’90s nostalgia is pretty common among our generation, even for kids who only spent five years in that decade (me). Most of us remember our childhood as a sort of golden era, where cartoons and cereal were our only concerns… But don’t be fooled. Our brains are capable of repressing terrible memories and making the past look like the Renaissance, no matter what decade we reminisce about. Here’s ten things that will probably spark memories of stuff you probably never wanted to remember again.
1.) Purple/Green Heinz ketchup
What’s more appetizing than clumpy green, purple, or blue ketchup all over your fries and hotdogs? Especially when they all started mixing together and turned a mushy brown?
2.) Dial-up Internet
Remember when we couldn’t use the Internet and the phone at the same time? Remember when we lived like savages?
3.) Candy Flavored Lip Gloss
Somewhere in the recesses of Claire’s, these things still exist. And they wait.
4.) Mood rings
The day my mom explained that these things just react to the temperature of skin, I was devastated. What was she gonna say next, that Santa doesn’t exist?
5.) Bell Bottom Jeans
Our kids are guaranteed to make fun of our skinny jeans in 20 years, but at least we can walk around without tripping on our own pants now, right?
6.) Soda Wars
For a long time you couldn’t go a year without soda companies introducing new variations of their brands, usually by mashing up two flavors and hoping they became the hottest new drink of the summer. They never did.
7.) Moon Shoes
I have a personal vendetta against these. Moon shoes were the absolute COOLEST thing when they first came out. The advertisements made it seem like you could jump 6 feet in the air with them, making eight year old me beside herself with excitement. When I finally tried them out, I looked less like I was walking on the moon and more like a sad, sad little girl with creaky blocks for feet.
8.) Frosted Tips
This one is more hopeful—if someone can go from looking like a dried noodle product to becoming one of this generation’s greatest music icons, you can achieve your dreams, too.
9.) Hair Experiments
Hair cookiecutters. Enough said.
10.) Eyebrows plucked to the edge of their lives
Nowadays thicker is better, but in the 90s your eyebrows had to look as thin as a strand of hair, apparently. At least Gwen shows us that eventually, we can all move on to bigger and better things.