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Dial 1-800-COLLECT and let the operator know you're calling collect — MCI's dial-around service promised cheaper collect calls than your payphone's default carrier. One of the most aggressively advertised services of the 1990s, it burrowed into Gen X's brain via TV spots with celebrity spokespeople.
The strip-mall weight-loss centers with the one-on-one consultants and the little frozen meals — and the TV ads that ran so constantly that "I called Jenny" needed no explanation. Through the '90s, Jenny Craig was simply part of the atmosphere: on every commercial break, in every shopping plaza, name-dropped in every sitcom.
Weekly meetings in a church basement, a public weigh-in, and — after 1997 — everything in your pantry translated into a POINTS number. Weight Watchers was already three decades old by the '90s, but that's the decade it felt like everyone's mom was "counting points" and the Duchess of York was on TV saying it worked.