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Donna Karan's younger, cheaper, city-cool little sister — the four letters everyone could actually afford. DKNY's logo tees and sweatshirts made a designer name attainable for the '90s mall, half the price of the runway line and twice as casual.
The toy store as a destination — the marble-and-magic Fifth Avenue palace with the giant walk-on piano from Big, toy-soldier doormen, and stuffed animals taller than you were. For a '90s kid, FAO Schwarz was the place a trip to New York was really about.
Kevin boards the wrong plane and lands in New York with his dad's bag and credit card — cue the Plaza Hotel, the pigeon lady, and traps somehow crueler than the first movie's. The rare sequel kids argued was better than the original.
Four single women navigate New York nightlife, relationships, and Manolo Blahnik shoes. HBO's June 1998 breakout became the defining show of female friendship and the cosmopolitan—literally.
The iced-tea and juice-drink brand that defined 1990s refreshment, served in a distinctive glass bottle with a metal cap (the famous "Real Facts" printed under the lid didn't arrive until 2002). That satisfying pop when you opened it, the quirky trivia, and flavors like peach and raspberry made Snapple a generational memory.
The Big Can: a tallboy of iced tea wrapped in pastel southwestern art that looked like nothing else in the cooler. It came out of a Brooklyn warehouse in 1992 to fight Snapple, priced at 99 cents — a number the company later started printing on the aluminum itself, and has refused to let go of ever since, through thirty-plus years of inflation.
HBO wired a real taxi with hidden cameras, put a real cab driver behind the wheel, and let strangers talk at three in the morning. Passengers found out they'd been filmed only when the ride ended. It won an Emmy in its first year, ran on and off for fifteen years, and remains one of the strangest things a premium network ever put on the air.