40 Fun Facts About 90s Fads

Which talking 1990s toy did the US National Security Agency ban from its offices, fearing it could repeat secrets?

Furby was barred in 1999 because the agency thought it had a chip that learned from speech. The head of Tiger Electronics replied that the toy had no ability to record anything at all.

Which 1990s toy did NASA engineer Lonnie Johnson dream up while testing a new refrigeration system in his bathroom?

Super Soaker went on sale in 1990 as the Power Drencher before a rename. Johnson later won nearly $73 million from Hasbro in a dispute over underpaid royalties.

The 1990s disc-flipping craze Pogs took its name from a passionfruit, orange and guava juice made in which US state?

Hawaii is where Haleakala Dairy on Maui launched POG juice in 1971 and promoted it with printed milk caps. A teacher on Oahu revived the old cap-flipping game in 1991 and set off the craze.

Which actress made The Rachel a salon favorite of the 1990s, then admitted she disliked the layered haircut herself?

Jennifer Aniston wore it as Rachel Green in the first two seasons of Friends. Stylist Chris McMillan designed the cut to repair her damaged hair and grow out her bangs.

Which giggling plush toy sparked a shopping frenzy at Christmas 1996 after Rosie O'Donnell showed it on her talk show?

Tickle Me Elmo began as Tickle Me Taz, because Tyco at first held no licence for Sesame Street plush toys. The $28.99 doll was being resold for up to $1,500 by the end of 1996.

Tamagotchi, the 1996 handheld digital pet, has a name blending the Japanese for watch with the Japanese word for what?

Egg is the other half: tamago means egg and uotchi comes from watch. Japanese versions show a ghost and headstone when a neglected pet dies, while English ones show an angel.

Which former heavyweight boxing champion put his name on a slanted, fat-draining grill sold through 1990s infomercials?

George Foreman lent his name to a design by Michael Boehm, whose slanted plates drain fat away from the food. More than 100 million of the grills have sold since 1994.

Which dance craze, set to a hit by Spanish duo Los del Río, peaked around the 1996 Democratic National Convention?

Macarena topped the US chart for 14 weeks in 1996 in its Bayside Boys remix. The duo came up with the song after watching a flamenco teacher dance at a party in Venezuela.

Which soft drink giant joined the early-1990s clear craze by launching a colorless cola under the name Crystal?

Pepsi took 1% of the US soft drink market with Crystal in its first year. Coca-Cola answered with Tab Clear, which its own marketing chief called a kamikaze effort to kill both drinks.

Which fast-food chain sparked fights in the late 1990s by offering miniature Teenie Beanies with its children's meals?

McDonald's put the miniature Beanie Babies in Happy Meals from 1997 to 2000. Scuffles over them at its restaurants led to police calls and criminal charges, and some branches ran out early.

Which 1990 craze did Wisconsin teacher Stuart Anders create from a springy steel band sealed inside a fabric cover?

Slap bracelets were first sold under the name Slap Wrap. Cheap knockoffs used thinner steel that could break and cut the wearer, and several schools banned them after reports of injuries.

Whose 1992 country debut single Achy Breaky Heart had a music video that pushed line dancing into the mainstream?

Billy Ray Cyrus was not the first to record it: the Marcy Brothers released the song in 1991 as Don't Tell My Heart. His version stayed his biggest US hit for 27 years.

Flannel shirts and ripped jeans became early-1990s fashion thanks to the grunge music scene of which US city?

Seattle acts such as Pearl Jam and Soundgarden wore flannel as an anti-fashion statement. Marc Jacobs then took the look to a luxury runway with his 1993 collection for Perry Ellis.

Hypercolor T-shirts, an early-1990s clothing craze, changed color wherever they were exposed to what?

Heat was the trigger: dye capsules in the fabric turned colorless above about 24°C, so body warmth changed a shirt's shade. Maker Generra went bankrupt in 1992 as demand faded.

Which rapper's name was given to the baggy, low-crotch trousers popularized around 1990 and also called parachute pants?

MC Hammer has said he prefers the name Hammer pants to parachute pants. He wore the shiny, tapered trousers in his videos and stage shows, where the loose cut suited hip-hop dancing.

Which Japanese franchise's trading cards, first sold in America by Wizards of the Coast, became a 1990s school craze?

Pokémon cards earned Wizards of the Coast more in five years than its own flagship game had made in ten. Hasbro bought the publisher in 1999 for $325 million on the strength of the licence.

The Dancing Baby, a 3D animation passed around the early internet, turned up in fantasy scenes on which legal drama?

Ally McBeal used the baby in its lead character's daydreams. The clip began as a sample file for animation software before a LucasArts animator posted it on a CompuServe forum.

Billy Blanks sold over a million video sets in the 1990s teaching which workout through TV infomercials?

Tae Bo takes its name from taekwondo and boxing. Blanks trademarked the term, so rival gyms had to pay a licensing fee or call their kickboxing classes something else.

The Talkboy, a voice-changing cassette recorder and 1990s Christmas craze, was created as a prop for which film?

Home Alone 2 needed a gadget for Kevin to outsmart adults, so writer John Hughes had Tiger Electronics build one. The shop version caused toy crazes over several holiday seasons.

