This is going to make me sound old, but here goes… “kids these days…”
I was born in the mid-80s ( yes that was a hard pill to swallow as I type) and grew up in the 90s. What I learned from my childhood, kids these days could benefit from.
Pop culture was at its finest, in my opinion. Tamagotchis, Nickelodeon, the rise of the boy bands (and yes, I will be first in line for the N*SYNC reunion tour!), Spice Girls and so much more.
No this wasn’t the dark ages. We had the internet, but it required an inordinate amount of patience as it was dial-up, and when you were finally online, you couldn’t get a phone call. Unless your house had two phone lines, fancy!
The landline was our group chat and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego was our biggest online adventure.
Let’s take a little trip down memory lane to appreciate all the great things we grew up with and our children will likely never know…
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1. Granny May’s
It has to be said, there is truly nothing like that store! To this day, stationery stores just don’t compare. If it was your BFF’s birthday, Granny May’s had the perfect gift. Different shaped and smelling erasers, rolls and rolls of stickers – for paper and your ears! And let’s not forger the adults-only section that kids used to love sneaking and snickering at. A paper shop that just kept on giving. Do better, Smiggle!
2. Long stretches of nothingness aka boredom aka free-play
Back in the day, you and your friends’ homes didn’t have multiple screens, so playdates weren’t centred around video games. So it was all about board games (that’s the correct spelling, board not bored), went outside and made mud pies, described cloud shapes in the sky, jumped on a trampoline. Granted, that trampoline was a bit of a death trap, but still, we got fresh air. Because we could, there was nothing to keep us scrolling, bingeing or clicking.
If we had a movie to watch, we often had to wait for five minutes because ultimately, you needed to rewind the tape. Yes, tapes needed to be wound back to the beginning. More often than not, we couldn’t be bothered, so we just went back to playing.
3. The Pizza Hut dessert bar
As 90s kids, parents wouldn’t take us to their favourite restaurants. No, they would take us to kid-friendly places and then go out after, without us! One such place was Pizza Hut, where you could dine under the hut, literally. The best part wasn’t the pizza, it was dessert. Ice cream with endless toppings, blue jelly (why blue?!), fruit that sat there, mini marshmallows, cream, chocolate sauce.
The best part, it was a buffet. Kids could choose their own adventure – and parents just let us because there was no parent-shaming.
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4. Space Food Sticks
Food made for NASA astronauts, in your own lunch box! It was amazing, it was almost educational to eat them, so teachers didn’t send a note home saying no more treats. Given the main ingredients were glucose and corn syrup – today they would be a big no-no!
Produced in Australia from 1971 until 2014 (plus a brief revival in 2019 to mark 50 years since the moon landing) in caramel and chocolate flavours. Just talking about them brings back the taste and texture that was as if cardboard and artificial caramel came together.
5. Spice Girls, N*SYNC & Backstreet Boys
Before they had a reunion tour, they were just on tour. Mel B is and always will be Scary Spice, not a judge on The Masked Singer. Justin Timberlake was one of the five names we knew. And friend groups were decided on if you were with BSB or N’SYNC. And when they do resume their tours, Gen Zers – we get tickets first!
And there was nothing like a Saturday morning waiting to see what number on the charts the video clips would appear on TV. There’s the magic word again, waiting! Patience was a virtue, you couldn’t get the song you wanted unless you had the CD, or had recorded it from the radio (extra points if you didn’t have the ads before and after).
6. Staring at a book or posters to find a 3D image
Anyone else remember the desperation to find anything pop out of the pages of the Magic Eye books? Those minutes just went on by while we agonisingly looked for an animal or sail boat. Seeing these colours unlocks a very real childhood memory or when another book would be released and you couldn’t wait to compete with your siblings to see who would see the 3D image pop out at you first.
RELATED: The Dinky Diary is officially baaaaack!
7. Daytime Talk Shows
“Jerry, Jerry, Jerry.”
“You are the father!”
These phrases were a staple of the daytime talk show circuit. If you had a day off school or during the holidays, it would be Jerry Springer, Maury Povich, Sally Jessy Raphael and Oprah who kept you company.
Daytime talk shows would be a mixed bag of conversations and topics, ranging from celebrities to paternity tests that would have guests throwing chairs (and occasionally celebs on couches!). While one of the best daytime talk shows of the ’90s has not been without its share of criticism, often for exploiting serious issues for entertainment value, it’s precisely the salacious, guilty pleasure nature of the series that fans love so much.
8. Getting up to pee during commercial breaks
TV taught us patience! Yes kids, we actually had to sit through gaps between our shows, these gaps are called commercials or ads and no you couldn’t skip them (unless you recorded a show, that’s a whole other story). This taught us to be patient. We also had to wait a week between our fave shows, no binge-watching!
We would go to the bathroom during ad breaks, and no we could not bring the TV with us to the bathroom like your iPad. Ad breaks were at least five minutes long, so you could go to the bathroom, refill your snacks, stretch your legs even!
RELATED: ‘My Tamagotchi taught me more about parenting than I realised’
9. Hairstyles inspired by Rachel Green
Friends was a beloved TV show for its one-liners, but also for its very real hair-fluencing. Thanks to Jennifer Aniston aka Rachel Green who was iconic in changing hairstyles of the 90s. And for the boys, it was a Luke Perry coif, sometimes even Brandon would influence.
10. Writing notes to friends, on paper
A time-honoured tradition in class. The trick, not getting your teacher, or the person you were writing about to read it. You would use all your coloured pens, changing colours every paragraph. Or each friend would be designated a colour to know who was writing back to whom. There was a real art to it. And took a lot more effort than a quick, snappy caption!
Ah, the good old days hey?
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