r/AskReddit • u/midixxierect • Jan 28 '23
What’s something that was popular in the 90s that you don’t really see now?
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u/walkingtalkingdread Jan 28 '23
those spray painted white t-shirts with like, tweety bird wearing grills and chains.
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u/Turbulent-Ad8291 Jan 28 '23
Holy shit, I forgot about that. I feel like every person I saw wearing something like that when I was younger are either addicted, dead, or in prison now.
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u/Hoppy_Croaklightly Jan 28 '23
Floppy disks
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u/BuffaloInCahoots Jan 28 '23
Still used for the save button on a lot of things. A lot of people have no idea what it is.
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u/tacknosaddle Jan 28 '23
I saw one where they were asking kids what common computer icons were and the top answer for the save button was that it was a refrigerator, apparently the thought process behind it was that a fridge "saves" food from spoiling.
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u/KryalCastle Jan 28 '23
Back before I first saw a floppy disk, I thought it looked like a television (for the record, I'm old enough to have used dial-up internet as a kid for serious purposes, but not old enough to have used a floppy for serious purposes)
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u/ButterflyAttack Jan 28 '23
I remember before floppies were really around - you had 8 inch discs, but the 5 1/4 was a game changer. But yeah, prior to this you'd have to save everything on a cassette tape. You'd have these audio cassette recorders, type save on the computer and have to hold down the RECORD and PLAY buttons on the cassette machine. Loading code from a tape you'd just type a load command and press PLAY. Sometimes you'd record multiple programmes in succession on a 30 or 45 min cassette, it was tricky finding the right space on the tape if you wanted to load say the 3rd program, so you'd write on an index card the counter number or time stamp that each programme began. The cassettes had two sides and you sometimes had to manually eject them and turn them over which was tricky if you had a long programme that went over one side.
They were surprisingly reliable, although a pain in the arse when the tape got tangled round the read heads of the recorder and you had to kind of untangle and re-spool it. Loading a program, it would make an electronic squawking sound like robots fucking.
Sometimes it just amazes me the way tech has improved. The phone I'm using now, if my maths is right, has about as much storage as 54,000 of those 5 3/4 floppy discs and fuck only knows how many miles of cassette tape.
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u/Mar_az_t Jan 28 '23
I saw a video of a kid who was asked “what is this?” when presented a floppy disk and they said it was a 3D printed “save” icon 😂
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u/BuffaloInCahoots Jan 28 '23
The weird one for me was seeing my little cousin pretend they were on the phone. Instead of using the universal phone hand signal 🤙 they just put their hand flat on their ear.
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u/dukec Jan 28 '23
Even weirder to me is that they don’t pretend to hold a camera to take pictures anymore, they pretend they’re holding a phone vertically and clicking the button on the screen.
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u/neckbishop Jan 28 '23
I just confirmed this with my wife who teaches preschool.
Kids will also pretend to take selfies.But here is the wild one. She has some old cordless phones and some old calculators in the "make believe station". Kids will fight over the calculators to use as phones (flat, buttons, little screen) and are bummed when all that are left are the cordless phones.
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u/lisaturtle_00 Jan 28 '23
CDs, Napster
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u/Ihadsumthin4this Jan 28 '23
...Netscape
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u/eagle52997 Jan 28 '23
Encarta
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u/Running_zombie_ Jan 28 '23
Encarta was incredible. Thank you for triggering that nostalgia out of the dusty corner of my brain!
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u/whatnameisnttaken098 Jan 28 '23
Butterfinger BB's. When the hell did they dissappear?
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u/mmmacorns Jan 28 '23
Why the hell did they even have to change the recipe for butterfingers?!
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u/whatnameisnttaken098 Jan 28 '23
Oh thank God, I thought I was going insane last Halloween after grabbing a few and thinking they tasted funny.
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u/mmmacorns Jan 28 '23
They are NOT good anymore! They were my absolute favorite candy bar and now they are trash.
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u/kirbyfox312 Jan 28 '23
So many things changed the recipe for the 'better' when it was just to cheap out on ingredients.
I don't even see Butterfingers anymore. It's like no one wants them, and there's a reason for it.
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u/grantnel2002 Jan 28 '23
Pay phones
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u/dan1son Jan 28 '23
I don't know why but this is one of the things that I think is so hard to explain to young people that weren't around. Payphones used to be EVERYWHERE. Rows of them in large public spaces. There was a payphone in or outside of shops on every corner. Restaurants had pay phones in quiet booths. They were so ubiquitous for decades and now they're just gone.
