Decades contest 90s

Right now all the dinosaurs looks like plastic puppets, but believe me - 25 years ago this movie was very advanced technologically.

Yo Yo

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Who didn't play with that simple toy? In the 90's the most desired yo yo was made of half transparent plastic with light diod inside which was activating each time when you yo was moving.

Elder kids were making championships with advanced yo yo tricks and it was truly spiritual experience to watch them. Sport and art at the same time.

Tamagotchi

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Another "must have" of every kid from my generation: electronic pet Tamagotchi. Kids had to take care of him by turning off the light when he wanted to go to sleep, feed him, clean the poop and make him a bath and, obviously, play with him a lot. Tamagotchi were very important. Kids were going with them everywhere, taking care of them and making contests which animal will live longer.

Most desired Tamagotchi were evolving, sometimes even twice. If you didn't kill your pet in the first two weeks, it was changing its shape.

Polish Music

I believe Polish pop music from the 90's was much higher quality than now. It was very instrumental, with plenty of jazz influences. It was quite common to hear saxophone, piano or trumps in the song and gosh, I loved it so much.

My favourite Polish band was called "Various Manx"

In 1994 Poland debuted on Eurovision - the most important song contest on my continent. That year we got second place and... since then we never have been on podium any more.

Here is the performance of Edyta Górniak from that show:

International music

There is plenty of authors which I could mention: boys bands and girls ads were very popular, with Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys as the most important icons. Quite similar music was presented by Britney Spears.
Madonna, the Queen of pop was, like always, in every top list of the hits. Usually the name of King of Pop was reserved by Michael Jackson.

Besides that there was Nirvana, No Doubt, Celine Dion, Tina Turner, Eiffel 65 and many, many more. As there was no Spotify or YouTube, we were waiting for the music to hear it in the radio or on TV.

Usually TV stations were making some top lists with the hits showing 15 second long information about each song. Only number one was played from the beginning to the end.

Lucky ones has cable TV with MTV and could watch videoclips + listen to music whenever they wanted. Yes, that days MTV was showing the music, not silly reality shows like right now.
By the way, as videoclips were very important (song without clip couldn't be popular because was not played on TV), sometimes they were like a small masterpieces. I think the most popular ones were made by Michael Jackson - with extended intro strony it could take even 15 minutes.

Encyclopedias

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When you didn't know some word or was wondering, let's say, where broccoli is from, you couldn't just Google it as internet was not available in most of the houses.

In 90s our wikipedia was on the paper. We called it "encyclopedia". It was a huge book (or books - in my family home we had one book for each alphabet letter) with words in alphabetical order and their meanings.

Sometimes the answer for our question was not there and all what left to the curious man was visiting the library or asking all the friends and family members for the answer.

No mobile phones

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Usually there was one cable phone at home and a small notepad with the most important numbers right next to it. Numbers for the family members we had memorized which now seems to be weird. I barely remember my own number...

If you wanted to call some service you could find the number in a phone book which was actualized once per year. You could also call the service which was connecting you with the specialist you needed.

All the phone calls, especially between the cities, were quite expensive so you had to use the phone wisely. Payment was for every minute, so if you talked one minute and one second, you payed for two minutes anyway.

There was no text messages, neither photos and videos made by phones. In some way it was not so bad - even when someone made something embarrassing, people were easily forgetting about it because nobody could record it.

When people were meeting, they really were talking, not looking at their phones all the time, like it happens now.

Fashion

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Jeans were very popular, especially with wide pant legs, which always were wet in the rainy days. Except of that people were wearing special arm pillows in their jackets. Men were using definitely too much gel on their hair and sometimes were dyeing the end of their hair in light blond to be like Scooter, the singer. Women were trying to look like Rachel from Friends.

Besides that we all were looking a bit like homeless 😁

Photographers

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We used to make tens of photos each day now. If the light is not good or if we closed our eyes, we make another photo not thinking about it much. It wasn't like that in 90s.

First, you had to buy the special film to the camera. It allowed you to make only few photos and it wasn't cheap so everyone was double thinking if something is worth to be photographed before they made the shoot.

Then you just had to hope your photo is good. It was impossible to say until you gave your film to the photographer, waited few days, payed for the service and got it back. It sounds weird but there was not much privacy then. Photographer could see all your pictures so making half naked photo sessions was not recommended 😉

Sometimes when the camera was accidentally opened and film was exposed on the sunlight, you was loosing all your photos and it was impossible to get it back.

TV programs

At first, in the early 90's we had only two TV stations in Poland. In 1999 it was already four and some people had the access to cable TV with tens of other channels.

As computers and internet we're not so common yet, TV was very important medium in each home.

I remember a lot of contests, like VA Banque, Millionaires and others. There was "Śmiechu warte" our YouTube - it was the program where people were sending funny videos with cats, dogs, kids and people having silly accidents.

Kids had a lot of educational programs like "5-10-15", or "Teleranek". Cartoons were on TV only in the early mornings and at 19.00, but with cable TV you could always have the access to Cartoon Network and Fox Kids.

It was the time with such a series like "Friends", "Power Rangers", "Pokemon", "Dr. Queen", "Bold and Beauty" (loved by my mother and grandma), "MC giver" or... "Dawson's Creek" - my favourite series. Maybe because it was saying about many issues which teenagers have, maybe because I found myself in the first gay character I have ever seen on the screen or maybe just because I loved Spielberg's movies, just like Dawson.

Smoking cigarettes everywhere

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It's not something what I miss but it's a big difference between old times and now. I am the smoker but it disturbs even me when people smoke in some places. Right now smoking is allowed in Poland only at home or on the street (but not next to the bus stops, schools, kindergartens and playgrounds). In the 90's it was socially accepted to smoke almost everywhere.

All the pubs and clubs were full of smoking people. Same with the bus stops, some shops and even... the restaurants.

Everyone knew that smoking is bad but nobody really cared about it. I remember that even kids were pretending they smoke with the candies which looked like the cigarettes.

Newspapers

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It was a time when the newspapers in paper were still in use. Right now in Poland 90% of the press is sold mostly in electronic version.
As the child I was buying sometimes comics, especially "Donald Duck" or later "X-Men".

I loved also "Bravo" which was the newspaper about music and pop culture. In each edition there were posters attached. Most of them were pinned to my wall right after bringing back the newspaper home.

The last magazine which I was buying was about computer games and it was called "Komputer świat gry". What's funny, I started to buy it before I even got my first computer. I was just very curious about it and wanted to learn as much as I could. As the child I was often pretending that I have a computer and making one of paper. I was even preparing some games which I was later testing on my brother.

... And much more

My post is already very long and I still didn't mention so many things, but it's natural: it's impossible to describe whole decade just in one post.

I do love that people in the 90s were much closer. Lack of modern technology made us all talk more with each others.
I do love rollers, walkmans, tazos, nintendo64, internet which required to disconnect phone to work, first computers with 2 GB of the memory, Tekken, internet cafes and much more things from that era.

Obviously, my unconditional love to 90s is related to my youth. There was plenty of things which were not great then - less variety of products in the shops, less safety streets (at least in Poland), some economical problems. Let's forget about everything what was wrong though and focus on the best memories we all have.

Thank you for reading!

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