Things From The 90's That Belong In The 90's

These come from collegehumor.com...I agree with most, however...McDonald's Pizza...I would McLOVE their return!

1. Soul Patches
The soul patch is, arguably, the most illogical of all 90’s trends. The chin strap beard, while stupid, clearly said, “I do too have a chin. I outlined it in my face hair. See?” The goatee wordlessly declared, “I’m an assh*le!” So what did a soul patch say? “The only thing I follow more religiously than minor league baseball is trends involving confused displays of masculinity.” If you ever had a soul patch, please take a moment to stew in your shame. If you still have a soul patch, you’ve got a little barbecue sauce in there.

2. JNCOs
Perhaps it was because of all of the Skip-It related chafing wounds, or just a general fondness for the feel of perpetually filthy shreds of fabric flopping against your calves, but, in the 90’s, nothing was cooler than going to Kohl’s with your mom to buy a fly new pair of JNCOs. WAS, being the operative word. We can all agree now that the circumference of your “pipes” should not exceed the length of your inseam. It just looks stupid. It doesn’t matter how many yo-yo’s you had stashed in there; no one needs that much room in their pants.

3. Leather Pants
No one who was over the age of 11 at any point in the 90’s made it through the decade without wondering, “Could I pull off leather pants?” The answer, ubiquitously, was, “No,” but Ricky Martin, Crazy Spice, and the actresses on Charmed were unrelenting in their desire to make leather pants last. In the end, the insane dry cleaning bills and the fact that you can’t take anyone in leather pants seriously defeated this terrible trend. Just in case: no. You can’t pull off leather pants. Don’t try to bring them back. No.

4. Thug Looney Tunes Shirts
Nothing proves the collective idiocy of the 90’s more than the fact that a group of businessmen thought, “People will probably buy T-shirts with Looney Tunes characters dressed in ‘urban’ attire,” and then people actually bought them. This fad predated the safety mechanism of ironic fashion. If you wore an oversized T-shirt with a picture of Bugs Bunny wearing baggy, backwards jeans, you genuinely thought it was cool. At some point in the 90’s, at least one person was probably held at gun point by someone in a gangster Tasmanian Devil T-shirt. Just think about that and vow to never let this fashion trend return.

5. Backwards Jeans
Why was Bugs Bunny dressed in backwards jeans? Oh yeah. Because that was a thing people did. Specifically “Mac Daddy” and “Daddy Mac” of the hip-hop group Kris Kross. They are to blame for countless misplaced beepers and chaos at junior high urinals. This is the kind of trend that can only be discussed by using the phrase “youth culture” in the most crotchety tone of distanced disparagement, but, come on, you tried your jeans on backwards. Just don’t try it again

6. Butterfly Clips
Any fad or accessory that draws attention to white person scalp should instantly be discarded. White person scalp looks ridiculous. Usually it appears as a side effect of white, suburban youths’ rebellious corn rows or dreadlocks (fads that relentlessly triumph over the test of time and obvious ugliness), but, in the 90’s, we all saw more white girl scalp than we wanted because of little things called Butterfly Clips. The Claire’s in your town had an entire wall of sparkly, neon, shiny, glow-in-the-dark clips ranging in size from tiny to minuscule, and every woman who grew up in the 90’s is still finding shards of them in the bottoms of her purses.

7. Scrunchies
One of the seemingly least offensive 90’s trends, scrunchies actually embody a number of truly horrible things like, really high, tight ponytails, scrunchies at the base and end of braids, and lamé. Despite American Apparel’s best efforts, the scrunchie has not been brought back into popular culture because everyone associates them with an annoying family friend who got them in trouble for something they didn’t do in 1996.

8. Overalls
It is impossible to take a person in overalls seriously. It’s a wonder that anyone except teenage babysitters and Murphy Brown’s house painter got anything done while overalls were popular. Aside from making everyone who wore them look like a giant baby, their efficiency was always compromised by the fact that all the cool kids kept one of the shoulder straps unhooked, so that the metal fasteners swung and beat against their sternums. If you were really cool, you hooked your locker padlock onto the dangling strap of your overalls. Because, obviously, wearing locks is cool.

9. Manic Panic
Yes, people still dye their hair unnatural colors, but, in the 90’s, it was a requirement that all misunderstood social outcasts went to the mall and bought a tub of Manic Panic in whatever color would most upset their mothers. It’s impossible to remember whether Manic Panic was so crappy that it made everyone’s hair disgustingly stringy, or if that was just a symptom of angsty teenagers’ inability to wash themselves. Either way, there’s a reason this look did not last.

10. Chain Wallet
The makers of chain wallets took the model of pocket watches and somehow made the opposite. For every austere British man who gracefully fished his valuable timepiece from his waistcoat, there were six teenage boys outside an HMV, digging in their pockets to find the nylon velcro wallet at the end of their excessively long chain. It’s probably fair to say that if you kept your wallet on a wallet chain, you had nothing worth stealing in there anyway

11. Starter Jackets
It’s not just that Starter Jackets were overpriced and ugly that makes them a trend we should hope never has a resurgence; they also made people crazy. Do you remember just how often there were news stories about people “getting jumped” for their jackets? Somewhere in America right now, there is an inmate serving out a sentence for a Starter Jacket-related crime. And that is a tragedy.

