Top 20 Things Only '90s Kids Will Understand

Kids love bouncing up and down, as parents and mattresses everywhere can attest. And while trampolines are arguably the most popular way for kids to leap in this way, there have been more portable attempts. While moon shoes have existed in some form since as early as the 1950s, the ‘90s saw Nickelodeon improve the safety of this product by making them from plastic and using bungee springs. And while they may have been cheaper than trampolines, moon shoes often led to just as many injuries, usually to the ankles or knees. That didn’t stop us from hopping around our neighborhoods or trying for a fabled double bounce on a bed or trampoline though.

This one is still somewhat relevant today, since some video games still use discs, but back in the ‘90s, discs were everywhere, particularly CDs for music. And keeping them clean and free of scratches was a practiced art. If it did happen, skipping audio was the least of the issues it caused! We tried everything we could to repair them, from banana peels to toothpaste! After all, finding a replacement wasn’t as easy back then, since who knew if the local record store still carried it. Plus, we only had so much allowance or summer job money to spend!

Juice boxes come in many shapes and sizes. But the most infamous is Capri Sun for one simple reason - the difficulty in putting the straw in. These juice pouches have a small straw “target” set “vertically” near the top, along with a sharp straw meant to pierce it more easily. Unfortunately, opening them correctly proved as difficult for many of us as kids as solving a Rubik’s cube! The straws always bent or you got the angle wrong. Some even tried going in from the bottom. No matter the method, we usually ended up spilling juice on ourselves. But when we got it just right? Ooo, that just made Capri Sun taste like ambrosia.

There are a surprising number of 90s experiences relating to writing we could’ve discussed instead, like losing the tip of your push point pencil or how to hone your skills with a Lite-Brite. But one thing that we all did in school is draw that cool “S.” To draw this “S,” all you have to do is draw three vertical lines on top of three vertical lines, then connect them, and draw points at the top and bottom. It’s a universal symbol that can be found the world over and has been around for decades, even before the ‘90s. However, we’d argue that the symbol’s popularity exploded in public consciousness during the 1990s.

The Olsen twins may have spent most of their adult lives trying to forget their childhood careers, but we can’t forget and we never will. Their movies starred the two sisters in what was seemingly some version of themselves, often with one of them being sporty and the other one being bookish. They would get kidnapped or trade places or maybe they were amateur sleuths. Their parents were usually absent or unseen, and they were free to hang out with cute boys in exotic locales all over the world! The movies didn’t make much sense, but that didn’t stop us from watching them on repeat.

Microsoft Windows was and still is one of the biggest operating systems out there. Windows 95 came equipped with several games everyone played to death, whether you were working in an office, or a kid just learning how to play on the computer. And Solitaire was usually the go-to due to how easy and fast-paced it is. But what we took our time with was choosing which card backs to use. Are we feeling tropical with a beach design? Or elegant, with the roses or vines? The castle evokes mystery. And who doesn’t love a robot? These are the kind of decisions you need to make if you were going to play the game for just 5 minutes…that became an hour.

These bean-stuffed toys are actually still around. However, their popularity today pales in comparison to how omnipresent they were during the ‘90s! Because the company that made them created deliberate scarcity by retiring certain animals, the resale value on them was gigantic and created a huge demand among adults and teens. But kids loved them too! They were everywhere! There were Beanie Baby magazines. They were arguably the first internet phenomenon. They were in Happy Meals! And sure, as kids we probably devalued them by playing with them, but we didn’t know any better.

Kids today have it so much easier when it comes to the internet. Back in our day (wow, we’re becoming our parents, aren’t we?), using the internet wasn’t as simple as opening a browser. We had to wait for it - every step of the way. We had to access it using a phone line, so we had to block off time when no one was using the phone in our houses. Then, we had to listen to that screeching dial-up internet noise that’s ingrained in all of our heads forever while connecting to America Online. And loading websites made us wait too, since internet speeds moved as slow as a snail through molasses! Remember that the next time your internet is “a little slow.”

