Monday, October 10, 2011

Guest Post: TOP FIVE: PRE-TEEN GIRL SERIES FROM THE 90s


About guest poster Megan: I'm a bookworm, aspiring author, daydreamer and music lover from Adelaide, Australia.

I blog about my obsession for books at Storybook Love Affair (link to http://storybookloveaffair.blogspot.com/) where I share reviews, reading and writing events, author interviews and bookish products.


Blog link - http://storybookloveaffair.blogspot.com/

Facebook link - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Storybook-Love-Affair/148548541901670

Twitter link - http://twitter.com/#!/search/storyloveaffair




From a very young age I have always loved to read. Remembering back to my youth, many of the books I devoured were part of a series. I did read the occasional stand-alone novel as well but it’s always the series books that hold the fondest memories for me and transport me back to a period I would love to revisit.

Luckily for me, I get to journey back to those years with this very fun guest post!

Here are the top five series that occupied much of my reading time while growing up in the 90s:

1. Sweet Valley High

Love them or loathe them, sixteen year old twin sisters Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield were a huge part of my life growing up. Unless you had also read the series, it probably wouldn’t hold any appeal to you, but for me the series has an intense nostalgic appeal.

The twins live in a town called Sweet Valley and are described as picture-perfect in every way, from their blonde hair, blue eyes, size six figures and All-American good looks. They are the popular students at Sweet Valley High where Elizabeth is the serious twin who writes for the school newspaper, and Jessica is the fun-loving cheerleader who flirts with boys and loves to party.

Life in Sweet Valley isn’t always idyllic though and between them the twins have been kidnapped, stalked, held hostage and attacked multiple times. Amazingly, through all this emotional drama they were never affected by anything and always managed to bounce right back into life with enthusiastic zest. As you do...

The books have been criticised for their unrealistic portrayal of teenage life and also for the lack of cultural diversity within the stories. Most characters come from privileged white backgrounds, have no zits or other typical teenage body issues, manage to have loads of cash without part-time jobs and drive cars that not even forty-something professional men could afford.

Although containing many inconsistencies (how can the same girls be 16 years old for 15 odd years??), the storylines in the early parts of the series were a whole lot of fun. They featured around the twins and their friends and often held a moral significance behind the story such as drug use and drink driving.

Later on in the series though the storylines became extremely ridiculous (I remember one in particular where somebody became so obsessed with the twins’ mother Alice that they tried to steal her face through a transplant?!).

The early books were definitely worth reading - it was fun to escape into the world of Sweet Valley and immerse myself in the quintessential American high school life. But the later books deserve a miss - unlike the vampire craze currently sweeping the world, these stories were boringly unrealistic.



2. Girl Talk

This was a series for teenage girls telling the school adventures of four American teenagers (Sabrina, Katie, Randy and Alison) in junior high school. The series produced a range of spin-off products including a board game and special edition books. I had the board game and absolutely loved it!

The books were known for one chapter being devoted to phone call conversations between the girls as well as offering descriptions of the hilarious 90s fashion they wore at the time (remember happy pants anyone?).
The books were written in the first person narrative with each character taking turns. Many of the books focused on the rivalry between the girls and another group of girls - Stacy the Great (the Principal’s daughter), Eva, B.Z and Laurel.

I loved reading Girl Talk simply because of the focus on friendship it had. The girls were such good friends and retrospectively thinking they were probably A LOT more mature than the average 13 year old in real life, but despite this they represented positive role models to all girls, particularly in terms of their relationships with their friends.





3. Nancy Drew

I started to read Nancy Drew books after another old mystery series I liked called Meg had ended (after only the sixth book!).

Nancy Drew is a young amateur detective who loves nothing more than to solve a mystery. There’s over 100 books in the complete series, and although I didn’t finish every one of them, someday I hope that I can!

The books first appeared in 1930 and the character has evolved over the years to suit America’s changing cultural tastes. But despite numerous changes, she’s always been depicted as wealthy, attractive and amazingly talented. Apparently this is the norm for preteen characterisation.

I guess the aspect that made Nancy so likable to girls was her ability to have traditionally feminine attributes such as good looks and a variety of clothes while at the same time encompassing traditionally male traits such as having the freedom and money to do as she pleases and living to solve mysteries rather than participating in family life.

