Bring Back These ‘90s Things

Growing up in the ‘80s and ‘90s, it was alway odd to notice nostalgia bringing back fads. I remember when the ‘70s came back with the DAZED AND CONFUSED soundtrack and everyone suddenly had lava lamps again. While the 1980s was a lot of regurgitation of the 1950s (cultural conservatism, emphasis on nuclear family, louder racism than usual), the 1990s was kind of a messy mix of a bunch of retro fads from all sorts of decades while filtering through new technologies and forms of media. Look at just in music: sincere singer/songwriters; punk (in grunge, mall, and straight edge forms, amongst others); big band; disco dance songs; R&B/soul groups; boy bands/teenie boppers acts; satanic panic bands.

That’s why, even at the time in my teens, I could never figure out how the decade would ever “come back”. If the ‘90s was the synthesis of the decades that came before it, then to be nostalgic for the ‘90s is really being nostalgic for this thing that was brought back IN the ‘90s from another era.

Needless to say, I was not a fun teen. But I had thoughts!

The decade ended up being split between throwbacks to what came before and a fervent desire to envision what the future would look like. Those places of collision are where signature trends and iconic aspects of the decade emerged.

While there is a bit of bleed through from the late ‘80s and early ‘00s, these specific relics had their heyday in the ‘90s, making them quintessentially “of that time”.

Scrolling across the desolate cultural wasteland of the decade, there are these signature moments and items that need to be brought back—not necessarily out of nostalgia. These select few have their own merits, deserving another shot and it would be cool to see how current folks could innovate them. Others should be revived but in very specific ways to match our craptastic 2021 world.

Here are seven things I wish to retrieve from that temporally confused era and give new life in today’s society. In no particular order…

Slap bracelets

Like many other items on this list, slap bracelets never went away—though there were bans in various places, including my own middle school, that deprived folks of them. But they certainly have quieted in popularity.

Bring ‘em back with new designs by celebs while crafty folks can create/decorate and sell their own sleeves on Etsy. Put some QR codes on there and you now have an easy-to-use, quick to adorn, aesthetically pleasing accessory that plugs folks into new games, social media, ARG, and other experiences.

Plus that moment it snaps and curls around the wrist is immensely satisfying.

End Credit Rap Songs

Yeah, I just watched the whole movie—but what if I want a CliffsNotes version of what happened that’s like 80% accurate and 70% relevant? Enter the End Credit Rap Song. This showed up on some various ‘80s films (THE MONSTER SQUAD, most notably) but it gained traction in the early ‘90s with “Turtle Power” by Partners In Kryme from TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES and others. It’s a fun way to either recap what happened, or underscore character traits, or even explore sidenotes and offshoots. MCU has already trained us to sit through credits waiting for stinger scenes, so give us something to do while we read the names of thousands of non-union CGI artists who were predatorily hired at lower rate than is fair without receiving adequate healthcare benefits! And that something is the End Credit Rap Song.

Recently, PG: PSYCHO GOREMAN did this with “PG For Short” at the end of their movie and it’s a great way to add some awkward and incredibly forced feeling of freshness that usually has to go way outside canon in order to find the right words that rhyme. Bring ‘em back!

Tiger Electronics Handheld LCD Games

Tiger Electronics LCD handheld games have recently come back to scratch that nostalgic itch. That’s literally the only reason someone would want to check out these infuriatingly limited games that give players like three moves at best and the screens can have maybe a total of three artifacts on screen at once. So why am I saying bring them back? Because I don’t want the just newly made copies of the old games—I want new ones.

LCD-type tech has improved in the past 30 years so there could be fun, incredibly stripped down versions of old school games that are a little bit more impressive and engaging than these pee yellow screens fill with scribbles and dots.

Or, and I think this would be even MORE exciting—try to figure out how to boil down modern games into this format. Minecraft as a Tiger Handheld? Skyrim? GTA? Fortnite? The list goes on. Forcing someone to reduce a game down to the most simplistic of actions and events with limited abilities while still kiiiind of resembling the original seems like it would be a perfect crowdsourcing challenge for nerds everywhere. It would show an ability to turn a massive universe into an exercise in minimalism. Have at it, geeks!

