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 Page A

didn’t see this tasteless talk show coming. The swearing! The punching! The blurred boobies! Security guard Steve—whosoon became a star in his own right—diving bravely into a cartoon-like ball of flying fists and hair-pulling! Jerry’s insipid “Final Thought,” a weirdly discombobulating statement that was about as relevant to the hillbilly guests as toothpaste!
    Springer
faded from the spotlight for many reasons. Once the dialogue became completely incomprehensible thanks to the necessary bleeps, it wasn’t as much fun to watch the fights. And eventually, there was just no way the show could top its latest insane topic. Really, after the transvestite who cut off his/her own legs with a power saw, even boob-flashing grandmas and self-proclaimed vampires felt tame by comparison.
    STATUS: Thirty-six hundred episodes strong and still screaming.
    FUN FACT: Some stations refused to carry a
Springer
episode titled “I Married a Horse.”

Jim Carrey
    R emember when Jim Carrey was known only as the White Guy on
In Living Color
? For a brief time in the early ’90s, the lanky comic’s claim to fame was off-kilter characters like Vera de Milo and Fire Marshal Bill on the Fox comedy-sketch show. But then, in 1994, three of what would become his signature flicks hit the big screen, and—ssssomebody stop him!—he became a household name. (Although in many households, the conversation went: “Isn’t Jim Carrey annoying?”)
    In
The Mask
, Carrey’s “ssssmokin’!” human cartoon character romanced Cameron Diaz (in her first role) and ate up the scenery with his giant choppers. In
Dumb & Dumber
, he teamed up with the Farrelly Brothers and fellow goofball Jeff Daniels to unleash a whole new level of sophomoric—yet undeniably hilarious—humor onto cineplexes from coast to coast. (“What is the soup du jour?” “It’s the soup of the day.” “Mmmm—that sounds good. I’ll have that.”) And as
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective
, Carrey showcased his Big Boy pompadour and talked out of his butt.
    Aaaall righty, then.
    STATUS: Carrey eventually made the leap to more dramatic work with films like
I Love You Phillip Morris
and
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
.
    FUN FACT: According to IMDb.com, when he was ten years old, Carrey sent his résumé to
The Carol Burnett Show
.

Jim’s Journal
    F or Jim of comic strip
Jim’s Journal
, buying a scrub brush is a pretty big day. The big-headed, mouthless Wisconsinite wanders through his comic strip like many folks do through their own lives. Hardly anything major happens in his four-panel strips. In one, he sits at Dairy Queen idly watching an ant crawl across the table. In another, he ruminates about how a sore throat gets better as the day wears on.

    The strip, which ran in more than two hundred college newspapers during the 1990s, followed Jim through college, numerous menial jobs, and an out-of-nowhere marriage to chum Ruth, who’s oddly desperate for him to enjoy stamp collecting.
    While the strips are outwardly banal, there’s sometimes a germ of wisdom or humor. When Jim gets new shoelaces, he spends the day mesmerized by their gleam. After he reads
The Sound and the Fury
, he finds TV to be a lot more stupid than usual. Like most of us, Jim’s life doesn’t soar into mountains of joy and sink into valleys of despair, it just keeps on keeping on, Thoreau’s quiet desperation measured out in stick figures.
    STATUS: In 2011,
Jim’s Journal
began running on GoComics.com. The new run features a mix of classic and new Jim, including a prequel where Jim is in high school (an aptitude test tells him he’d be a good dentist).
    FUN FACT: Jim’s creator, Scott Dikkers, later founded
The Onion
.

Juice Boxes
    B ack in the day, kid beverage choices were as varied as colors for Henry Ford’s cars. You could have milk, or you could have this