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u/watzrox Jan 28 '23
It really does bother me that they completely disappeared. There is no backup emergency system in place. If cell towers go out that’s it. Unless you live on a campus with an alert system idk I just constantly think about how pay phones or something a bit more up to date should be accessible still.
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u/Pterodactyl_Souffle Jan 28 '23
Even if you just drop your shit, you're now without recourse. Many people don't even have land lines in their homes anymore to compliment their cell service so if something just happens to your phone, you're fucked.
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u/watzrox Jan 28 '23
Exactly, if for some reason say there is a major disaster ( think like 9/11) no one and I mean no one could get through to New York. The systems were completely overloaded. This is just an example and I understand pay phones at that time were still in place , cell phones were becoming more popular. I was 18 then. It just makes you think like we rely on technology more and more but what happens when it fails? What is the emergency response system? I’m just saying unless you have an iPhone 14 with SOS via sat feature, the cell towers stop working, unless you have a land line which is incredibly rare today… what are the options?
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u/throwaway9484747 Jan 28 '23
There is a number that exists in the 710 area code. It’s the only number in that area code. It’s kept in place for major emergencies. Supposedly if you call it you have to have a code to use it, but it has priority over essentially every other provider to get through to other numbers in case of a catastrophic emergency.
e: this really doesn’t contradict what you’re saying, I just think it’s cool
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u/lazarus870 Jan 28 '23
In 1999, when my pager went off and I was at the mall I hung out at, I would go to the row of payphones outside of the movie theatre, drop a quarter in, and call them back.
Now pagers, the payphones, the movie theatre, hell the entire mall, is all gone.
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u/quincyd Jan 28 '23
1996, I had to call my parents from a pay phone to see if I could stay out past curfew. I always had a cup of change in my car in case I needed to make a call.
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u/SquirellyMofo Jan 28 '23
As a young woman who began dating in the late 80s and early 90s, you were taught to always keep change in you In case something happened during the date and you needed someone to come get you.
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u/indistrustofmerits Jan 28 '23
It's so odd thinking about the pay phone in my high school and making sure I had a dime on me to call my mom when I was done with after school stuff. Feels like another life and yet at the same time doesn't feel like that long ago.
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u/watzrox Jan 28 '23
1-800-collect stating “come pick me up” and my dad not accepting the call 🤣best way around it
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u/Fuckofforwhatever Jan 28 '23
I remember carrying a pocket sized address book and a fuck ton of quarters so I could call family or neighbors when someone forgot to pick me up. Can’t even relate to that anymore bc I just store all my info on my phone.
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Jan 28 '23
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u/Kamirama Jan 28 '23
Or the classic 3212333222133
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u/Ladnerlad Jan 28 '23
What does it mean (born after the 90s)
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u/Kamirama Jan 28 '23
Its Mary had a Little Lamb. Just type the numbers into your phone keypad and the tones should match the song. It still does on my smartphone
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u/jbrc89 Jan 28 '23
Auto seat belts on compact cars
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u/maidenfern Jan 28 '23
For the best apparently. I heard a lot of people didn’t buckle the belt part.
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u/throwaway9484747 Jan 28 '23
I have this in my 1990 accord. They’re there because airbags were becoming mandatory but the cars were already designed so the auto belt was a compromise.
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u/MousaDembele16 Jan 28 '23
Novel drinks like Orbitz with random shit floating around it made of gellan gum.
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u/jonnyappleweed Jan 28 '23
I still have three unopened bottles of Orbitz! The little orbs are still perfectly floating in the bottles. Whatever those little balls are made of, it's some sturdy stuff!
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u/Drake0425 Jan 28 '23
See through technology. Like the purple translucent Gameboy. Hits different.
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u/vansshoesta Jan 28 '23
See through inflatable furniture.
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u/SeriousBrindle Jan 28 '23
My inflatable chair was my first taste of independence. I’d bring it down for family movie not and not have to share the couch. I remember thinking, when I grow up, I’ll have a whole room of these.
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u/SunflowerMusic Jan 28 '23
It’s kind of funny that people essentially had pool floaties in their rooms.
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u/Khorasaurus Jan 28 '23
The teen room at our church was furnished entirely in inflatable furniture.
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u/fergehtabodit Jan 28 '23
iMac...came in multiple fruit colors
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u/percygreen Jan 28 '23
I still remember the commercial. All of the transparent, colored computers doing sort of a “synchronized swimming” routine to the Rolling Stones’ “She’s A Rainbow”.
