Why Being A 90’s Kid Was Badass

At the risk of offending the several cougar fans(you know who you are) I have who no doubt want to have sex with me if the circumstances allowed it, I have the following statement to say: Being a 90’s kid was the best and greatest time to be an adolescent so far. Sorry cougars who had their childhoods in the 70′s and 80′s. While you Gen Xers and Baby Boomers were busy raping our futures with short-sighted policies on banking and government regulations that would leave us riddled with a huge national debt, unemployment, and underemployment, we were watching bad ass TV shows, playing sweet ass video games, and messing around with some tits ass toys.

We Had the Most Bad Ass TV Shows EVER!

I’m talking about Power Fucking Rangers, Tiny Fucking Toons Adventures, Rocko’s Fucking Modern Life, The Fucking Simpsons, Ahhh… Real Fucking Monsters, Adventures of Fucking Pete and Pete, The Fucking Critic, Global Fucking Guts, The Fucking Wonder Years, and my favorite of all, Fucking Doug. If while reading that list your eyes just sparkled a tiny bit and smile ran upon your twenty-something face, congratulations, you were blessed with being a 90’s kid in fucking America.

This was the time when basic cable was at its peak. Nickelodeon had its original Nick Toons and Cartoon Network was just beginning to evolve from just airing old Hanna-Barbara Cartoon into developing their own in house shows. We had great after school shows from FOX Kids and Kids WB. We were young and full of hope. Why wouldn’t we be when he had hero’s like the Power Rangers?

Power Rangers wore sweet ass helmets with tights of different colors (red was my favorite) and beat the crap out of monsters sent to attack earth by Rita Repulsa. Then Rita Repulsa would throw her staff at the Earth and make the monsters grow as big as skyscrapers. Holy fuck, shit just got real, but not to worry, because the most kick ass part was to come. The Power Rangers would then summon their colossal robotic “zords” and each would be some type of dinosaur. The T-Rex was my favorite! Then, oh my fucking god, they would combine and form The MegaZord that kicked so much ass. In the ensuing epic battle, they would destroy the city and monster, thus winning the day. Then the episode would neatly conclude and everyone would learn to Just Say No to Drugs. Also, Kimberly, the Pink Ranger, was the perfect girl and was the source of many a prepubescent boner.

With that solid set of role models, we were set up for success. While adults were busy watching boring ass shows like Melrose Place and Party of Five, we were honing our funny bone with some great comedic works. A few especially affluent 90’s kids will remember The Critic. A short-lived animated series that was too good for its time. Starring the paunchy Jay Sherman as a film Critic that has low self-confidence, bad luck with women, and pretty much used as a punching bag by those he loves. The show had edge and a special wit it used to parody movies, celebrities, and current events that was only matched by The Simpsons.

Combine the many shows of that caliber and access to it in our youths, and you have 90’s kids, brought up to have a pretty wicked sense of humor. We are the generation that paved the way for all the shows that currently dominate.

We Had a Sweet Ass Video Gaming Experience

In general, Baby Boomers were too old at the time to really get into video games and misjudged video games as just another fad. While a lot of Gen Xers got into video games as well, they merely adopted them. 90’s kids were born into them, forged by them. We never knew of a world without them. Before we knew how to say our alphabets, we had a Nintendo controller in our hands. Hoping to beat Super Mario Brothers without having to start over a million times or trying to shoot all the ducks in Duck Hunt.

Sometime during the first decade of our existence(’91), the gods blessed us with Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, effectively ensuring our eternal dedication. They enriched our lives with Super Mario World, Street Fighter 2, F-Zero, Super Ghouls and Ghosts, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Altered Beast. Games whose names when uttered fills the body with a form of romanticism and nostalgia resembling Al Bundy thinking about the time he scored four touch downs in a single game.

It was a great time, the 16 Bit War was raging, the video game industry hadn’t run out of idea’s yet, and there were no load times. You would go over to a friends house after school and play some Street Fighter 2. Totally ignoring whatever lame ass crap adults did. Look at them, they’re just sitting around drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes, and NOT playing video games, what a bunch of joyless weirdoes.

Video games became a part of our generation. Nearly every 90’s kid has at least played Super Mario Brothers and most of them had video game system in their houses growing up. A lot of them still have the modern systems in their home right now. Mario, Sonic, and Pokemon have grown up to be idols to us. These characters from a more carefree and innocent time still remain with us today after we have ventured out into the cold, unforgiving world full of disappointment, gloom, and doom.

Speaking of doom, we played the shit out of Doom on PC on Microsoft DOS. Blowing the shit out of zombie marines and imps. Even though they had the same death animation, it seemed so realistic to our naive eyes that we actually felt we were going through a war with demons from hell. While older generations scoffed, and some groups tried to censor our games for being too violent, we knew better and played them any ways. Fuck the system.

Ours was the first true gamer generation, sure, others had guys who played Pong, Space Invaders, and Pac Man, but ours was the first one to play video games in mass and pushed the industry forward. What did kids before us do? Pretty lame crap like hula hoop and jacks. What the fuck is that shit?

We Had Tits Ass Toys

While we loved watching TV shows about good guys fucking shit up and playing good guys fucking shit up in video games, we also wanted to act out the role of good guys fucking shit up. There were a few toys from the 90’s that totally epitomized the whole fucking shit up concept.

The Nerf Ultimator was one of them. It was big, powerful, slow, and inaccurate. It was essentially a Nerf RPG. With this big boy you could shoot at your friends from a long distance and have some small hope of hitting them. The thundering noise it gave off while the trigger was pulled struck terror into the hearts of your enemies. The key to this weapon was shooting at close distance so it could totally rock your poor opponents world. You had to be careful if you missed because the reload time was insane and thus leaving you extremely vulnerable. If you could master this weapon, you would own the battlefield.

Though my family was poor, they put their money together one Christmas and got me the most tits toy of the year, The Megazord. I’ve explained it earlier what it was, but you have no idea how cool it felt to have a real life Megazord in my hands. My imagination will go wild as I would imagine sweet scenarios where I stomped the guts out of my other actions figures who were playing the role of enemy monsters. After thoroughly vanquishing my foes, I would imagine jumping out of The Megazord in my Red Ranger suit and making out with Kimberly.

I don’t know how any previous generations childhood could have been better than that of a 90’s kids. Seriously, what the hell did you guys do when you were bored at home on a Saturday night? I think the kids today have it pretty damn awesome. I see my two year old niece using the iPhone and iPad with a higher degree of competence than half of adults. She’ll never endure commercial breaks, 56k modems, or AOL banning her from chat room because she cursed too much. She’ll never feel the pain of having to beat a video game with no save points or having to blow into the cartridge in order for the game to work. She’ll never be disconnected from the internet when her mom picks up the phone or have to deal with being forced to watch novelas during the time she should be watching The Simpsons because there is only one TV in the house. I just look at her in amazement and jealousy of how awesome her childhood is going to be because of all these neat toys and video games she has access to. Spoiled brat.