During the ‘90s, digital pets were all the rage with kids. And while Giga Pets also made a big splash, there’s no beating the recognition of Tamagotchi. These virtual pets came in distinctive, egg-shaped games. Looking after these low-pixel creatures could feel like a full-time job way back when, as we took them from eggs into various new forms as they changed, depending on how well we took care of them. And there’s a special level of panic when you realize you haven’t fed yours and it’s in danger of dying - which they did frequently.

Sitcoms are generally the most adult thing kids are exposed to on TV and in the early ‘90s, every kid’s favorite was definitely “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” Will Smith was (and still is to many of us) the absolute epitome of cool and his show had all the same charisma and hilarity that he delivered. The anticipation that built in our young selves when the theme song began can’t properly be put into words. Speaking of words, we’ll never get the show’s lyrics out of our heads, no matter how much our lives get “flipped turned upside down!”

Schools today have a lot more options when it comes to teaching and engaging kids. However, during the ‘90s, school could feel like a lot of the same, day in and day out - at least for students. So, we learned to savor those times when class didn’t feel like class. A rainy day game of Heads Up, 7-Up during class, a game of parachute during P.E., or the excitement we got when the teacher wheeled in a TV from the AV club – these were the moments we lived for when going to school. Because watching “Bill Nye the Science Guy” never felt like a chore!

The ‘90s were all about colors on everything. As kids, the louder and more colorful you could be, the cooler you were. This extended not only to bigger school items, like backpacks (we’re looking at you, Lisa Frank!), but also the things we kept inside them. We wrote and drew using single pens that dispensed multiple colors, milky gel pens for dark paper, and even markers with mini stamps! We didn’t just have Elmer’s Glue – we had it in gel form! And we kept it all in Spacemaker pencil boxes, complete with a transparent lid!

Whoever came up with some of the toys during the ‘90s was definitely thinking outside of the toy box. Most of them were new spins on familiar concepts. Bicycle spoke decorations have been around since bikes were invented, but specially made beads? That was a new one. And sure, everyone has played with a baseball, but how about one that’s green and has a Velcro catcher’s mitt? Or how about a skipping rope, but instead it’s made of plastic and attached to one of your feet and counts your skips like a fit-bit? While there are plenty of weird toys today, we do miss these ones from our youth.

Slap bracelets were a major fad during the ‘90s. They generally took the form of bendable metal bracelets with colorful plastic or soft coverings, that could “snap” between being straight lines and conforming to the shape of your wrist. While they’re still around today, they’re not quite as…uh, sturdy…as they used to be. Snapping one onto yourself or someone else sure is fun - and looks totally trendy, but it could seriously hurt if done hard enough – they are made of metal, after all. We can see why some schools took to banning them, even if we would have taken the bruises to remain fashionable at the time.

Colorful items would never have been made during the ‘90s without equally some colorful ideas, and some of the more bizarre and awesome ones were about board games. ‘90s games were as strange and extreme as everything else during the decade. How else do you explain games like Dream Phone, a game similar to Clue, except the objective was to find out who had a crush on you? Or how about 13 Dead End Drive, where players fight over a major inheritance by trying to permanently get rid of the other players with traps! Wild, right?

We’ve already touched a few times on how colorful and bright everything in the ‘90s was, but not only did everything have to be colorful, but it had to change colors too. Foods that changed colors were popular. Heck, sunscreen even sold by making it seem to kids like it would change their skin tone to weird shades (it totally didn’t, much to our disappointment!)! Everything had to light up too, from sneakers to yoyos; if it wasn’t illuminated, it was only half as cool. Plus, inflatable stuff, including chairs and toys, was very popular. If we surrounded ourselves with this stuff now, we’d probably look crazy, but in the ‘90s, we were just trying to stay hip.

Yeah sure, we’ve got specialty theaters these days with lots of surround sound and tons of output, but back in the ‘90s, THX was the name in sound for movies! And before many movies, the THX logo would appear, along with its signature resonant sound that’s so freaking loud you can feel it in your chest! It’s a sound and experience so memorable that if you hummed it in public, people would know exactly what you were referencing and they might cover their ears reflexively. Or because you’re making a weird noise in public. But definitely one of the two!