18 items
A golden retriever who could sink jump shots, a lonely kid in a new town, and a state final decided by a check of the rulebook: nothing in it says a dog can't play. Air Bud was a $3 million Disney release that made $29 million and launched a direct-to-video dynasty that long outlived its star.
Don Bluth's lost-princess musical that a whole generation is sure was Disney. Meg Ryan's amnesiac Anya, a music box, Rasputin as an undead villain with an albino bat, and "Once Upon a December" — made in Phoenix by Fox, and released a week after Disney re-issued The Little Mermaid — a scheduling war Fox called deliberate.
The VHS board game where the TV was the enemy. A ghoulish host called the Gatekeeper glared out of your screen, barking orders and taunts, while a 60-minute tape counted down and you scrambled to win before he did. You played in the dark, against your own television.
Chris Farley and David Spade's follow-up to Tommy Boy, rushed into theaters by Paramount in February 1996. Farley is the bumbling brother of a candidate for governor of Washington and Spade the aide assigned to hide him in a cabin that a boulder knocks off its foundation. Critics savaged it, it grossed almost exactly what Tommy Boy had, and it was the last time the two shared a screen.
The blue-and-yellow torn-ticket empire where Friday nights meant wandering the new-release wall, hoping the big movie wasn't rented out, and dreading the late fees. At its peak in 2004, Blockbuster dominated home entertainment with 9,094 stores worldwide—until Netflix and streaming dismantled the whole business model.
The shelf of puffy white plastic cases was a status symbol of the 90s living room — each one thick as a book, snapping shut like a lunchbox, holding a Disney movie you'd watched forty times. The clamshell was Disney's home-video signature, and the sound of one clicking open meant the next ninety minutes were spoken for.
Christina Applegate as a 17-year-old who fakes her way into a fashion-industry job when the elderly babysitter dies and mom's away in Australia. It opened quietly in 1991, then VHS and cable turned it into a cult classic. "I'm right on top of that, Rose" — a catchphrase that never died.
"Size Does Matter." TriStar spent a year hiding its new Godzilla behind teasers of a foot crushing a T. rex skeleton and Taco Bell chihuahua ads, then opened it over Memorial Day weekend 1998 to $44 million and a collective shrug. The monster ran from missiles, nested in Madison Square Garden, and was eventually renamed "Zilla" by its own Japanese owners.
The video rental chain that played Blockbuster's biggest shadow competitor, with blue-and-gold membership cards that lived in junk drawers nationwide. Founded in 1988 and headquartered in Oregon, it grew into a national Blockbuster rival — and gave gamers GameCrazy, the buy-sell-trade store-within-a-store. It was the other card to carry, the place that often had the tape you needed when Blockbuster was cleaned out.
Rick Moranis and Ed O'Neill as feuding brothers coaching rival pee-wee football teams in Urbania, Ohio; Icebox, the girl who got cut for being a girl; a bus full of real NFL stars; and a trick play called the Annexation of Puerto Rico. It didn't earn back its budget in theaters, but it never left the kid-sports canon.
The big furry alien who ate clocks — the mascot of a language course your parents saw advertised on TV. Muzzy came as a set of VHS tapes (and cassettes and workbooks) that promised to teach kids French, Spanish, German, or another language the way they'd learned their first one: by watching a cartoon. Whether it worked or not, that green clock-munching creature is unforgettable.
The dim little mall store where you bought the movie you'd already rented five times. Suncoast sold films to own in the age of renting — VHS, Laserdisc, then DVD — under a neon marquee that made movie collecting feel like a legitimate way of life.
Richard Simmons in striped shorts and a tank top, leading a high-school gym full of ordinary people through low-impact aerobics to 50s and 60s hits, on the VHS tape in every parent's cabinet. The first tape came out in 1988, but the sequels and the late-night infomercials selling them made it a 90s fixture.
Billy Blanks in the headset mic, punching and kicking the air in front of a room of glistening people, and the infomercial promising that Tae Bo would do the rest. From late 1998 the four-tape set was in every living room: the VHS that turned taekwondo and boxing into aerobics and had your mom throwing jabs at the TV.
The 1989 animated film that revived Disney animation—Ron Clements and John Musker's adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen, with Oscar-winning songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. 'Under the Sea' and 'Kiss the Girl' became instant classics, with Jodi Benson's Ariel and Pat Carroll's Ursula cementing themselves in pop culture forever. For 90s kids, the real experience was the VHS: released May 1990, it became the year's best-selling home video and a household object that defined childhoods.
Watch a cursed VHS tape, get a phone call, die in seven days. The Ring turned Japanese horror into Hollywood's next obsession, made TV static terrifying, and gave every sleepover a new dare.
Odette, Derek, the sorcerer Rothbart, and "Far Longer than Forever." The 1994 princess movie that wasn't Disney, from a director Disney had fired, opened the same week The Lion King came back to theaters and died. Then it sold two and a half million tapes and spawned eleven sequels.
The squeak of wheels in the hallway, the tall metal cart nosing through the classroom door, the TV strapped on top with the VCR on the shelf below — and thirty kids realizing at the same instant that today was not a real school day. No object ever delivered better news than the TV cart.