- [Narrator] It's September, 1993.
And it's finally the weekend. - Yay!
- [Woman] That's right.
(dreamy music)
♪ Ah ♪
- [Narrator] Movie tickets only cost
four dollars and 14 cents.
Frasier-- - I'm listening.
- [Narrator] Just premiered on NBC,
and women were finally allowed to wear pantsuits
on the Senate floor. (bell dings)
It's Saturday morning, and that means one thing.
♪ And they're zany ♪ - Cartoons.
♪ The show ♪
- [Narrator] So at eight a.m., "Animaniacs" was on Fox Kids,
and we scheduled a meeting with Rob Paulsen,
the guy who voiced Yakko.
- Oh, sure. (clears throat)
Okay, well let's see, I'm Yakko Warner; hello, nurse.
- [Narrator] We wanna know about
the "Nations of the World" song.
- [Rob] Well, the interesting thing is that it only took me
one take to record it.
- [Narrator] What?
♪ United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama ♪
♪ Haiti, Jamaica, Peru ♪
♪ Republic Dominican, Cuba, Caribbean ♪
♪ Greenland, El Salvador too ♪
♪ The art project ♪
- [Narrator] For most of us, Perler beads got left
in the 1990s alongside HitClips and Oakley Minutes.
- [Man] Cool.
(phone beeping)
- [Narrator] Hello, can you hear me?
- Loud and clear. - Perfect.
Kyle is an artist, but rather than paint or pen,
he uses Perler beads, even today.
- [Kyle] I am all-Perler, all the time.
Perler beads were invented by a Swedish man in the 1960s.
It was originally a therapy material for older folks.
- [Narrator] Kyle sees your '90s Perler bead posters
and raises you this.
- [Kyle] I would say, without a doubt,
my most ambitious project has got to be Project Springfield,
which is 40-square-foot mural of the Simpsons' hometown.
It's over 140,000 individually placed beads.
And it took me about two years.
- [Narrator] It's your nostalgia, only elevated.
♪ The birthday parties ♪
- [Kids] Happy birthday!
- [Narrator] The holy trinity
of the '90s kids' birthday party was simple.
Pizza, cake, and laser tag. (noisemaker toots)
- [Kids] Pew pew, pew pew!
- [Narrator] Amen; so we talked
to the man responsible for all of that.
- Hi, I'm George Carter, I invented laser tag
about 30 years ago.
- [Narrator] The game was inspired by a pretty famous movie.
- [George] The movie "Star Wars."
I had watched them going up and down the halls of the ship
shooting lasers at one another.
And I thought I'd put it in some sort of context
and make rules, and we got a great game then.
It was more competitive back in the early days.
Well, laser tag today has moved
into family entertainment centers,
with actually more people playing than ever before.
- [Narrator] And there it is, your weekend,
and some of the people behind it, 1993.
♪ All the cats ♪
- [Kids] Yay!
(light music)