh virgin eyes of children it manages to renew itself as affective for a new generation. When we later saw the baseball, football, and basketball versions of this movie we were well prepared for the requisite shots of inspiration. Not to mention the two sequels, the animated series, and an actual NHL team under the Ducks namesake. Learning about sportsmanship and franchise milking management in one fell swoop. Not bad.


*Wet Hot American Summer, in case you were wondering, starring our pal Marguerite Moreau. If any of you caught the Wet Hot references in this post, congratulations. You're awesome.

10 Things I Hate About You

There's nothing like a movie based on a Shakespearean play to get the teenage hormones firing. Well, perhaps not in their original form, but take out all of those "thees" and "thous" and you've got yourself the basis of a juicy, teen-friendly blockbuster hit. The real key is to trick kids into thinking that what they're watching is in no way tied to anything remotely educational or character-building, and leave them to be midguidedly amused upon reading the original and finding that the main characters share names with some of their favorite teen movie roles.

In the 90s, Shakespeare was actually pretty standard cinema fare, though 10 Things I Hate About You was most apt at repackaging the original concept. There was Baz Luhrman's iconic Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream with Michelle Pfiffer and Calista Flockhart, reincarnations of both Hamlet and The Twelfth Night, and even the semi-autobiographical Shakespeare in Love featuring Gwenyth Paltrow. Someone out there must have seen the rise in Shakespeare's 90s cinema stock and thought to themselves, "Now how I can I make this appealing to teenagers who consistently fall asleep while reading their 10th-grade English class copies of Macbeth?"

Indeed, moviemakers were up to the challenge, releasing 10 Things I Hate About You in 1999, a clever rethinking of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. See how much it helps to change the name? I'm not a hundred percent certain I could even recognize a shrew in a forest ranger lineup of woodland creatures, and I can't imagine delighting in the fact that the term was meant to describe the lowly and second-rate social status of women. A squirrel maybe, but a shrew? Really? They're not even industrious or cuddly. How insulting.

Lucky for us the new teen version respun the tale to include a mild dose of feminist manifesto, thus canceling out the play's original message of female subordination to their obviously superior male counterparts. In short, we were given an upbeat and more enlightened retelling of the original Shakespeare tale, though at least the initial setup of the storyline remained relatively intact. Cast any film with good looking, well-dressed teenagers and we'll all quickly forget that it's somehow laced into the rich heritage of significant 26th century literary tradition.



Even from the trailer alone it's easy to see all of the wonderful 90s teen movie cliches that so defined this iconic genre. Teen comedies were all the range, though 10 Things proved to be a bit smarter than its peers. For instance, it refused to employ the cheap trick of giving our supposed outcast glasses, which is essentially the equivalent of having a character cough to indicate future terminal illness. Instead, 10 Things gives us a sassy, independent-thinking social deviant who is cool in her own right, even if she doesn't abide by the same rigid standards of mainstream high school coolness as her sister. For a teen movie, that's a pretty lofty feat.

It's true to its Shakespearean roots in its utterly complicated and twisted plot. We open on Cameron's (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) first day of school as his nerdy escort Michael gives him the grand tour complete with requisite clique overview. In the midst of his orientation, Cameron spots the beautiful and popular Bianca (Larissa Oleynik, who I still generally refer to as Alex Mack for mental cataloging purposes) and is immediately taken in by her physical charms. Michael wisely tries to dissuade his delusional companion, but he's too far gone to be swayed by logic. Instead, he signs on as Bianca's French tutor, ignoring the fact that he himself does not speak French.



Meanwhile, Bianca is smitten with tube sock model and toolbox extraordinaire Joey (Andrew Keegan), who while admittedly a dreamboat in the looks department is less than brimming with sparkling wit and conversational skills. Unless the conversation is about him, of course. Bianca's joyride is outed by bitter sister Kat (Julia Stiles), forcing their single father to reconsider his ironclad anti-dating policy. The new policy turns out to be Bianca can date when Kat chooses to date, creating a sticky and notably uncomfortable situation for all. Strategic parenting at its finest.