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u/cheeseburgerwaffles Jan 28 '23
The original iMac, the Funtastic line of N64 consoles, phones, tamagotchis. It's like translucent colored plastic was on mega sale at the stockyards in the 90s
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u/slowish_turtle Jan 28 '23
The really big satellite dishes, my uncle had one that looked like it should be able to flag missiles from his yard.
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u/SixStringGamer Jan 28 '23
Your comment made me laugh! I remember growing up in an extremely rural area and my dad bought this massive 10-12 foot wide satellite dish. All for about 20 channels at most. I remember there used to be LOADING screens for different channels, and some would take so long me and my siblings would go out and watch the dang thing move around trying to get a signal. I still remember the WB frog on the loading screen to this day
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u/dragn99 Jan 28 '23
Oh wow. We just had the crappy little wire antenna with two channels for so long, that our first satellite dish was a little two foot diameter dish with hundreds and hundreds of channels.
It was a big deal for me, because I could finally watch all the cartoons my friends did without having to wait for the new VHS with three episodes of a show.
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u/smartnclumsy Jan 28 '23
Pogs
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Jan 28 '23
Remember pogs, Bart?
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u/drewbs86 Jan 28 '23
I always think of pogs when someone mentions the 90s, despite the fact that (where I lived at least) they were only around for one summer
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u/98NSX Jan 28 '23
Walkmans
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u/BLUFALCON78 Jan 28 '23
The '90s we're all about the diskman though. The first one I had was like an inch and a half thick and took six or eight AA batteries that lasted about 30 minutes or so before they died. I loved having a "portable" CD player that I couldn't take anywhere because it would die. My parents paid a fuck ton of money for that thing and kept having to buy me batteries. My dad went out and bought the AC adapter for it to plug directly into the wall. So for the longest time I carried that cable in my pocket for when we got somewhere and I could listen to my CDs but for the times that I wasn't near a plug I would pull all eight of those fucking batteries out of my other pocket and stick them back in the CD player. I found out the hard way that the battery still drained even when it was plugged in. Good times...
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u/Pterodactyl_Souffle Jan 28 '23
They fucking were NOT. Diskmans SUCKED DICK. All they did was skip. Walking? Skip. Riding your bike? Skip. Driving? Skip. Fuck those things. I miss a metric shit ton of things from those halcyon days, but music skipping because life happened isn't one of them.
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u/BLUFALCON78 Jan 28 '23
Well my battery limit kept me from doing those things with it. By the time I saved birthday and lawnmowing money I bought a much better one that had the anti skip pre loading thing and took a lot to make it skip. It only took 4 AA batteries and could last a whole hour.
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u/Flurb789 Jan 28 '23
Slap bracelets...koosh balls
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u/theirishman21 Jan 28 '23
Parent of 2 kids and these are still around and fairly popular in my area
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u/RosemarySaraBlack Jan 28 '23
Pagers
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u/liqinling1 Jan 28 '23
I still see pagers in hospitals.
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u/emergencychick Jan 28 '23
We used them at work (paramedic) until about a year ago. Now we have cell phones. But we all miss the pagers. The reliability was on point and they were small, easy to carry on the belt and needed no maintenance. Just a battery every 4 or 6 months.
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u/Shmily318 Jan 28 '23
I’ve got a double dipper for this thread, I had a translucent pager!
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u/Octavus Jan 28 '23
Amazon was still supplying pagers to certain engineering teams until a few years ago, they may still be doing so. Pagers, not just for drug dealers.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Employee-Review-Amazon-RVW2920328.htm
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u/jaradi Jan 28 '23
I joined Amazon in 2016 and yes they gave us a pager for on-call but we just used the paging app on our phones instead since they coexisted. They may have phased out even being able to order one 1-2 years later (I left a year ago so can’t check)
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u/Global_Flamingo_3767 Jan 28 '23
I still wear one at work daily! I work in a psychiatric hospital.
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u/BenGattin Jan 28 '23
Collect calls
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u/Colmustard15 Jan 28 '23
Wehadababy itzaboy
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u/laineDdednaHdeR Jan 28 '23
Correction: "You have an incoming call from: 'Bobihadababy Itzaboy.' "
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u/BeetzByGeetz Jan 28 '23
Dial down the middle 1-800-C-A-L-L-A-T-T
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u/lordjeebus Jan 28 '23
I pity the fool who don't use 1-800-COLLECT.
Save a buck or two
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u/midixxierect Jan 28 '23
Your receiving a collect call from:
“Mom pick me up from the mall I’ll be in the front” Said 20x fast
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u/Actuaryba Jan 28 '23
Beanie Babies. They were supposed to pay for my college!
