I was a 90s kid.

If you haven't experienced it already, one of the first moments in your life when you realize that people get old and life changes is when you look at someone younger than you and realize they grew up on different television shows than you did. This happened to me a few years back when I was at a friends house and their younger sibling was watching the Disney Channel. This kid was a big fan of the Jonas Brothers and High School Musical and I realized, "this kid is the child of a new decade." A 90s kid like myself didn't grow up with the Disney Channel, I'm not saying we never watched it, we just watched Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network a hell of a lot more. This is the reason I'm writing this post, I want take a few of you on a nostalgia trip and the rest of you on an educational journey, to a time when the Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers were not to be messed with, to a time when Bakugan's didn't exist but Pokemon roamed the Earth, and to a time when Amanda Bynes was relevant. Welcome to the 90s!




SKETCH COMEDY
A lot of the post will be about television, why? Because it seems to me that most 90s kids grew up on television. So just to get her out of the way, lets talk about Amanda Bynes first. If you had to google the name because you had no clue who she is, you're not a 90s kid. Furthermore, if you did recognize the name, but only from Hairspray and Easy A, you're not a 90s kid. I'm talking about The Amanda Show-Amanda Bynes, I'm talking season 3-6 of All That!-Amanda Bynes. These shows were the SNL's and MADtv's for kids and they were a fuckton better than those shows (at least with the earlier cast. Also, pardon my French.) Anyone aware of a show called Drake and Josh? Guess were they made it big? The Amanda Show! Amanda Bynes was practically the Queen of Nickelodeon, the kings being Kenan Thomson and Kel Mitchell stars of their own show featuring a lot of Orange Soda and a little gem of a movie called Goodburger. Back in the day, these actors were famous, they were good, now... well, lets hope Nick starts showing reruns of All That! or something. (Which they're totally going to do by the way!)




NICKELODEON
Clearly this part of the article is going to get a lot more into Nickelodeon. I just want to skim through this real quick and mention a few shows, see if they pop out for you. Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, The Adventures of Pete & Pete, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Clarissa Explains It All (Melissa Joan Hart has children now... weird.), Doug, The Ren & Stimpy Show (before it aired on Spike), Rocko's Modern Life, Rugrats (the black kid wasn't always on the show and yes they were once babies), Salute Your Shorts (at least the reruns), The Secret World of Alex Mack, Animorphs (which apparently only had 2 seasons, for some reason I remember it having more), KaBlam (best show ever), Hey Arnold! (taught me long division), The Angry Beavers (before you could call a group of feminists the name), CatDog, The Wild Thornberrys, and Rocket Power (although this and Thornberrys were late 90s). These were among some of the shows I caught on Nick when I was a youngin. Out of all of them, however, I feel I should get into further detail about Rocko's Modern Life.




ROCKO'S MODERN LIFE
This show deserves to be explained in further detail simply because of SpongeBob SquarePants, or as I eventually began to realize "Rocko Under Water." Yes, both shows share some of the same writers and producers, so I suppose its understandable that they'd be at least similar. But I've come to realize they're pretty much the exact same show (only Rocko's Modern Life was original and part of the 90s.) Both shows feature animals, the star of the show is a single male who lives with his pet, he has a next door neighbor who hates him, a near-mentally challenged friend, and lives a pretty average life if it were in a weird cartoon world. Now I was there to watch the first episode of SpongeBob and I like the show and all, but to me, it was the death of the 90s. SpongeBob SquarePants became the Rocko's Modern Life of the new millenium, except it doesn't have as much adult humor in it. Rocko was the best.




CARTOON NETWORK
This is the part were I mention shows from the other network 90s kids watched avidly. Courage the Cowardly Dog (late 90s, but still), Cow and Chicken (remember the episode with the quarter-heads?), Dexter's Laboratory (Ego Trip was a bitchin' movie and apparently an episode was made were Dexter cusses a lot but it only airs at conventions, also, this show launched the career of Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane), Ed, Edd n' Eddy (loved jawbreakers), I Am Weasel (and I R Baboon), Johnny Bravo (adventuring with the little neighbor girl, nobody asked questions), and The Powerpuff Girls (same universe as Samurai Jack, google it). That's just the regular shows, Cartoon Network also introduced our generation to anime (and american shows like animes) with Toonami. It aired shows like: ThunderCats (incase you didn't grow up in the 80s), Voltron, The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest (incase you didn't grow up in the 60s), Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball FUCKING Z (HELLL YEAH!!!!! Before they shortened and re-aired it, which they're doing now), ReBoot (CGI show that was way cooler than TRON on more than one occasion), and even Gundam Wing (which may have been a year after the end of the 90s). Who here reading this remembers the CGI robot that hosted Toonami? Remember the transformations it went through? Awesome! For all the younger generations who watch Cartoon Network now, I just want to mention that at one point in time, Cartoon Network showed ONLY cartoons, this pretty much stopped when they aired the Scooby Doo live action movie and now you can find live action stuff on Cartoon Network.




POKEMON
Gotta catch 'em all! This franchise is still popular today. The 90s was the Golden Age of Pokemon. Back when Ash set out on his adventure with Misty and Brock. It was a time when there were only a set amount and kind of Pokemon in existence, before they started coming up with new ones. Also, Digimon sucked in comparison to Pokemon back in the day. You weren't a 90s kid if you didn't cry when Ash died in the first movie. Also, I can probably find my old Pokemon trading cards if I looked hard enough through my messy closet. This was the best anime show of the 90s for kids.




POWER RANGERS
Go, go, Power Rangers! Guitar solo! Go, go, Power Rangers! Guitar solo! Go, go, Power Rangers! Mighty Morphing Power Rangers! The masters of martial arts. Sure the Ninja Turtles were just as awesome, but they were a cartoon. The Power Rangers were live action and they kicked ass! The Mighty Morphing Power Rangers in particular kicked a lot of ass because they were the original. Eventually the show ended its Zordon story arc and each subsequent series pretty much "rebooted" the franchise. The original Rangers existed in the 90s and they were undefeatable!




STUFF AND THINGS
Who owned a Giga Pet? What about a Tamagotchi? Or a Furby? If you were a 90s kid, at one point in time you owned one of those toys. Or countless other toys to come out of the 90s. The toys of the 90s seemed all about taking care of virtual pets. You questioned getting a real pet when you realized you couldn't take care of your virtual one. That's what the toys of the 90s did to us, made us question shit!




CONCLUSION
I'm glad I was a 90s kid. The first generation of kids raised on television, but could still enjoy playing dodge ball with the neighbor kids and so forth. We seem to be the last in a generation who watched violent shows when we were young (evil parents and networks have cracked down on this), last in a generation who enjoyed playing outside (childhood obesity is STILL on the rise), and last in a generation who enjoyed life without the good internet (we existed during the time of Dial Up!). We were also the first generation of kids to master the art of gaming (try to beat a 90s kid at Mortal Kombat, I dare you), the first generation to experience the weird advances in computer technology (you could take care of a virtual pet!!!), and the first generation that no longer had to sneak porno mags into their rooms because we could find that shit online. The 90s seems to be right there on the line that seperates the generation of older decades from the generation of the millenium. We still have the values of our parents and could grow up in similar ways, but we can also use all this new age technological stuff kids play with these days. We didn't have to be as conservative as our grandparents, we didn't have to be on drugs like our parents, and we weren't addicted to technology like the new generation (well, if you don't count television). So I raise a glass to the 90s! You were an awesome decade and made one awesome generation of people! Can't wait to see what the future holds for the post-millenium decades!