Cameron starts on as Bianca's French tutor, during which time he learns about Bianca's newly enforced dating restriction. Cameron and Michael hatch a scheming plan to find a suitable suitor for surly sister Kat. He approaches Patrick (the late great Heath Ledger), an Aussie loner with a reputation for dangerous behavior. After failing to convince Patrick themselves, Cameron and Michael consider a new strategy and enlist the help of BMOC Joey Donner. They broker a deal for Joey to pay Patrick in exchange for his Kat-wooing services, unaware of his role as middleman to Cameron.

Michael, angry for being chastised by his former group of nerdy preps, starts a rumor that classmate and rival Bogey Lowenstein's intimate get-together for his pre-WASPy friends is actually a party brimming with free beer and live music. All the while Kat is underwhelmed (maybe just whelmed?) by Patrick's attempts at romance




The whole school shows up at the Lowenstein residence, including Bianca and Kat after the former begged the latter to attend. Kat gets outstandingly drunk, dances on a table, and incurs a near-concussion as a result. Patrick is at her side the whole way, seemingly charmed by his former burden. Cameron learns that Bianca was actually playing him rather than the other way around, as she was using him as a pawn in her path to Joeydom. However, Cameron offers Bianca a ride home and is granted a kiss in return, refocusing his intentions.

After sobering up, Kat remains unimpressed by Patrick's attempts until he performs the ultimate grand gesture that left teen girls everywhere swooning:



There are some minor hiccups but Patrick manages to convince Kat that his intentions are true, which is actually pretty false and he's receiving $300 for his services. Granted, he seems to be into her, but I can't imagine I'd be pleased to find someone was being paid to date me. Bianca and Kat both end up at the prom on the respective arms of Cameron and Patrick, leaving Joey in the proverbial dust. Oh, and Bianca wears this godawful midriff baring two-piece number. Really, it's just completely hideous.

Joey spills the beans about the deal in a rage and justifiably, Kat's pretty pissed. Oh, and Bianca punches Joey and it's awesome. Almost makes up for the dress. But really, not quite.

Back at school, Kat reads her self-referential poem of the movie's namesake, "10 Things I Hate About You":




Everything and everyone comes to blows, but all seems well that ends well. Patrick buys Kat a guitar with his dirty bribe money, Kat's father permits her to go to her first-choice school Sarah Lawrence, and Bianca and Cameron are an item. Everything is fairly neatly tidied up for the ending as expected, but it's still sort of sweet.

It may not have been actual Shakespeare, but the movie did showcase a humor and wittiness that far outpaced its teen film genre competitors. Plus, it had a kickass soundtrack, or at least I perceived it to be back in junior high. Pretty much everyone left theaters humming Letters to Cleo's cover of "I Want You to Want Me", after all.

The movie relied on a lot of cliched teen movie tropes, but it turned some on their head as well. It was a better, smarter version of our stereotypical movie offerings, giving us a new teen world in which senior girls flash their soccer coaches as a diversion tactic and quirky school guidance counselors write smutty romances between sessions. What's not to like?

AOL and Chat Rooms

Once upon a time, our parents didn't have a clue what we were doing online. The internet was a new and exciting place, and it seemed like a safe and inpenetrable fortress of unsupervised mischief. Mind you, this was years before Chris Hansen was popping in to offer you a seat while the decoy internet teen went to go check on the hot tub. There was no catching of predators, no online policing, just pure, unadulterated dangerous fun.

If anything, our parents were more concerned with our tying up the phone lines than our online whereabouts. Sure, we may have been making under-the-table investments with Nigerian princes, but our parents were solely worried about the busy signal clogging our line. Back in the day, there was no wireless or high speed internet connections, there was a little phone jack that shared a common line with our home phones. In a time before universal cell phone ownership, this was a pretty serious inconvenience. Not to mention how annoying that modem sound was when you picked up the phone. Ouch.

When children of the 90s first got in-home internet access, it was a novel and exciting concept. Finally, a relatively captive audience with whom to share our innermost thoughts, dreams, and anonymous flirtations. Once we could actually forge a connection, that is. I'd sit for scores of minutes at a time, waiting impatiently for that little running AOL man to enter his successive phase of connectedness. Words like "modem failure" and "inability to connect" haunted us, forcing us to redial and redial until finally we could enter our glorious online community.