Side query: if a game cannot be boiled down to such an easy way, does that suggest something is in fact flawed and overcomplicated with the game? Discuss.

Puffy Paint Fashion

Again, I’m sure this is still around. I don’t see this mainstay of indoor crafting for a couple of hours going away.

But it should be back in mass production. I would not buy a Kanye t-shirt for $90. But you throw on some Puffy Paint, maybe some Hypercolor too, make some dope designs, and now you’ve got a groovy piece of clothing on which I would spend serious money.

Pop Up Video

If every there was a show that would be better in the current age of lightning fast news cycles, technological connectivity, love of entertainment, and curiosity of odd trivia…it’s Pop Up Video. Why is this not still a thing? If I were Vevo on YouTube, I would contract out some of the artists’ music videos to get the Pop Up treatment. Or smaller labels or retro artists could do the same. This doesn’t require a massive central network—it could actually thrive on social media.

And it needn’t just be music videos. Netflix should do it, just an extra selection that has to be made. Turn it on with their movies and now you’re learning who 50 Cent is. They could do it for their series too, or even just select one episode from six of their series; now people who like Stranger Things watch the Pop Up Video version to learn stuff but also get interested in seeing the other Pop Up Video episodes. Or people that like Pop Up Video watch the Stranger Things episode and now are interested in that show. This isn’t difficult! Any streamer could be doing this.

Female R&B Groups

Again, I know we still have female R&B groups out there. That seems to be the (not as successful but still pretty successful) second wave of KPop these days with BlackPink and the like. But those are more pop/dance groups. Which a R&B ensemble definitely has to include if they want to chart (do charts still exist?).

But the ‘90s R&B female groups brought all levels of extremely powerful singing that span the emotional spectrum: decrying the pain of being broken hearted, or bemoaning the problems of society, or overjoyed at finding love, exuberant with the feeling of camaraderie from one’s female friends, or simply giddy at the thought of boning…it had everything!

SWV, Blaque, Destiny’s Child, En Vogue, Xscape, TLC, Brownstone, Jade…we need them now more than ever.

With the intersectionality of musical genres, social reforms and discussions, empowerment of the overlooked, celebrating the too often put down, and the importance of dealing with emotions responsibly—2020s are clearly meant to be the decade defined by female R&B groups.

Themed Blocks Of Entertainment

Saturday mornings from 8am - 12pm were for cartoons. Saturday nights from 8pm to 10pm were all about SNICK on Nickelodeon. Disney Afternoon was from 2pm to about 5pm with half hour blocks of shows. Must See TV on NBCs had a two hour block of enjoyable sitcoms with affable white folks living in a New York City devoid of high rents or Black people. Block programming use to be a thing during network TV years. It still is to varying degrees (times carved out for daytime talk shows, news, late night talk shows, etc.), but there was a fun uniformity to it where an attitude permeated the entire two hours, no matter the individual content within it.

With Streaming, this has mostly gone away. But these Entertainment Blocks weren’t just a place to find those shows, but also get commercials for products aimed at you (predatorily so, but still), or learn about the new movie/series/whatever that could interest you. There’s no reason not to have these curated blocks return, even in the era of streaming.

Shudder does this somewhat with their Joe Bob Briggs shows, wherein time is carved out and it’s a live show for people to follow along with the movies being played. But it needn’t be approached that way. The entertainment block could literally be something curated by people (celebrities, nerds, friends, you) where you choose a couple of TV shows, maybe a movie, or some trailers, or something, and people can’t to just sit in 2 hours of watching Doug TV or seeing what the Alicia Block is offering up. Streaming services will want more people to be more engaged with their products—this is a way. Let them create a marathon, or a block, or something that runs every Friday or whatever.

\Suddenly you have those two hours or however long to enjoy whatever someone has served up for you. It’s a start to recreating the communal experience at a time when people are physically apart and watching everything on different schedules.

But to recreate those moments where many folks all basked in the same glow for a while might be a nice thing after a few years of total isolation.