4 items
Tiny plastic chunks with names like 'Mosh' and 'Cyclops' that you flicked at one another across playground asphalt. Crazy Bones were the pogs that came after pogs — just as collectible, just as fiercely traded, and just as likely to get you banned from school.
The competition show that threw The Real World and Road Rules casts into the same arena and let them fight it out for cash. Premiering on MTV on April 20, 1998, it evolved through several names — from Road Rules: All Stars to Real World/Road Rules Challenge to, eventually, just The Challenge — and became a physical, strategic, elimination-driven staple of MTV's 2000s lineup. Improbably, the spin-off outlived both of the shows that created it.
The CBS reality-competition show that premiered in 2000 and kicked off the modern reality-TV boom. Contestants are stranded in remote locations, split into rival tribes, and compete in challenges while voting each other out at Tribal Council. Host Jeff Probst's iconic catchphrase "The tribe has spoken" and the show's tagline "outwit, outplay, outlast" became part of the cultural lexicon.
The boardroom reality-competition that made "You're fired!" a national catchphrase. Premiering on NBC on January 8, 2004, and produced by Survivor mastermind Mark Burnett, it pitted contestants against one another in business tasks — running lemonade stands, marketing products, managing teams — with the loser of each week sent home from a tense boardroom showdown. The winner walked away with a one-year, $250,000 contract to promote one of Trump's properties, and the boardroom showdown became a fixture of mid-2000s television.