I was flipping through the channels last night and came across a little gem called HomeAlone 2: Lost in New York. Now, I know that the franchise went downhill afterwards,
but I remember the excitement I had, and the desire to see that movie that swelled inside
after receiving my little Hardee's box cut out that formed into a Limo with Kevin's head
poking out. One thing that caught my eye was the Talkboy, the recording device he used that
was part of the main story which eventually was released to the public from Tiger
Electronics. All it does is record your voice onto a tape at different speeds, but it
provided hours of entertainment! I have compiled a couple of other things from the
90's that you may have forgotten about, and probably loved.
Super Soakers
I remember my 5th birthday I got one of these bad boys, and immediately filled up
the tiny tank, and started pumping, and pumping, and pumping... It took approximately
20 pumps for about 3 seconds of streaming water, but oh the joy that ensued
for the person holding the water gun. My buddy, Jeremy Smith had not yet received
a water gun of his own, which was unfortunate for him and his pursuit of dry
clothes.
Street Fighter II
Ayuuuuukiiin! If you know what that word means, then you likely spent a good portion
of your youth punching buttons in a frenzical manner, intently watching your health bar
as it lowered slowly. I believe I received a good amount of my geographical education
from the game, learning that large monsters came from the Caribbean, and all russians
dress in military garb with killer boots, often getting kicked in the face by nimble
chinese women. Street Fighter: 100% better than the movie of the same name.
Power Rangers
The best one was Jason, of course. Though I remember feeling torn that my favorite
character wore red-a girl color- around while fighting the putty patrol. Rita Repulsa
never decided to make the bad guys big before the end of the episode. In fact every
episode followed the exact same formula.
-Characters are hanging out at school or local... restaurant or whatever that place was.
-Characters face some moral situation often facing teens.
-Facing that dilemma is delayed due to a monster running around causing trouble.
-The characters fight the putty patrol in their normal clothes.
-They morph into their suits to fight the bad guy.
-The bad guy gets big.
-They call their zords, make their megazord, and then a guy in a boxy robot suit fights
the monster in the same suit as before, standing amongst miniature buildings.
-The characters finally face the moral dilemma (drugs) by not doing it/doing it/or
humiliating the bullies that tried to get them to do it.
-The End
All in all this is the wonder that was Power Rangers, and I still get a weird feeling of
giddiness everytime I see those spandex suits obviously imported from Japan.
Trapper Keepers
I tried to get one of these when I started this school this year, but apparently they
stopped selling them when I was in about 4th grade. Apparently they ran out of
poorly rendered 3D images and perforated purple plastic. This means that I had to
find another place to keep my sticky stretch hand from the quarter machine and a
different pad of paper to doodle Daffy Duck on.
Mighty Max
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Have you ever found yourself wishing that you had a portable action hero and a
portable scenario based setup in which to play with his likeness? Well you are in
luck because we solved that need years ago. This one is pretty obscure and you
may not have participated in this trend, but it was the male equivalent of Polly
Pocket, which was the same idea though infinitely more lame (in the mind of a
young boy).
The 90's were a great time to be a kid. There were a thousand trends to fall into,
and a thousand ways to spend your time in addition to awesome video games. I
can't think of a decade I would have rather spent my youth in, besides possibly
the 1800's when I could have had a bowie knife and gun of my own at 7.
2 comments for this post
That is so weird - I just barely finished watching Home Alone 2 before reading this. Yeah, I know it wasn't the greatest movie, but I still love it. Probably because of the New Yorkness.
http://es.rangercentral.com/datos/mmpr/images/mmpr-rg-tommy1.jpg
Cooler than Jason... minus the hair cut.