The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, Brian Bellmont

“HeadOn! Apply it to your forehead” and Subway’s ubiquitous “Five! Five-dollar! Five-dollar footlong!”
    FUN FACT: In one MadTV parody, a dense elderly couple think their medical-alert button is the remote control. Their attempt at channel changing calls the paramedics, which freaks the oldsters out so much they dash outside and are run over by a semi.

Janet Reno’s Dance Party
    Q uick, who’s the U.S. attorney general? In the late ’90s, every kid in the country knew—thanks to Will Ferrell’s impersonation of a certain A.G. with a mannish ’do, deep voice, and bright blue outfit. On
Saturday Night Live
’s recurring “Janet Reno’s Dance Party” sketch, Ferrell portrayed the first female attorney general as a defensive, clench-fisted, karate-choppin’ force of nature in pearls and sensible pumps—who also happened to be throwing a party for local kids in her unfinished basement. Amid the crepe paper, balloons, and disco ball, Ferrell would stop to interview students, and quickly accuse them all of lying (“Shut your mouth, you dirty liar”), or dive into the crowd (“Here comes 180 pounds of pure Reno!”).
    Watching “Reno” herky-jerk to “My Sharona” or slow dance with then–Secretary of Health Donna Shalala (Kevin Spacey!) blew our minds, but it was seeing her in a boxing match with the real Rudy Giuliani that pushed the skit into classic territory. Ferrellkneed Giuliani in the groin, and then, when accused of boxing dirty, crazily flailed his arms and uttered one of the best retorts ever to come out of SNL: “Then how comes my conscience is so clean?!”
    Taking a cue from her fictionalized self, the real-life Janet Reno hosted a dance party as a campaign fund-raiser when she ran for the governor of Florida. She didn’t win.
    STATUS: Available on DVD collections, Hulu, and YouTube.
    FUN FACT: The actual Reno appeared on the final “Dance Party” sketch, busting through a cinder-block wall Kool-Aid Man–style.

Jell-O Jigglers
    J ell-O wasn’t the first gelatin company to make their product into wiggly but firm blocks that were easy to shape with cookie cutters—Knox Blox had been around for decades. But when marketing manager Dana Gioia helped launch a promotions blitz for Jell-O Jigglers in 1990, the colorful finger food was suddenly everywhere.
    In a 1991 TV ad, Jell-O spokeslegend Bill Cosby advocated making Christmas-shaped Jigglers for Santa in place of milk and cookies. Egg- and jellybean-shaped molds encouraged Jigglers as an Easter treat. Kids loved them because it was suddenly okay to eat Jell-O with your fingers. Jell-O loved them because they requiredfour times as much Jell-O to make as a regular pan of the stuff, plus they could keep cranking out holiday-themed molds.
    For some kids, Jigglers were the first step into mom and dad’s kitchen. They were tasty, easy, fun to eat, and the variety of colors and shapes kept things interesting. If only all foods came in every color of the rainbow and required the use of cookie cutters.
    STATUS: Still jiggling.
    FUN FACT: In Carolyn Wyman’s book,
Jell-O: A Biography
, it’s revealed that Jell-O marketers first laughed off the term “Jigglers” because it sounded obscene. But when a quick poll of Kraft secretaries revealed that the name passed muster with them, a new product was born.

The Jerry Springer Show
    A re you a pregnant prostitute? Having an affair with your cousin? In love with a phone-sex operator? Proud to be a homewrecker? Cheating on your boyfriend with his identical twin? All of the above? There’s one place for you, and it’s center stage at
The Jerry Springer Show
, the spawned-in-the-1990s phenomenon that all but invented tabloid TV.
    Springer’s show was a revelation when it launched in 1991. Sure, TV hadn’t exactly been all
Masterpiece Theatre
for some time, but we