12. Children’s Toys That Became Acceptable “Collectibles” for Adults
If you were a kid in the 90’s, having Beanie Babies and Furbys and Tickle Me Elmos was fun. But you know who else had those things? Weird middle-aged people who lived alone with their cats and their Troll Doll collections. For some reason, it became a fact that Beanie Babies were going to become very valuable in the future and, therefore, being the creepy grown-up at the K.B. Toys was fine. Now that we know Beanie Babies are as worthless now as they were then, let’s try to avoid letting children’s toys get this popular again.

13. These Phrases:
You used to say these phrases: “As if,” “Bi-otch,” “Da bomb,” “All that and a bag of chips,” “Bugg’n,” “Boo ya,” “Talk to the hand.” Say them again right now. Then never say them again. Actually, “Boo ya” is still pretty fun.

14. Soda Experiments
It used to be that a summer could not start until a new and unnecessary soda had been introduced to the market. Whether it was Crystal Pepsi, Jolt, Bubble Yum Soda, Surge, EDGE, Josta, Kick, OK Soda, or Pepsi AM, you always reacted the same way: you drank it for 3 straight weeks, then remembered it was gross and went back to drinking regular soda. This soda marketing trend trailed into the 2000’s with Coca-Cola Blak, but we can hope that the only new soda developments that will arise in the near future are other ways to say, “calorie free.”

15. Candies That Take More Than 20 Minutes to Eat
Candy is great. 90’s candy was really great. Because you were a kid. It was ok to mindlessly slobber over your knuckles while eating a Ring Pop, or suck sugar out of a receptacle made of more sugar when you ate Baby Bottle Pop, or gnaw your way to a chocolate drool covered toy at the center of your Nestle Wonder Ball, or even unhook your jaw and obscenely mash your tongue and lips against the Jawbreaker you kept in a sticky Ziploc bag on your desk. It was ok then. But not anymore. Your iPhone screen has enough sticky finger prints as is.

16. Smilk
If you were wondering why you looked so fat in your 6th grade class picture, it’s because you were fat. And that’s probably, in part, due to Smilk. The Milk Moustache ad campaign made companies realize that kids would drink milk if you aggressively forced advertisements down their throats. And if you added fake sugary fruit flavors to the milk? Kids would guzzle that shit till their moms realized it was making them fat. Though that was also the Butterfinger Milk’s fault.

17. Toe Rings
Anyone who wore a toe ring in the 90’s is probably still wearing one today because they could never get it off. That’s what happens when you cram a cheap piece of metal on your sweaty, growing toe. It didn’t look good when it was new, and it really doesn’t look good now. You should really get that toe knuckle hair under control.

18. Devil Sticks
Today, there is one person in every college quad playing with Devil Sticks. In the
90’s, there were eight. Devil Sticks never took off as much as their marketing campaign indicated that they would have, but they definitely took off more than they should have, considering the fact that they were two sticks with which you were supposed to smack around a third, tasseled stick.

19. Backpack Purses
Move over butterfly clips and scrunchies: backpack purses were the least flattering female accessory of the 90’s. They managed to completely disrupt sideboob, make a girl’s butt look comparatively enormous, and they provided about a quarter of the storage space of a normal backpack. The only thing worse than a regular backpack purse was a backpack purse in the shape of some sort of stuffed animal. Grown-ups carried those. In public. Never again.

20. These Hair Styles
It used to be impossible to go to a Supercuts without seeing people actively requesting these hairstyles: flat tops, mushroom cuts, rat tails, frosted tips, and long-ass curly hair on guys. While current fashion trends have their fair share of stupid haircuts, at least they tend to err on the side of being too low-maintenance. The 90’s was a time of working hard to look ridiculous. And we all succeeded quite well

21. Zubaz Pants
One day, in the not too distant future, we will have a president who has been photographed wearing Zubaz pants. This fate is impossible to avoid because, defying all reason and decorum, Zubaz pants were cool. Anyone who wore Zubaz pants in the past will defend them by saying, “They were comfy,” or “I only wore them while working out.” No. They wore them because they were cool. For that, society should feel collectively embarrassed.

22. Swing Music
Just because a guy with “cafeteria fishstick” greasy hair backed by a bunch of horn-blowing, zoot suit-wearing “cool cats” tells you to jump, jive, wail, and buy khakis doesn’t mean you have to. A lesson many in the 1990s found out entirely way too late. With fashion that gaudy and music so fedora flipping awful, it’s no wonder The Mask wanted somebody to stop him.

23. Boy Bands
Let’s not pretend that boy bands weren’t fun. They danced around and made catchy music that, years later, you still know all the words to. If a Backstreet Boys or *Nsync or 98 Degree song comes on the radio, you are instantly infused with pre-9/11 levels of cheerfulness. That’s powerful stuff. We can give credit where credit is due. They defined a specific time in popular culture. But, good god, didn’t you just want to punch those annoying anuses in the face?

24. Pauly Shore
Also known as “The Weasel,” you might remember him from such films as Encino Man, Son in Law, In the Army Now, and Bio-Dome. If you don’t, you were probably one of the many, many people high enough to find his Valley dude brand of humor enjoyable. After spending his teenage years as a stand up comedian, Pauly got his big break as an MTV VJ and was eventually given his own show. He even recorded and released his own music video. Which really helps explain why neither are around anymore.

25. McDonalds McPizza
There is no better example of the profound optimism of the 90’s than the McPizza. The fact that McDonalds thought that they could just start making pizza and everyone would be cool with it is a sign that things were going too well for America. We know our limitation better now. We know McDonalds can’t make pizza, Taco Bell can’t make french fries, KFC can’t make salad, and Britney Spears will never be a cute 17 year-old again. Let’s just move on

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