Which teenage rap duo of the early 1990s started a craze by wearing their jeans and shirts backwards?

Kris Kross were two Atlanta school friends spotted at a mall by producer Jermaine Dupri, then still a teenager himself. Their 1992 debut single Jump spent eight weeks at number one.

Which Irish dance show began as a seven-minute interval act at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest in Dublin?

Riverdance reached an estimated 300 million viewers that night and earned a standing ovation. Producers then put over $1 million into a full-length show starring Michael Flatley and Jean Butler.

Which Japanese toymaker launched the Tamagotchi in 1996, at first marketing the digital pets only to teenage girls?

Bandai sold about 40 million of the original pets, then lost 6 billion yen when the craze faded by 1998 and left it with piles of unsold stock.

In the 1990s game of Pogs, what name was given to the heavier disc players threw down onto the stack?

Slammer was the word, and metal ones were barred from some games for being too heavy. Because winners often kept the caps they flipped, many school districts treated the game as gambling.

Beanie Babies, the collectible 1990s toys, were deliberately under-stuffed with what filling so they could be posed?

Plastic pellets, nicknamed beans, gave the toys a floppy feel that critics at first called cheap. At the height of the craze the toys made up 10% of all sales on eBay.

Which 1990s book series hid 3D scenes inside flat patterns that readers had to stare through to see?

Magic Eye first took off in Japan, where sales reps stood on street corners showing passers-by how to find the hidden image. The first North American book followed in 1993.

Which brand, started in a Minneapolis family basement by Scott Olson, led the inline skating boom of the early 1990s?

Rollerblade began life as Ole's Innovative Sports, with Olson's brothers on the payroll. Its name became a generic word for every inline skate, whoever made it.

Which Three's Company star fronted early-1990s infomercials for the ThighMaster, an exerciser squeezed between the legs?

Suzanne Somers became the face of a gadget invented in Sweden as a physical therapy device called the V-Bar. Marketer Joshua Reynolds, who had earlier made money from the mood ring, turned it into a hit.

Which sneaker brand sold millions of pairs of the light-up children's shoes it launched in 1992?

LA Gear named the line LA Lights and sold it through Foot Locker stores. Even that hit could not save the company, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1998.

Which Los Angeles denim brand became a 1990s staple for jeans with leg openings up to 50 inches wide?

JNCO is short for Judge None Choose One. The company's sales peaked at $186.9 million and then halved in 1999.

Which citrus soda did Coca-Cola launch in the US in 1997 to lure drinkers away from Mountain Dew?

Surge was known inside the company as MDK, for Mountain Dew Killer. It appeared first in Norway under the name Urge and sold so well there that an American launch followed.

Troll dolls, the wild-haired toys that boomed again in the 1990s, were created by a woodcutter from which country?

Denmark's Thomas Dam was a baker who turned to fishing and selling logs when flour ran short. His earliest dolls had sheep wool hair and glass eyes.

Which singer hosted the talk-show-style infomercials for the Psychic Friends Network, a 1990s pay-per-call service?

Dionne Warwick fronted what one trade publisher called the most successful infomercial of all time. The network took in up to $125 million a year at its peak, yet went bankrupt in 1998.

Which dance style from Harlem's ballroom scene, built on model-like poses, went mainstream through a 1990 Madonna hit?

Voguing takes its name from the fashion magazine whose models inspired the poses. The 1990 documentary Paris Is Burning showed the ballroom dancers behind the style in the same year as the song.

Which fat substitute, approved in 1996 and used in WOW potato chips, had to carry a label about digestive effects?

Olestra was found by accident in 1968 by Procter & Gamble researchers looking for fats that premature infants could digest more easily. The FDA dropped the warning label in 2003.

The Hampster Dance, an early web craze of looping animated rodents, used a sped-up song from which Disney film?

Robin Hood opens with Roger Miller's Whistle-Stop, the tune the page sped up. Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte built the site in 1997 while competing with her sister and a friend for web traffic.

Which short-lived 1990s drink from the makers of Clearly Canadian had small edible jelly beads floating in every bottle?

Orbitz kept its beads suspended with gellan gum, and drinkers compared it to a lava lamp. It was gone by early 1999, and its web address was later bought by the travel agency of the same name.

Warheads, the sour candies of 1990s playground dares, were first made for their American importer in which place?

Taiwan is where importer Peter De Yager found the sourest candy on a hunt across Asia, after a sour-coated Japanese sweet gave him the idea. Children went on to hold playground sour-offs.

Which clothing chain's 1998 Khakis Swing commercial, set to Jump, Jive an' Wail, cashed in on the swing dance revival?

The Gap used Louis Prima's 1956 recording, and some fans took the ad as a sign that the revival was over. Brian Setzer's cover of the same song was the revival's highest-charting single and won a Grammy.

Zubaz, the zebra-print workout pants of the early 1990s, were devised with two stars of which sport?

Wrestling duo the Road Warriors wanted better workout pants and brainstormed the design with managers of gyms they owned. They then wore the wild prints in the ring on television.

Which service, launched in 1999 by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker, clogged college networks with students swapping MP3s?

Napster took its name from Fanning's school nickname, Nappy. Copyright lawsuits shut it down in July 2001, a few months after its user count peaked at 26.4 million.