At our house, there were three potential modem phone numbers with which to reach the internet, and we'd frantically alternate between our options, forever seeking a signal. It's remarkable to think that just a decade earlier, we were content to wait five minutes to catch even the briefest glimpse of the internet. Nowadays, if a website takes more than three seconds to load we're all about one step away from tossing the laptop out the window. Back then, though, these were different times. More patient times. And of course, more salacious.

No sooner than we'd heard that familiar robotically enthusiastic declaration "You've Got Mail!", we'd be clamoring to reach our favorite chat rooms. As AOL was the premier internet service of the 90s, a good chunk of the online population could be found roaming these virtual spaces. It was a novel concept for the time: you could actually communicate with many people at once! People you didn't know! People who we should trust indefinitely to be telling the truth, the absolute truth, and nothing but the truth!


So help us God, this was probably not the case. Judging how things usually went our own end, it's doubtable that these new virtual pals were honest about any element of their existence other than that they were currently connected to the internet. The original chat rooms were popular online pickup scenes, the equivalent of an internet singles bar. Only, truth be told, all the people in those rooms were probably either under the age of 12 or over the age of 50.

While today a notion like that might raise a red flag or two, these things were chalked up to good, clean fun back then. Well, er, sort of clean. Children delighted in their ability to fool others, though looking back it's unlikely that my friends and I fooled anyone with our fifth grade writing skills and general misunderstanding of innuendos.

From the moment a person asked, "A/S/L", you knew it was on. That is, imploring his chatroommates to give their age, sex, and location. I don't know about you, but this was a great source of fun for my pals and I as children. In one room we could be exotic 18-year old Brazilian twins working to get our modeling careers off the ground while in the next we could easily slip into the guise of a mysterious lonelyhearts Spanish exchange student seeking a nice middle aged office drone to. The possibilities were truly endless.





Sometimes we may have outed ourselves as the 12/Fs we really were, but in general the idea was to fool others into believing the bull we were serving up. I imagine parents everywhere would have been pretty uneasy to find that their young children were being approached online with the request to "cyber", but again, these were different times. Very few people had considered the notion of troubling internet connections, we were too enthralled by its exciting possibilities to see any danger in letting children loose into chatrooms with a slew of card-carrying NAMBLA members and known sex offenders.

In our innocence, though, we were too giddy to be bothered by these facts. These were the days before MySpace, Facebook, or online dating, so people everywhere used this free market chatroom environment to make connections. Users formed full-fledged online relationships with people they had never even met. Sure, in real life you may have been a Dungeons and Dragons playing loner with duct-taped glasses, but online you could be the suave AOL romeo you'd always dreamed of being. Until your potential mate requested a picture, of course. Photographic evidence is a bitch.






The original AOL was a kid's paradise. It's going date us immensely when we someday tell our children of plugging a common search term in a search engine and having zero results, but we'll know that we were the true online pioneers. We knew the thrill of navigating the unknown wildernesses of the internet before firewalls and parental controls and the like neutralized the treacherous terrain. Sure, we may have talked to a pedophile or two, but we lived, dammit. We lived. Well, vicariously through our internet alteregos. But you know what I mean.

Gel Pens

If you have noticed, we over here at Children of the 90s have been pretty caught up in the back-to-school spirit. There's something about fall that brings all of us 90s nostalgianiks right back to our frantic scrambling office-supply store shopping trips. We would all try to use our intuition and summer-accumulated wisdom to buy the most coveted back-to-school items, but there was little way of knowing whether your choice was going to sink or swim in the classroom implement hierarchy. It's a cruel world, and we might as well have learned it at a young age. There's nothing quite like ridicule and public shaming over what we were toting in our pencil cases. It's probably what's turned us into the humble adults we are today.

The problem with school supply trends was that we could hardly look to fashion magazines for our social cues on what to buy. Instead, we had to simply hold our collective breath and hope that whatever we'd haplessly shoved into our OfficeMax carts was the wise choice. Would Yikes Pencils be in or out? Would Clueless's Cher's feather pen still be the highly coveted item of the back-to-school season, or were Troll pencil toppers the way to go? It was enough to etch premature wrinkles into our juvenile brows.