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u/Pterodactyl_Souffle Jan 28 '23
In general, the whole "collection fad". Kids have and always will collect things. But it was a different mentality in the 90s. People legit thought their ancient mass produced crap was going to be worth something. XD
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u/kareninfinance Jan 28 '23
I just found one of my kids beanie babies on the couch. Got curious and went to eBay. Somebody is trying to sell the same dang thing for $70,000.000.
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Jan 28 '23
pop up headlights
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u/cycle_dadfast Jan 28 '23
Pontiac Firebird was better looking than the Camaro... until it started winking at you.
Let's add Pontiac to the list while we're at it.
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u/lobster-overrun Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
Pour one out for the greatest innovation in uselessly awesome car features ever devised. Toyota had the balls to sell the exact same car under two different names, one with and one without pop up headlights, proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that the pop ups were unnecessary. People wanted and still want the one with pop up headlights more. That says everything you need to know. They are the best.
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u/uncultured_swine2099 Jan 28 '23
I had an old Subaru XT6 with pop up lights back in the day, they were da bomb.
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u/lobster-overrun Jan 28 '23
They were literally the coolest thing ever and all the coolest cars had them. The cars you had on a poster on your wall as a kid, they all had pop up headlights.
Why? Because it was cool as shit. Why else? We didn’t need a reason, that’s the beauty of true love.
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u/SarahAB227 Jan 28 '23
Mall culture. I was such a mall rat.
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u/23JanIsMyCakeDay Jan 28 '23
Mall culture is still huge in Asia, so are A&W restaurants, Toys 'R' Us, and Borders.
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u/BekahBeks Jan 28 '23
Disposable cameras
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u/harlemrr Jan 28 '23
I heard the noise one day when I was in Central Park. That plasticky clicky noise when advancing the film after taking a photo, like a blast from the past. I looked around the crowd, and then spotted it… someone actually using a disposable camera. I’m not sure if I had seen one in at least a decade.
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u/BekahBeks Jan 28 '23
I think they are fun because you never really know what you’re gonna find when you get the film developed ;)
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u/PipPipPooray Jan 28 '23
Clubs with dance battles. I don’t know, I was in elementary and middle school in the 90s but I thought my future would have a lot more dance battles in the club.
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u/Squishysquishface Jan 28 '23
Duuuuude, I say this all the time!!! I grew up thinking there would be more dance battles when I became an adult lol I’m so disappointed tbh
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u/BeautifulEssay8 Jan 28 '23
Girls Gone Wild
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u/Ok_Entertainer7721 Jan 28 '23
I can't believe they got away with those commercials on TV. Crazy times
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u/shawn77 Jan 28 '23
Trying to rub it out to one of those commercials when you were a kid is a right of passage that youths won’t ever understand.
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u/eyeoxe Jan 28 '23
Video rental stores. Something about browsing for a movie by just looking at the box, was way more fun than browsing netflix. Sometimes a bizzare random movie you never heard of would catch your eye from across the room which just doesn't happen with streaming.
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u/Silver_Shadow007 Jan 28 '23
3 words "In Living Color" if you remeber this show man was it funny with most iconc shenane XD
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u/PsychoticMessiah Jan 28 '23
Iirc it was The Simpsons, In Living Color, and then Married with Children airing back to back to back Sunday nights on Fox.
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u/Grave_Girl Jan 28 '23
My kids grew up hearing "Homey don't play that" with, like, zero context.
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u/TheGeofoam Jan 28 '23
In college on Sunday, I would order my pizza and watch “In Living Color” then “Star Trek Next Generation”
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u/drawohhteb Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
Drawing S that one way
Edit: it makes me weirdly happy this simple thing connects so many generations
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u/BabyBuddySweetpea Jan 28 '23
Middle school teacher here- 90s parents have definitely passed this on to their kids. My students draw it all the time.
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u/TSgt_Yosh Jan 28 '23
Middle school custodian here. I had to clean one someone sharpied on the floor yesterday.
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u/RagnarTheRed2 Jan 28 '23
I miss these T.V. shows:
Biker mice from Mars. Street Sharks. Eureka's Castle. Captain Planet. David the gnome.
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u/hellowithmyheart Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
Live Action kids (preschool) TV shows, especially ones that feature puppets. There were SO MANY in the 90s when I was growing up, and I loved them. The only one I can think of that is still running is Sesame Street.
It honestly seems like 99% of current shows made for preschoolers are computer animated.
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u/ActualGiantPenguin Jan 28 '23
Lesbian bars
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u/shadowofzero Jan 28 '23
There's something bothering me about this place.