In essence she was a contradiction, which made her all the more intriguing and ironically a bit of a mystery herself.



4. The Baby-Sitters Club

I wasn’t as into The Baby-Sitters Club as I was the other three series mentioned above. However, I did spend a lot of time reading the books and I think I came pretty close to completing the whole set.

The series is about a group of middle school students who run their own baby-sitting club. The members of the club are all best friends, however they go through numerous conflicts throughout the stories. The books came in many different versions including super specials and mysteries.

I remember swapping the books with other kids in my neighbourhood when I was young and we even tried to set up our own baby-sitters club at one point. Not surprisingly, our own club didn’t work out quite as well as the club in the books. Turns out parents were appalled at the idea of us (just babies ourselves) trying to take care of their kids! Oh the nerve...



5. V.C Andews - The Dollanganger Series

Flowers in the Attic was one of my absolute favourite books growing up. The five books in the series focus on the Dollanganger children who are imprisoned in an attic by their mother and monstrous grandmother.

The first book Flowers in the Attic tells of their incarceration and subsequent escape while the rest of the novels pick up the story after their escape.

The V.C Andrews Series books have copped a lot of flack over the years for being trashy. I certainly wouldn’t describe them in this category though. To me they are a combination of a brilliant gothic horror and family saga genre. The novels are famous for their family secrets and forbidden love (frequently involving scenes of consensual incest between a brother and a sister). It still amazes me today that these books are actually aimed at a younger audience. The themes are so remotely adult and have even been quite controversial over the years leading to the book Flowers in the Attic actually getting banned at one point from schools.

The storyline presents a shocking portrayal of child abuse and is at times very dark and extremely sad. The series truly is a gripping read though and offers an extreme example of the influence of money and how the pursuit of it inevitably always ends in nasty greed.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Guest Blog: 90s Cartoon Network Classics



Standing in for your regular blogger, I am Nick, otherwise known as Blogging Nickster. You can catch my blog, The Unofficial Cedar Point Blog, which is a blog all about the world-class amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio! You can also follow me on Twitter and like my blog’s Facebook page!

As a kid in the latter half of the 1990’s, Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon ruled my weeknights. Johnny Bravo, the Angry Beavers, Rugrats, and Dexter’s Laboratory ruled the land of cartoons, before the world of Spongebob-reruns and cheap knock-offs of the classics. Although both networks were amazing at the time, Children of the 90’s has sort of neglected Cartoon Network shows. To solve this, as a guest blogger, I will be peering into the fascinating cartoons that used to roam Cartoon Network in the mid-to late 1990’s.

Dexter’s Laboratory



The theme song was scary; the main character was a tiny carrot-top; and the protagonist was extremely annoying. What other cartoon could that be besides Dexter’s Laboratory? In a nutshell, the show was about an extremely short kid with a giant laboratory somehow shoved into his family’s standard two-story house.

Dexter’s parents were so stereotypical that it almost made me sick: a businessman dad and a stay at home mom, complete with an everyday outfit of an apron and yellow rubber gloves. However, Dexter’s sister, Dee Dee, was quite… um… different. Dee Dee had really long legs, with these giant combat boot-like feet that would make a funny stomp noise as she stumbled about. To this day, I still don’t know how that girl could even pick her feet up!



Mandark was this annoying enemy of Dexter that also created his own secret laboratory, too. (I’m sorry, but there really only needs to be one mad scientist per town…) But anyway, Mandark inherited the worst laugh in history. It was this high-pitched, pinched “Mwuhahaha, mwuhahaha, mwuhahaha, mwuahahaha!” (See video below to remember the annoyance!)



In between each episode, these little segments would pop up called “Justice League” and “Dial M for Monkey.” Both of the segments annoyed me. I didn’t really care about this stupid monkey that had superpowers; I thought it was a dumb idea. The Justice League bit was just as bad. I just wanted to get back to watching Dexter!

Cow and Chicken

By far, the most bizarre (Hey, that rhymed!) cartoon on the network was Cow and Chicken. Amazingly, two humans managed to produce a cow and chicken as children, creatively named Cow and Chicken.