There are, however, some school supplies that spoke for themselves. When we saw them in the store, we simply knew we had to have them. They had a value all their own, not only because they were popular, but because they had real appeal. Not to mention we knew deep down, even from a young age, that if one of these babies would set our parents back $2 a pop versus the fifty cents or so they'd shell out for a regular pen they just had to be great. After all, the pricers wouldn't lie to us. They know real value, and we had to be prepared to pay for it.




Gel pens quickly became a veritable writing implement phenomenon, flooding into middle school desks everywhere with a barrage of metallic colors. These things were legitimately impressive, for school supplies. We had never seen this type of performance before in a pen, nor had we particularly cared when it came in the drab shades of blue and black favored by rival pen producers. Gelly Rolls, though, these things were impressive. Not only did they come in a vast spectrum of visually appealing shiny colors, but they could write on all sorts of surfaces! What more could you ask for?

Sure, our parents were probably less than pleased when we came home with homeroom-drawn gelly roll tattoos graffiti-ing our bodies, but at least it was still a step above opting for permanent ink. My mother unleashed upon me a slew of old-wives' tales of how the ink would permeate my skin and lead to all sorts of terrifying blood poisoning, but I saw right through it. Well, I did at first. My vision started to blur after the fourth or fifth day, now that I think about it. I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Gel pens had pretty incredible powers, really. For one, they could write on black paper. I know, I know. Maybe I should give a minute to let that sink in. Black paper. Have you ever heard of such a thing? I know I hadn't, until I bought a colored multi-pack that came complete with a pad of black paper. I sat there staring at my new acquisition, thinking, Why, it just can't be. How can a pen write on a piece of black paper? I couldn't quite wrap my head around it, but suffice it to say I was sold. Yearbook signing would never be the same.

There were a few prototypes in particular that particularly astonished, amazed, and amused us. I wrote many an origami-folded note to my friends, imploring them "W/B/S" (write back soon) and declaring my feelings via LYLAS (love ya like a sister). Among the most popular on the market were:

Gelly Roll


These were truly the original impressive gel pen. They were so shiny. Really, just so so shiny. My mind is riddled with mental ADD at the mere thought of them, so just imagine the effect they had on real live kids attempting to take notes with their sparkly, sparkly ink. Ooh, sparkly. I'm sorry, what were we talking about here?



Milky


Though now the name sort of makes me want to vomit, in middle school we were completely enamored with these pastel-hued pens. These things drew on everything, leaving no drawable surface on my body, clothing, and schoolwork untouched by the magic of their soft hues.



Marble Ink


Described by their manufacturers as "a milkshake of colors", these pens were a teacher's worst nightmare. To receive a handwritten essay that gradually shifted from one end of the color spectrum to the next and back again was nothing short of a grading nightmare. Kids were certainly entertained by them, though, so it would take more than simple chastisements to stop us. We had pen rights, dammit, and we were prepared to exercise them, color-induced nausea aside.


Sure, there were a few kinks in the process. Namely, when the inkwell in the pen's core began to go dry, these things were nearly impossible to write with. You'd scratch through your paper just trying to get some color out of it. And don't even get me started on the moments of gel overload. Believe me, these splotches were not pretty. Okay, they were kind of pretty, but that's not the point. It's hard to take an algebra answer seriously when half of the equation is obscured by a giant shimmering pink blob you're forced to turn into a flower to make it less conspicuous.

Regardless of their minor flaws, these babies were golden. And silver. And bronze, and well, you get the idea. My technicolor-dreampen-case was brimming with shimmery, shiny colors and for a brief moment in time, it was enough to hold my attention and entertain me in class. If only I could get as worked up about office supplies now. It's hard to picture me hugging my stapler or spooning with the fax machine, but I'm willing to give it a try. What can I say? I'm a dreamer.

Mentos

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

Mentos, the freshmaker!

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

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



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

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



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

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



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

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



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

Children of the 90s Ultimate Classroom Distractions

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

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

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


Fortune Tellers


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

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





Rubber Poppers




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



Laser Pointers



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




MASH



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



Origami-Style Note Folding



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



Metallic Gum Wrapper Decoupage



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



Slap Bracelets



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



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

America's Funniest Home Videos

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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



The Babies



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



The Disruption of a Major Life Event



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



The Animals



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



The Injury Ward


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



The Prank (aka the Set-Up)



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


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

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

Trapper Keepers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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



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

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



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