Gael Fashingbauer Cooper - The Totally Sweet 90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to Whatever, the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade

Advance Praise for

The Totally Sweet 90s

Mr. Dewey gives The Totally Sweet 90s an A+! Should be on the required reading list for all Baysiders. But dont worry, no need for caffeine pills, Jesse. Each page is a delightful reminiscence of that sometimes glorious but all too often ignominious (look it up, slacker) decade that polished off the twentieth century.

Patrick OBrien, actor from Saved by the Bell

THE

TOTALLY

SWEET S

From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge
to Whatever, the Toys, Tastes, and Trends
That Defined a Decade

Gael Fashingbauer Cooper
and Brian Bellmont

A PERIGEE BOOK

A PERIGEE BOOK

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright 2013 by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont

Photographs by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cooper, Gael Fashingbauer.

The totally sweet 90s : from clear cola to Furby, and grunge to whatever, the toys, tastes, and trends that defined a decade / Gael Fashingbauer Cooper and Brian Bellmont.

pages cm

A Perigee Book.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-62399-2

1. Popular cultureUnited StatesHistory20th century. 2. United StatesSocial life and
customs1971 3. Nineteen nineties. I. Bellmont, Brian. II. Title.

E169.Z82C675 2013

973.929dc23 2013000219

First edition: June 2013

Text design by Tiffany Estreicher

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers, Internet addresses, and other contact information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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This ones for our siblings
Rudge, Claudia, Drew, Clio, Anne,
and Dave on Gaels side,
and Mike, Dave, and Kevin on Brians.

And also for the friends who helped us survive and thrive in the 1990s.
For Gael, thats Lisa Olchefske Gilbert, Sue Dillon, Bob Seabold and
Bobbe Norenberg, Scott and Stacy Pampuch, Todd Mannis, Dan Dosen,
Scott Feraro, and Matt Gillen. For Brian, that would be Chris Moore,
Mike Zipko, Kathleen Hennessy, Dave Aeikens, and all the folks
at WEAU, CONUS, Axiom, and Shandwick.

Kids of the 90s, Unite!

W e know, youve spent a lifetime celebrating the nostalgia of older generations. Every other week a magazine cover remembers the enormous social changes of the 1960s, a shaggy 1970s band goes on tour, or a hideous fashion trend of the 1980s returns. Thats all well and good, even if jelly shoes havent gotten any more comfortable in thirty years.

But maybe you still smile when you hear someone mention The Oregon Trail, or when you find your old Lisa Frank notebook in your moms closet. Or maybe you get sucked in to watching the entire Big Lebowski every time it pops up on cable. Or you cant bear to throw away your cassette tapes, even though you havent owned a tape player for years. Theres nothing wrong with holding fond memories of your own chosen decadeeven if you still cant figure out why Urkel was ever popular.

The reason we wrote this bookand its 1970s1980s-themed predecessor, Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops?is that we believe the lost toys, tastes, and trends of an era do more than just remind us of what we liked as kids. They tell us a lot about who we were then, and who we are today. You cant figure out where youre going until you understand how you got there.

Sure, each decade is technically just ten years, but we feel confident saying that the twentieth century seemed to gain speed as it neared its end. Starting in the 1990s, technology jumped on a roller-coaster-fast track that changed everything. Mobile phones went from brick-sized behemoths that only Gordon Gekko carried to slim little numbers that everyone from nannies to nuns popped in their pockets. Televisions used to be so clunky they might have singlehandedly made you refuse to help a friend move. After the 90s technology revolution, they morphed into sexy flat screens that hung on walls like paintings.

Before the 1990s began, you may not have received a single email. By 2000, the dude who lived in your AOL inbox was barking Youve got mail! every couple of minutes.

Its not just that the 1990s introduced us to a boatload of new stuffall decades do that. Its the fact that items we first encountered in the 90s didnt just come and go. Computers, mobile phones, electronic news and communicationsthese things may keep changing form, but theyre never going to fade out of our lives completely, not now. Theyll get betteror weirderbut for good or for ill, theyre here to stay.

Also in the 90s, many of the things generations had grown up with started to slip away. Photographic film. Landlines. Newspapers. You almost dont notice when those things start to slowly roll out of your life, but when you look back at where you were in 1990 versus where you were in 1999, its mind-blowing.

Technology aside, it was a decade of rich creativity and downright crazy inventions. Just think about how the 1990s loved to play with form.

You think you had candy, previous generations? We have super-sour candy that will rip a layer off your tongue! Think T-shirts pretty much cant be improved? We have shirts that change color with the temperature! Thirsty? We have clear colas and beverages with weird floating pearls in them! Youve seen dozens of movies and watched a million hours of TV? Were going to hit you with Quentin Tarantinos pop-culture-flavored violence and the whole bizarre reality TV universe. Whats that Al Jolson said as Hollywood moved into talkies? You aint heard nothin yet, indeed.

As advanced and futuristic as we thought we were back in the 1990s, we look back on it now as a decade of innocence. The Berlin Wall came down, the Soviet Union imploded, and for a brief moment the nuclear fears that haunted 80s kids almost fell away. We had no idea, as we sailed into airports an hour before a flight, cruising through metal detectors with shoes and belts on, tweezers and giant bottles of mouthwash stowed in our carry-ons, what the 2000s would bring.