The 1990s were a simpler time. It was a decade when NFT meant Newfoundland Time, a time before the news was fake, before phones were smart, before media was social, and before our televisions and waistlines went widescreen. Today, we’re going to look back at some of the fashions, activities, and gadgets from our favorite decade. Join us for a wild trip down the most bizarre and awkward memory lane there is!
Three-Step Plan To Rockin’ The 90s
Here’s our handy three-step plan for every little kid to rock the 90s. Step 1. Find the brightest neon T-shirt, Bermuda shorts, and sneakers possible. Yellows, purples, and cyan colors contrasted with black stripes, swirls, and spots are like totally rad! If your chosen apparel hurts innocent onlookers’ eyes, you’re on the right path. Step 2. Offset clothing with an even brighter backpack. If passersby run screaming to the E.R., then you can be sure you’re rockin’ that look!
Step 3: Complete outfit with a hideously colored Simpsons, Dinosaurs, or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lunchbox. Now give yourself a high-five because you are officially doing the Bart Man!
The Dopest, Freshest Fashions
We actually forgot how cool fashion was back in the day. With those flared, baggy jeans and tie-dye colors, as kids sat down to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer, they got their swag on dressed as happy little emos. This young model sure looks like Buffy’s younger sister, Dawn, but then again, every girl from the 90s looked like this. If this advert is from 1995 and the model was 18, she’s now around 45 years old!
And what’s up with that mixture of UppEr aNd LoWer cAse LeTteRs? In the 90s, pre-schoolers were seemingly given jobs in advertising straight outta kindergarten. And those kids who didn’t become advertising execs became surgeons like Doogie Houser, M.D.
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Now, this is a story all about how The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air catapulted Will Smith from the basketball courts of Philly to his aunt and uncle’s pad in Bel-Air and took over our living rooms once a week. In addition to its heartwarming comedy and neon fashions, Aunt Viv and Uncle Phil became surrogate parents to us all, and Will, Carlton, Hilary, Ashley, Geoffrey, and Jazzy Jeff, taught us valuable life lessons.
This photo of Will Smith comes from the actual Philadelphia playground where he spent most of his days. Speaking of which, we bet everyone on the planet aged between 35 and 50 can recite every single line of the theme tune.
Read It And Weep, Teachers!
As recently as 25 years ago, every math teacher in the world would spout some variation of “You aren’t always gonna have a calculator in your pocket.” Well, newsflash, Mr. Simmonds, nowadays everyone has a calculator, watch, camera, calendar, translator, gramophone, food delivery service, dating app, and a million more things in their pocket. Nowadays, the older generation must think we all have Star Trek communicators in our pockets.
Similarly, we won’t mention how teachers wasted billions of manhours teaching unnecessary things like algebra and trigonometry that we’d never use! Students 1 Teachers 0.
Three For The Price Of One
This VHS tape captures three of the most ’90s thing ever. First, while DVDs were widely available in the latter part of the decade, someone found this rel-life dinosaur––a VHS tape––in their attic! Next up, it happens to be a guide on how to install Microsoft 95 onto your computer. If you weren’t around at the time, computers back then were towers almost as high as the Nakatomi Building from Die Hard.
Last but not least, those two stars on the cover are Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry from the decades most popular TV show, Friends. In the words of Chandler Bing, Could you be any more 90s?
Let’s Drive To The Video Library
1990s appreciation posts have been doing the rounds in recent years, and anyone who grew up during that decade will surely cite Blockbuster Video as a huge part of their life. Before Netflix and YouTube, we’d actually have to drive to the video store, peruse the aisles as if it were a chewing gum-littered library, and choose one of the 74 copies of Titanic that hadn’t already been physically rented out.
Fifteen hundred people died aboard the Titanic in 1912, but thanks to their sacrifice, millions of teenage boys got to pause the video on Kate Winslet’s boobies. Thanks, Blockbuster.
Before The Government Banned Sleepovers
When was the last time you had a sleepover? That’s right – it was probably in the 1990s! Those endless summer nights when you and your teenage friends would dance around your room listening to the latest NSYNC compact disc in your pajamas, watch scary movies, play Mario Kart or Goldeneye, eat mountains of pizza, and make prank calls from transparent phones, all washed down with gallons of Capri Sun or Sunny D!
Sadly, kids were having so much fun that the government was forced to ban sleepovers circa 2001 as part of the Patriot Act. That’s the only explanation.
The Scientific Reason Time Speeds Up
How can 1990 be more than 30 years ago when wearing M.C. Hammer pants feels like yesterday? And how has more time has passed between now and 1990 than between 1990 and The Beatles first taking the world by storm? Well, if you want a scientific answer, the neurotransmitter dopamine governs our perception of time, and as we get older, dopamine levels drop, making time appear to run faster.
This drop in dopamine levels explains why school summer breaks stretched before you like a lifetime when you were seven years old, but New Kids On The Block hanging tough seems like last week!
Keep On Rollin’
This dude deserves props for rocking that Fred Durst look across three decades. Discovering his old 90s get-up in his wardrobe, fake Fred strapped his olive green cargo pants halfway down his thighs just above his knees, put on an old T-shirt, and turned his baseball cap backwards. Then he went to his mom’s room to check himself out in the full-length mirror. Just like back in the old days.
We can only presume the next thing he did was find his old skateboard in his dad’s garage before rollin’ rollin’ rollin’ along some streets and carving up some sidewalks.
Some Things Will Never Be Obsolete
Some things will never be obsolete. This is not one of them! The common-all-garden PC tower would take an hour to boot up, and then you’d have to dial in via a modem to connect to the internet, which––in some cases––could take up to a week! Here’s one such dinosaur, and rather hilariously, it even features a sticker reading “Never Obsolete.” Never has a falser word been spoken.
That “Never Obsolete” statement might have been true when this photo came back from the One Hour Photo Store. Yes, kids, back in the old days, we used to have to drive to a strip mall to get our rolls of photographic film processed.
Here, Take Our Money
Some bright spark came up with the idea of a nostalgic 1990s bowling alley called Memory Lanes, and our response is… Here, take our money! The only way this idea could be bettered is if the shopping mall also had a movie theater showing movies like Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Seven, Goodfellas, and Jumanji. In fact, it’s such a good idea; we’re heading straight to the patent office before anyone else does!
Then, if there were a Laser Quest and video game arcade on either side, it would make wearing other people’s smelly bowling shoes almost worthwhile!