The “Best” ’90s Fads List Is Here… And Honestly, Our Entire Childhood Was Just Chaos With Frosted Tips

A website has ranked the “best fads” of the 1990s, which is basically like opening a time capsule that smells faintly of Fruitopia, plastic lunch containers, and CK One.

And somehow… somehow… The Macarena took the top spot.

Yes. A dance where an entire generation voluntarily looked like malfunctioning windshield wipers at weddings and school dances is apparently the crown jewel of the decade.

To be fair, the ’90s were absolute anarchy when it came to trends. One minute you were feeding a Tamagotchi like it was your actual child, the next minute you were nearly breaking your wrist with a slap bracelet while rollerblading into a Blockbuster.

Some of the other “best fads” on the list include:

• Pogs
• Grunge music and fashion
• Super Soakers
• JNCO jeans big enough to hide a family of four
• Nintendo Game Boy
• Starter jackets
• Slap bracelets
• Third-wave ska
• Beanie Babies
• Rollerblades

And honestly? This list feels aggressively 1997.

The ska mention alone triggered flashbacks of hearing No Doubt on MuchMusic while someone in checkered Vans explained why trombones were cool now.

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Also, can we talk about JNCO jeans for a second? Those things weren’t pants. They were studio apartments. You could lose a Discman, two Fruit Roll-Ups, and your self-esteem in one pant leg.

Meanwhile, Beanie Babies had parents out here treating stuffed animals like retirement investments.
“Don’t touch Princess the Bear, sweetie. That’s your college tuition.”

And sure, the list covered the basics, but it missed some elite-tier ’90s behaviour:

• Recording songs off the radio and getting furious when the DJ talked over the intro
• Inflatable furniture that stuck to your legs every summer
• Frosted tips
• Chain wallets
• LimeWire viruses disguised as Blink-182 songs
• “Talk to the hand”
• The absolute emotional trauma of your Tamagotchi dying during math class
• Watching Beverly Hills, 90210 like you personally lived in California
• Pretending you understood the plot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer while mostly watching for the outfits

Honestly, the ’90s were a beautiful fever dream. We all survived low-rise jeans, dial-up internet, and computers shaped like colourful jellybeans. We deserve compensation.