Not Only 90s Kids

There's this weird epidemic where people post something from their childhood on social media and then say something like, "Only 90s kids remember..." or "Today's kids will never know..."

Whenever someone posts something like, "Only 90s kids remember how awesome Blue's Clues was!" I am very puzzled, because this implies that the grandparents, parents, babysitters, and older siblings of 90s kids lack the ability to remember this television show that featured a grown man named Steve who wore the same outfit every day and an animated blue dog of indeterminate gender and during which you were supposed to incessantly shout "A clue! A clue!" That seems like it would be pretty unforgettable.

Or when someone posts something like, "Today's kids will never know how lit these little P.E. scooter boards were!" my reaction is, "First of all, in the time before today's kids, nobody said anything was 'lit,' unless that thing was legitimately on fire. Second of all, you just made a post essentially informing everyone of the litness of said scooter boards. So now everybody knows."

In fact, nowadays everybody can harness the power of the Internet to access clothes, music, movies, books, hairstyles, and recipes from all kinds of eras. I predict that in the future times periods will become obsolete because people will be able to wear, watch, listen to, and otherwise enjoy whatever they like without being limited to current trends.

For my part, I wish I had some of my 90s toys back. Not the stuff that everybody and their computer-literate dog is posting on social media, though. I'm thinking of things that are a tad more obscure.

Disclaimer: I found the images below from random Internet searches. Rather than citing all the sites where the images were originally uploaded, I chose not to crop the search details out of the images. Those details should give an idea of where these images were found should anyone desire to examine them more closely and/or need a reason to be dissuaded from suing me.

Sky Dancers

Sky dancers were pretty popular when I was a kid, but they don't seem to be getting much nostalgic love these days. Older Sister and I had...three or four sky dancers, I think. I think there was a pink one, a turquoise one, a lavender one, and/or a blue one. All had similar wing, clothing, and stand styles. I couldn't find an image of that particular style, but the closest thing is shown below.

Even better than sky dancers were the sky dancer movies. I showed my brothers the sky dancer picture above a few weeks ago, and I mentioned watching the pink sky dancer movie. They were all, "What? The movie was called The Pink Sky Dancer Movie?" I had to explain that no! No, it was not, as far as I knew. It was just that the three sky dance movies came on three different VHSs: bright pink, bright blue, and bright yellow. It was just easier to refer to them as the pink, blue, and yellow sky dancer movies.

The Bunny House

The bunny house (or Hideaway Hollow, as is apparently its real name) was a gift to Little Sister the same Christmas that Older Sister and I received the castle (pictured later). I actually liked the bunny house a little better than the castle, and so Little Sister and I played with the bunny house a lot.

The image above is the starter set. It had a mommy, daddy, and baby bunny; the house; some assorted furniture; and a strawberry pie. That stump was the coolest. The top could flip to be either a normal stump or a little table with milk and cookies. Little Sister also had an additional set or two. Mostly I remember the bedroom set with the big sister bunny, pictured below.

Baby slept in the trundle bed.

Little Sister and I were obsessed with expanding the bunny house. So many cool sets were pictured on the back of the box! We had a plan that we would go to the D.I. and find a few additional sets, including some tan bunny sets. The tan bunny sets came with a tan version of the gray bunny sets. They even had a pie with purple berries in lieu of the strawberry pie!

The Princess Castle

Although it wasn't quite as good as the bunny house, the princess castle was fun. There was a princess, a prince, and a bunch of furniture, pets, and accessories you could buy to furnish the castle. There were little holes in the bottom of the prince and princess's feet so that you could stick them on the revolving ballroom floor and make them dance.

You could get several horses to go with the castle. We had two or three. The blonde one below was considered mine. Older Sister had one with purple hair.

We loved this treasure chest, although maybe it was one of our friends who owned it. (Almost all our friends also had the same princess castle.)

We definitely had and very much loved this bed. We would often have our Kellys sleep in it.

The Little Tikes House

Of all of our doll houses, this one was the oldest. It probably dated back to before I was born, as I was forever climbing into it and getting stuck as a year-old child.

Exciting features: a closet that really opened. A bathroom with a sink, toilet, and tub (which I would flood with water). That brown deck would pull out to reveal a swimming pool (which I would also flood with water).

It's interesting, but the bed was just a little nook with a piece of padding. The image above has pink padding for the bed, but ours had yellow padding.

The image below shows various (all?) sets you could get for this house. We had the parents, the two kids, the picnic table, the normal table, the chairs, the car, the slide, and the green baby. (Later Little Sister and I bought one of the blue babies at the D.I...yes, while looking for bunny house sets.)

The picnic table, the chairs, the car, the slide, and the kitchen set were also sold as life-sized toys. It wasn't enough that Older Sister and I had the miniatures. We wanted the life-sized ones, too, and we were sorely jealous of the friends who had them in their playrooms and backyards.

There you go. Fun, huh? Do you remember these toys? Did you ever have any of them? Weren't they great? (While writing this post, it took all of my self-restraint to not buy myself a bunny house and some tan bunny sets. I'm still tempted. If I did, though, I can almost guarantee that Little Sister and I would set it up and play with it for hours.)