Austin Powers
Mike Myers as the swinging spy, the bald nemesis, and eventually half the cast — a three-film Bond parody whose catchphrases colonized every schoolyard in 1999. The humor ran racy for its era; the craft underneath is what stuck.
#Catchphrases
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Budweiser "Whassup?!"
Friends on the phone, watching the game, having a Bud — tongues out, "Whassaaaap!" Budweiser's campaign turned a real short film about real friends into the catchphrase that ate the year 2000, when every phone call, hallway, and sitcom in America did the bit.
Bugle Boy
"Excuse me, are those Bugle Boy jeans you're wearing?" A woman in a black Ferrari, a hitchhiker in the desert, and a 1988 commercial that made a Simi Valley pants company a household name. Bugle Boy rode parachute pants and then baggy cargo pants to roughly half a billion dollars in annual sales and outsold Levi's with boys and young men by 1990, then spent the decade sliding toward the discount rack and a 2001 liquidation.
Chappelle's Show
The sketch show that owned the mid-2000s. Dave Chappelle's Comedy Central juggernaut turned razor-sharp racial satire and absurd characters into the most-quoted comedy of the decade — "I'm Rick James, b****!" echoing down every school hallway.
"Dude, You're Gettin' a Dell"
Dell's TV campaign starring Ben Curtis as Steven, the shaggy slacker who hyped desktops to hesitant buyers and sealed every spot with "Dude, you're getting a Dell!" For three years the line was a national catchphrase you couldn't escape.
Emeril Live
Bam! For a decade, Emeril Lagasse cooked in front of a cheering studio audience and a live band, and Food Network had a household name. Emeril Live ran on the network from October 1997 to December 2007, 1,653 episodes of garlic, pork fat, and a catchphrase that got applause every single time.
The FreeCreditReport.com Band
The floppy-haired slacker singing cheerful songs about his ruined credit — stuck working a pirate-themed seafood restaurant, driving a beater, living with his in-laws. Experian's jingle campaign was catchy enough to get stuck in the whole country's head, and misleading enough that a 2009 law made the ads carry a disclaimer.
GEICO Cavemen
"So easy a caveman can do it" — and the sophisticated, deeply offended cavemen who kept overhearing it. The insurance ads that became a cultural in-joke, then flew too close to the sun as an actual ABC sitcom.
"Get a Mac" Ads
"Hello, I'm a Mac." "And I'm a PC." Two guys, a white void, thirty seconds of the suit losing to the hoodie. Apple's 2006–2009 campaign turned an operating-system rivalry into the most quotable sitcom on television — and made John Hodgman's crashing, virus-riddled PC the most lovable loser of the decade.
"Shoes" — Kelly
"Shoes. Shoes. OH MY GOD. SHOES." Comedian Liam Kyle Sullivan's deadpan drag creation Kelly growls her way through a birthday shoe rampage in one of YouTube's first true viral videos — the clip a whole generation quoted at every mall for years.
Kmart Blue Light Special
"Attention, Kmart shoppers." A rotating blue police light on a pole, a voice on the PA, and a stampede toward whatever aisle it was parked in. It ran from 1965 until 1991, so early-90s kids caught the tail end, and then Kmart spent the next two decades trying to bring it back.
The Fantanas
Coca-Cola invented four fictional spokes-girls to lip-sync about wanting Fanta, and for most of the 2000s the jingle lived in everyone's head rent-free. Each Fantana repped a flavor; together they were the bubbliest, most aggressively catchy thing on television. "Wanta Fanta — don't you wanta?"
Verizon Test Man ("Can You Hear Me Now?")
A man in a gray jacket and horn-rimmed glasses wanders the far corners of America, pressing a phone to his ear and asking the void: 'Can you hear me now?' 'Good.' For nine years, that was Verizon — four words that turned a network-coverage claim into a national catchphrase.
Wayne's World
Two guys broadcasting a cable-access show from a basement in Aurora, Illinois became a $183 million blockbuster — still the biggest movie ever made from an SNL sketch. "Schwing!", "…NOT!", "We're not worthy!" colonized every hallway in America, and one headbanging scene in an AMC Pacer sent Bohemian Rhapsody back up the charts seventeen years after its release.
Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century
Kirsten Storms as Zenon Kar, a 13-year-old exiled from her orbiting space station to boring old Earth in the year 2049, where nobody gets her slang and she has to stop a plot to crash the station for the insurance money. Disney Channel premiered it on January 23, 1999, and "zetus lapetus" entered the vocabulary of every kid watching. It was the first Disney Channel Original Movie to get a sequel.