Leap Day!

I really have no idea what to say, but how often do you get to blog on February 29th? If it was my birthday, I'd technically only be seven years old. I'd like to think I am sometimes.

I don't know what I was doing on February 29th, 1992, or 1996, but I wasn't enjoying the extra school day in 1996, that's for sure. It was a Thursday (I looked it up)... which as memory serves meant tater tots in the cafeteria... not that I ate lunch from a Styrofoam tray, but tater tots were pretty cool. I literally remember Thursday for being tater tot day at the elementary school, (Pizza was Wednesdays)...which means the cycle of lunches must've been altered in 1996 because of the extra day. Think about it. Maybe there was two tater days!

Maybe I don't know how the calendar works.

S Doodles and Transparent Cubes

To this day I don't have a clue what those S-things were (I guess they were called "stussies") and didn't back in the 3rd grade either. But back in the 90s, if you could draw one, you were cool. That's all I needed to know to start penciling it all over my lined paper and notebook covers. And there's only one way to draw these gangstah-like S things, and that's the cool way. You draw the diagonals first, only those pointing the same way at a time, and THEN connect them with the vertical lines to make the "S" appear. Oh yeah...

I think I figured they were some band logo, something to do with Sketchers sneakers or a something from the hip-hop world that I knew nothing about. Apparently nobody really knows what they are and they actually go back as far as the 1960s or something. All I knew was all the cool kids were doing it, and putting one on your notebook was absolute cred... especially if you could draw it the cool way. 

It's kind of like the cool way you'd draw the "transparent cube"-- the only other doodle that conferred you instant cred once emblazoned on your Trapper Keeper. In drawing the transparent cube, the only way to do it was to draw two squares on top of each other, and then connect the corners. Anything else just wasn't proper.

"Yeah, I just drew in 3-D, and I blew your tiny mind..."

7up Spot - The "Uncola"

It's a clear soda, it's kind of citrusy, and it's not Sprite. Any other guesses? The answer is obviously 7up, the official "uncola." I have no idea what "7up" means, but their "Spot" ads peppered the 90's and contributed yet another big-shoed, shades-wearing cool dude that wasn't a pink drummer bunny... just a red circle with legs. But you know what? I'll take any role model I can get.

As a kid seeing this, I always used to think the 7up Spot was supposed to be a bottle cap or something. But whatever it was, there's perhaps no "clearer" representation of the 90s than the process of changing a typical "stain your teeth" cola into crystal clear sparkling citrus refreshment, and that's what these little guys were all about. (Just think about it for a long time in a dark room, and it will come to you.) Now imagine all the uncola adventures these guys could go on! I certainly used to... 7up Spot: The Movie! Rated G.

There were so many of these I had a hard time picking one out. They merchandized the hell out of this guy too, with video games, toys, telephones, you name it, and it all comes down to the fact that spiky shades are unbelievably rad, and you know it. They definitely made me want to drink more clear soda... or excuse me, "uncola."

The Death of Weebo

Plankton ripped this off.

For 90s kids like me, Flubber was one of those movies we hate to love. As the Nostalgia Critic put it, "Why didn't they just call this movie, 'Shit Bounces and Nobody Cares!'??" Even as a kid, when I saw it in theaters, I knew it wasn't all that good, but that's just my opinion. One thing I think we can all agree on though was that the death of the perky little floating robot wife of Robin Williams, "Weebo," was probably the saddest and most unexpected movie character death since Littlefoot's mother.

And why was it so sad? Why was the death of some nagging, pesky, robot wife of some science geek, who spent the movie smacking into stuff and being dorky... the last thing that brought tears to my eyes in a movie? Maybe it was because those writers (who really dropped the proverbial basketball on the rest of the movie) made her personality so real that killing her off almost made her seem like a real person... (and not just because she actually was a "real person" at one point... in one very weird scene...).

And that red one at the end, carrying her "katra" as it were, "Weeblette?" What the hell is that? It's not the same! Bring back the real Weebo. She's a robot after all. It can't be that hard.

Lucky Charms Marshmallows

Whales? Whatever.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the rainbow marshmallows in your bowl of Lucky Charms. That's right. Thanks to whoever screwed up back in 1992 one day and poured too many colors into the "purple horseshoe" mold, we've had those stale marshmallow "rainbows" ever since. As a kid, I didn't pay all that much attention to what marshmallow shapes I was picking out of that cat nip they told me was the "toasted oats," so I didn't really notice how much the lineup has changed over the years. And if you've always been a marshmallow sniper like me, I assume you haven't either.

But based on my very detailed Wikipedia research (and this page), if you were a kid twenty years ago, and picking out the marshmallows, you were probably looking for "pink hearts", "yellow moons", "orange stars", "green clovers", "blue diamonds", "purple horseshoes", and "red balloons". A lot has changed though. These days, kids (and you) are picking out "yellow pots of gold", "orange shooting stars", "blue moons", "rainbows", and "green hats" instead... along with the same pink hearts, red balloons, and purple horseshoes as before.

But do you see what happened? Basically, we forever lost the "yellow moons", "orange stars", "green clovers", and "blue diamonds". (Evidence here... 13 seconds in, you'll see the marshmallows that used to be.) They did bring back the "green clovers" for a while... but even those have fell by the way.

This was because in the 90s, they decided to introduce a new marshmallow every two years. It started in 1989 with the "red balloons" (which is technically the 80s, but close enough). Then it was the "rainbows" in 1992, the "pots of gold" and the "blue moons" in 1994, the "green hats" in 1996, and the "shooting stars" in 1998. To make room for this TNG of marshmallows, the old color guard had to be put out to marshmallow paradise... a place so wonderful, none of them would ever think to come back.

Rest in pieces.

Personally I would've preferred to keep them all. What's the big idea General Mills? Just keep adding marshmallows and you won't need to keep filling the boxes with that oat-flavored packing material that takes up most of the box. Marshmallows rule.

So a moment of silence please for the Lucky Charms marshmallows that have gone before us....