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

your jeans, in your bedsheets, and absolutely everywhere else.
    STATUS: Glitter cosmetics are still around, but you’re most likely to find sparkles in fingernail polish these days.
    FUN FACT: Glitter was so popular in the 1990s that even mega-chain Bath & Body Works had a line of products, Art Stuff, that seemed designed only to showcase glitter.

Bottled Water
    P ay for water? When it already comes free out of the tap, the hose, the drinking fountain, even the sky? Our dads found the very concept as horrifying as leaving the lights on when no one’s home. In the 1970s or even 1980s, buying water seemed as silly as the old jokes about selling ice to Eskimos, but by the end of the 1990s, it was a billion-dollar industry.
    The bottled-water craze made sense in a way. Water is better for you than sugary pop, so who wouldn’t feel a bit smug toting a bottle of the clear stuff instead of a Mountain Dew? But the craze brought its own problems—endless water containers clogging up landfills, as well as concerns about BPA, a chemical used in some plastic bottles. And don’t forget the cost—the
New York Times
estimated drinking eight glasses of tap water a day costs a consumer $0.49 a year vs. $1,400 for bottled water.
    STATUS: Water continues to be a popular carry-with-you beverage, but more and more people are refilling the same container, oftentimes out of the tap. Thankfully, the next evolution in the you’re-paying-for-
what
? craze—oxygen bars—has yet to quite take off.
    FUN FACT: “Evian” spelled backward is “naïve.”

Boy Bands
    B oy bands weren’t invented in the 1990s—just ask moms who once swooned for the Monkees. But the late ’80s and the ’90s saw the trend explode, and junior-high lockers and concert promoters were the richer for it.
    Whether you grooved to New Edition, Boyz II Men, ’N Sync, 98 Degrees, the Backstreet Boys, or earlier offering New Kids on the Block, the most important part of boy-band fandom was selecting a favorite band member. Every girl knew immediately if she was going to fall for the Cute One (’N Sync’s Justin), the Shy One (Backstreet’s Kevin), the Bad Boy (NKOTB’s Donnie), or the One Who Was Left Over After All Your Friends Already Called Dibs (oftentimes he was the one who quit the band early and immediately flopped at a solo career).
    Thanks to teen magazines and TV specials, you soon knewyour favorite’s hobbies, dog’s name, preferred foods, and of course his astrological sign and how it compared with your own. Your slightly older brother would mock you endlessly for this trivia, but really, he had no ground to stand on, considering he knew the same factoids about his own chosen idol on the Vikings or Red Sox.
    Boy banders embraced the clean-cut, cookie-cutter image that made girls swoon. From the meticulously coordinated outfits to the never-out-of-step choreography, this was music cranked out by the corporate machine. But who cared? The harmonies soared, the tunes made for perfect prom themes, and the singers themselves were cuter than Beanie Babies. They had the right stuff, baby.
    STATUS: Various bands popular in the 1990s have made comebacks, and in the 2010s, Europe began feeding us new boy bands, with One Direction leading the way.
    FUN FACT: New Kids on the Block spawned a short-lived cartoon in 1990–1991. The real band members would appear briefly before the episodes to deliver messages about how much they loved camping or to urge fans to stay in school.

The Brady Bunch
Revival
    H ere’s the story…of a lovely lady. And her family, who never left our minds.
    Campily classic sitcom
The Brady Bunch
was canceled in 1974, but never really ended. Reruns ran eternally, and there also was acartoon, variety show complete with synchronized swimming,
The Brady Brides
TV series, and
A Very Brady Christmas
.
    But it was in the 1990s that the famed blended family came back