I know! This lesbian bar doesn't have a fire exit!
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u/The_Great_Luck Jan 28 '23
Bill Cosby
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u/LiteLit Jan 28 '23
Well. You might be seeing a lot of him in the media next year. That monster is going on tour.
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u/tallicafu1 Jan 28 '23
General happiness and positivity towards the future.
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Jan 28 '23
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u/Bamboopanda101 Jan 28 '23
I truly believe thats the case.
I'm older now obviously I ain't a kid anymore; having said that my opinion probably isn't without a pinch of salt.
What I can tell you as when I was a kid growing up and it even sounds like before my time the same thing; we didn't care about the world around us; we were growing up happy to see the next revolutionary video game or thinking about the next restaurant to go with the family, or the book fair or daily normal things; up to my teens I was still the same and just enjoying time with friends and family without a care in the world. Everything just seemed bright
But i have nephews that are in high school or middle school and its bonkers how much they themselves follow the news, how school shootings is a daily thing to think about when growing up for me a gun didn't even exist in my world. How kids today are already assuming they can never own a home. These are teenagers and already giving up? Or How political they are; how strong their beliefs are, and how all around pessimistic they are about life. The worse during my time in high school was an emo / goth phase.
You could argue i'm an adult now and obviously i see the real world and seen some things, but these are kids that haven't seen a real life day in their lives and already they see everything so bleak.
I will say, I wonder why 9/11 caused so much chaotic divide or conflict in our world. Obviously this was a terrible terrible event that I wish never happened; but I always wonder how this domino effect stemmed from something that should have brought us closer together and made us stronger. Instead it made us spiraling into some kind of theorycrafting political racist divide.
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u/firematt422 Jan 28 '23
I used to think that was just called being a kid, but zoomer memes get pretty dark. I think it really is just getting worse.
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u/Sumthin-Sumthin44692 Jan 28 '23
Rollerblading. Man, I miss rollerblading. Too bad I’m too old and broke for that shit now.
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u/ivymeows Jan 28 '23
Those sleeves of individual ice cream cups with the latest Disney movie release characters in hard candy form in them. Harder than diamonds. They had the wooden sticks as “spoons”.
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u/EveSixxx Jan 28 '23
Hip hop, ska, pop, rock, swing, electronica all in the billboard top 10 all in the same week.
Music was wild.
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u/refinnej78 Jan 28 '23
Ska
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u/Acceptable-Mine8806 Jan 28 '23
I'm seeing Save Ferris live next week, so excited!
Also, the best ska song of all time is "This Gigantic Robot Kills." Ska is not dead!
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u/lobster-overrun Jan 28 '23
If you still enjoy it from time to time, consider giving The Interrupters a try. “She’s Kerosene” and “Let ‘em Go” are my two favorites by them.
I still shamelessly love the genre. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, it’s fun and goofy and self aware. But it can also be serious sometimes when it wants to be, but never for too long before it gets fun again. The kind of music that makes you want to dance like an idiot and just not care because fuck it nothing matters anyway.
People look back and say it looked stupid, but that was kind of the whole point. That shit was the BEST.
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u/xTHEKILLINGJOKEx Jan 28 '23
Roaming outside all day with your friends or by yourself unsupervised
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u/undeadexile752 Jan 28 '23
Pogs, Pogs were everywhere. Then they gave us the ability to make our own unique Pogs. Schools were hotbeads for massive Pog production and distribution. All the way up to the high schools and possibly colleges. Then just like Furbies, Beanie Babies, and Rollerblades they were forgotten. Also forgot to add Nerf Guns
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u/thatonecustodian Jan 28 '23
Champion clothing was considered the cheap walmart brand
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u/darkbubble Jan 28 '23
Jolt Cola.. it tried to make a comeback but limited distribution killed it
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u/powkiddyv90dangit Jan 28 '23 edited Jan 28 '23
the worst fad had to be those wwjd bracelets and strap bands. read the kjv bible jesus was strictly against fashion and appealing to the world. just a really stupid fad that didn't go away fast enough.
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u/Pterodactyl_Souffle Jan 28 '23
Kid-themed Christianity in general in the 90s. Churches were doing these events called Cross Color Jam that tried to be like an Andy Warhol rave without the acid or...you know...the fun. And all of that weirdly corporate TOTALLY X TREME JESUS WITH SKATEBOARDING AND PETRA!!!!!!!!! bullshit.
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u/ImLaunchpadMcQuack Jan 28 '23
Gateway Computers delivered in a cow box.