The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade Read Online Free PDF Page A

drawer, and pail and shovel talking to him? Or that it took him a half hour to solve a mystery that most preschoolers figured out in the first three minutes?

    When Steve left the show in2002, a new dude named Joe moved into the
Blue’s Clues
world and the Internet went nuts with rumors that the original host had actually died. That mystery was quickly solved. (Surprise: He was fine. Steve split to pursue a music career.)
    We wish that they’d have given some time to the show’s real mysteries. Like how Mr. Salt and Mrs. Pepper gave birth to a jar of paprika, or why Steve always wore the exact same light-and-dark-striped green shirt? Or the solution to the biggest whodunit of all: That when Blue left clues all over the floor, it probably meant she needed to go outside.
    STATUS: The show stopped production in 2006, but reruns still air on Nick Jr.
    FUN FACT: Steve Burns played a murderer on
Homicide: Life on the Street
in 1998—still wearing a striped shirt.

Bob Ross and
The Joy of Painting
    Y ou never really intended to watch
The Joy of Painting
with Bob Ross, but maybe it was late at night, or maybe you were stuck at Grandma’s and the remote was not within your control. Or face it, maybe you had just settled down on the couch after a night out and were completely baked.
    And there was this guy, in jeans and a white man’s Afro, speakingin the gentle voice of a pastor, offering up a painting lesson so sparsely shot it may have been filmed in his garage. He murmured the names of the colors, from titanium white to Prussian blue to burnt umber, as if they were his beloved children. And like a good dad, he had complete faith that his audience could do anything he could do, which in this case meant turn a blank canvas into a mountain masterpiece or a seascape in one half-hour show—if they didn’t nod off to sleep first. The
New York Times
once called his voice aural Demerol.

    Fans learned a little about Ross in the process, including that his mom was his “favorite lady” and that when fishing he “put a Band-Aid on the fish and gave it CPR” before releasing it. Like Mr. Rogers, he seemed unquestionably good at heart—how could anyone painting “happy little trees” be otherwise? For that half hour, you were in the hands of a gentleman, and there was nothing bad in the world.
    STATUS: Gone for good. Ross died in 1995. A personality like Ross’s can’t be replaced, but his memory lives on through reruns and his line of art supplies.
    FUN FACT: A
Far Side
cartoon shows a woman watching a Bob Ross–like show who’s crushed to death when a real “happy little tree” falls on her house.

Body Glitter
    H ow did you apply your body glitter? A spray? Lotion? Powder? Those Kissing Potion–like roll-on bottles? Really, the question should be: Why did we apply it at all? What was it about 1990s fashion that made us feel we could best accessorize by coating our skin with sticky, messy sparkles, as if we’d first dressed to the nines, and then sat down and rolled all over a kindergarten craft table?
    Cosmetics companies indulged us by offering glitter in all scents, colors, and formats. Want to paint it on your nails? Squirt it in your hair? Dab it on your lips? Sweep it on your eyelids? Mostly we just splashed it on anywhere skin was at all exposed, envisioning ourselves to be hip and trendy club kids, instead of preteens who might as well have asked Claire’s at the mall to set up a direct-deposit account for our allowance.
    You’d roll the glittery blueberry- or strawberry-scented goodness all over your shoulders, chest, and sometimes midriff, envisioning that the sparkle would surely catch Nick Lachey’s eye as hestared out into the nosebleed seats at a 98 Degrees concert. In reality, painting the glitter on was the most fun of the whole exercise, and the least fun part was finding the little sparkly speckles for days afterward on