We never really got to see the upper halves of Cow and Chicken’s parents, but there was obviously something genetically wrong with one of them. They both must have some recessive traits that were lining up somewhere, or their upper halves were extremely screwed up...


The Powerpuff Girls

Growing up, my older cousin’s favorite show was The Powerpuff Girls, and I never wanted to watch it because the show was centered on three girls. And, as we all know, girls have the dreaded cooties, and these three girls were especially toxic because they were created with “sugar and spice and everything nice.”

But, once the cooties phase ended, I caught an episode or two of the Powerpuff Girls, and was automatically scared of Mojo Jojo. He just… looked so… evil! I had a nightmare after I watched my first episode of the Powerpuff Girls involving Mojo Jojo pushing me into this mysterious fire-filled pit. I hated tly monkey-looking thing. And I never understood that hat/helmet thing he wore.

Just now, during a little research, I found out that Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup were kindergartens! They could really kick butt for kindergarteners, now that I think about it!

Courage the Cowardly Dog



Ah, the pink little puppy: one of my favorite Cartoon Network shows. Sure, it could really scare me out of my mind sometimes, but nowhere near Mojo Jojo, somehow.

So pretty much, in every episode, some sort of weird monster or creature attacked Courage and his elderly owners, Eustace and Muriel. My personal favorite of the creepers that showed up was Katz the Cat, a homicidal red cat that cooked up several schemes to kill or manipulate Muriel and Eustace, such as a spa that turned Muriel into a washing machine and Eustace into a wrecking ball. Freaky Fred, Muriel’s nephew with an obsession with shaving heads, was another notable and scary villain. Let’s just he was very “naaaaaaaawtieee,” as he would say.

Johnny Bravo


Johnny Bravo… I’m not even sure how to describe this cartoon. There was a big blonde guy that really wasn’t all that bright, and he still lived with his “Mommmaaaah,” as he said in an Elvis Presley-like tone. That’s about all you need to know. It was a primarily simple idea...

2 Stupid Dogs



Believe it or not, the theme song was probably the most complex part of the show...

The short-lived 2 Stupid Dogs was amazing show about… two stupid dogs. Okay, so maybe it wasn’t the most creative name. Although we never knew their names, the dogs were a dachshund and a type of shepherd dog. The bigger shepherd dog had a low-pitched, unenergetic voice (which was actually Brad Garrett voicing him!) that was the complete opposite of his dachshund counterpart.

About the only episode I remember watching was when the dogs had to swim across this ridiculously large ocean, and somehow ended up at the San Andres fault line. I’m not really sure what happened after they reached the fault line, because my dad took the remote! (Didn’t you hate when your parents did that!?)

Technically, the show is a way toned-down version of fellow 1990’s cartoon “The Ren and Stimpy Show.”

Mike, Lu, and Og


The adventures of Mike, Lu, and Og always confused me. How did they get on that cool island? Why is only Mike wearing “normal” clothes? Why was Lu such a brat? And what is a wombat?
Well, I found out that Lu and Og were cousins, and inhabitants on the island, but Mike landed on the island after being asked to be an exchange student. In the issue with Lu’s problem with being a brat, she’s the governor of the island’s daughter, so naturally she believes that she is the princess of the island. She even had a turtle named Lancelot, and she tortured that poor thing. And according to Wikipedia, Lancelot is actually a girl! Whoa! Finally, a wombat is some sort of weird squirrel-looking animal. There’s everything you need to know about Mike, Lu, and Og!

Overall, Cartoon Network was great back in the day. But nowadays, they hardly even show cartoons anymore! I mean, with a name like CARTOON Network, you’d think that they’d show CARTOONS! But, just like Nickelodeon, it will go down in the books as a “used-to-be cool and original” television network.

I miss the 90’s. (insert sad face here)

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Please Excuse this Interruption from Your Regularly Scheduled 90s

You may have noticed I've been a little MIA lately. I appreciate all the guest bloggers pitching in to help (If you're interested in writing a guest blog, please email me at childrenofthe90s@gmail.com!)

Right now I'm knee-deep in wedding planning and haven't had much time to tend to the world of nostalgia. I'm taking more applications for guest bloggers for now! I promise I will be back once things settle down a bit. Thanks for understanding, 90s fans.

Digg This!