Welcome to Top10Archive! Ah, the 90's. Anyone that grew up during this decade will likely
attest that it was all that and a bag of chips. In fact, we're feeling a bit nostalgic and
want to take our Generation Z viewers on a rad trip back in time. So we threw together
this dope installment of things that only 90's dudes and dudettes would understand.
You're like totally going to hate this list… NOT!
10. Crystal Pepsi Don't adjust your monitors, there's nothing
wrong with the color. This Pepsi actually is crystal clear! Though the PepsiCo product
made a brief and very quiet revival in the United States and Canada, the presence of
the beverage was hardly as predominant as it was in the 90's. Kicking off the new decade,
companies were starting to equate clarity with purity, and so they sought to remove
unnecessary color from their products to make them look "cleaner". Pepsico got sucked into
this mindset and, in 1992, introduced the caffeine-free clear alternative to cola, Crystal
Pepsi. The beverage started off popular, but by the end of 1993, Pepsico was delivering
its final cases to retailers. 9. Columbia House
Nowadays, kids get to just pop on the internet and download their favorite songs. Ah, but
back in the day known as "The 90's", we had to rely either on cassettes or CDs - or if
you were lucky, you spent 3 hours downloading 1 song on Napster. While cassettes are a relic
from the past, CDs do still exist today, but we'll venture a guess that maybe 1% of the
population under the age of 35 actually uses them. A shame, too, because you Gen Z'ers
will never know the joy of mail order CD Clubs. On a monthly basis, you could subscribe to
receive new CDs in the mail at an affordable price, sometimes even a penny! Truth be told,
there were hidden costs in the fine print that made the CD's cost retail - but that
didn't stop every 10 year old from doing their own Christmas shopping!
8. Portable CD Players So once you have those $.01 CDs, ya gotta
have something to listen to them on. You can still purchase these archaic forms of technology
today, but we’d bet our iPods that no respectable adult would be caught walking around with
one. Portable CD players were an incredible convenience when they first released in Japan
in 1979 - though not at all a consumer “must have.” It wasn’t until the 1990’s when
CDs started entering homes at a rapid pace that the Portable CD player, like the popular
Discman from Sony, became a staple. Today, these portable devices would drive us mad.
Subpar battery life, skip-prone technology, and a sensitivity to scratches sometimes made
listening to your favorite tunes more of a chore than they were worth, even the penny
ones. 7. Passing Notes
Believe it or not, there once was a time when people weren't so readily connected with one
another. If a message needed to be passed along about how cute Bobby's hair was today,
it took a lot more effort than a few smileys and acronyms - we once had to actually write
notes. Can you believe it? You must be wondering how we survived with such a primitive form
of communicating gossip, but it really wasn't that bad. One thing you can't really do with
a text message is fold it up like a puzzle or some rudimentary origami, and that was
really the fun of it. 6. Quirky Fashion Trends
Every generation leaves behind its own fashion trend. The 70’s were all about polyester
while the 1920’s were known for bringing rise to flappers. The 90’s were no different
and introduced the public to the concept of minimalism and neutral colors. That was the
subdued side of fashion, however, as the generation also gave us quirky trends like wearing one
pant leg up, tying sweaters or shirts around the waist, thinking overalls were acceptable
off the farm, manpris, and baggy jeans. Children of the 90’s may also remember the popularity
behind Reebok Pumps and the creation of the “grunge” look of ripped jeans and shaggy
hair like Kurt Cobain. Speaking of hair, Guy Fieri may have the corner market on bleach
blonde follicles, but it was the 90’s and bands like the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC,
and then later Eminem, that made bleaching your hair a popular fashion trend.
5. "Be Kind, Please Rewind" It's such an outdated technology that you
don't even hear people making silly jokes about having to rewind their DVDs anymore,
but thanks to Blockbuster Video and the mechanics of the VHS tape, "Be Kind, Please Rewind"
was like a 90's mantra. Chances are if you didn't grow up in the 90's, you're more accustomed
to the DVD format which means at no point in your life did you have to deal with picking
up a VHS rental and popping it in only to find that the prior renter didn't rewind the
movie. You then had to sit there for what seemed like forever to rewind the tape back
to the beginning. To combat these nay doers, Blockbuster campaigned "Be Kind, Please Rewind"
as their catchy slogan and, when that didn't work, the company implemented a fee to crack
down on discourteousness. 4. POGS
They were as silly as their name makes them sound, but it's hard to deny how addicting
they were. Pogs were the brand named version of milk caps, a childhood favorite in the
mid-90's . The game was simple and involved a stack of milk caps and a piece called the
"Slammer" - the mother-of-all POG that's typically made of hard plastic or metal. Players would
stack their caps and, using the slammer, cause the pile to scatter. Any caps that landed
face up were awarded to the slamming player. Milk caps didn't become incredibly viral until
the World Pog Federation came into the picture and introduced caps worth collecting. Pogs
featured an assortment of characters no 90's kid could resist, including Power Rangers,
Beavis and Butthead, and The Simpsons, along with a wide variety of original designs.
3. Goosebumps Books R. L. Stine was to children of the 90’s
as Stephen King is to the entire horror community. He was a visionary that created the ghouls,
monsters, and gnomes that taunted the dreams of the youthful. The stories were often a
kid-friendly take on classic horror creeps, from vampires to werewolves to headless ghosts.
Occasionally, Stine would draw something incredibly off-beat and unique out of his hat of monstrosities,
like the Horror at Camp Jellyjam, the Egg Monsters from Mars, and Monster Blood, a series
of Goosebumps that saw a variety of grotesque mutations come to life. The 90's were a great
time for spooky classics. While R. L. Stine was dishing out classic after classic in book
form, the Crypt Keeper was keeping us entertained and spooked on TV in Tales From The Crypt.
2. The Dial-Up Tone and the Internet When you want to hop on the internet, all
you need to do is turn on your computer or unlock your cell phone. Back in the golden
age of the 90's, it was a process to get yourself online that required you to sign in using
the correct local landline number and password combination. Then you had to sit through a
dial tone as your computer literally dialed out, struggled to connect to the internet
and, in most instances, tied up the home's landline, making inbound and outbound phone
calls impossible. It was the primitive age of the internet and though it had all of the
essentials one would need, such as.. well, basically just Yahoo, it was all marred by
that taunting dial tone. If that doesn’t sound awful enough, very early internet was
a pay-per-hour setup. Thankfully, getting “lost on YouTube” wasn't an option back
then - which was probably a good thing.. Imagine the wait times..
1. Y2K As you may have noticed, the world didn't
end in the year 2000, but that wasn't the thought all throughout the mid- to late-90's.
Sure, you may have lived through the Mayan Apocalypse and the Rapture, but there was
no more interesting apocalyptic scenario than Y2K. It wasn't going to be a natural disaster
or divine intervention, but instead, it was all going to boil down to the capacities of
computer networks built and designed by humans. What was feared was that computer networks
would crash. Seeing as how these networks only registered the last 2 digits of the year,
it was believed these networks would register the year 2000 as the year 1900 and simply
just stop working.