Free The Totally Sweet ’90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to “Whatever,” the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade by Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, Brian Bellmont

CDs, DVDs, and flash drives all signed the floppy’s death certificate. Which was probably too big to fit on a disk.
    FUN FACT: Even a 16GB flash drive, which is on the small side, holds more than eleven thousand times as much information as the average floppy.

Forrest Gump
    W e’d already chuckled at Tom Hanks in flicks like
Big
,
Sleepless in Seattle
, and
Turner & Hooch
. (Okay, maybe not so much
Turner & Hooch
.) But with his southern-fried performance in the 1994 Oscar-winner
Forrest Gump
, Hanks shot to a new level of superstardom, wiping out every last memory of when he wore a bra and girdle in
Bosom Buddies
, or played Elyse Keaton’s ne’er-do-well brother on
Family Ties
.
    In the movie—a perfect blend of blow-your-nose-in-your-popcorn tear-jerker and punch-in-the-gut comedy—simpleton Forrest insinuated himself into just about every grainy piece of archival footage director Robert Zemeckis could unearth. Forrest, it seems, changed the course of history: He taught Elvis how to swivel his hips, started the ping-pong craze, exposed the Watergate break-in, and showed president Lyndon Johnson that he was shot “in the butt-tocks.” He left catchphrase after catchphrase inhis wake, as he pined for his childhood sweetheart Jenn-ay (“Run, Forrest! Run!”), befriended slack-jawed Bubba (“Shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad…”), and sprinted across the country (“Stupid is as stupid does”).
    And we watched it all over and over again, until we could recite every line by heart. Every time we popped it into the VCR, unlike the box of chocolates Forrest carried around, we knew exactly what we were gonna get.
    STATUS: The book
Forrest Gump
has a sequel,
Gump and Co.
, and there’s constant talk of making a movie sequel out of it, but nothing yet.
    FUN FACT: According to IMDb.com, John Travolta, Chevy Chase, and Bill Murray all turned down the role that eventually went to Hanks.

FoxTrot
    W hat
Peanuts
was to the 1950s, Bill Amend’s
FoxTrot
was to the 1990s. But while Charlie Brown and pals were oblivious to the pop culture of their era, dorky dad Roger and mom Andy’s three kids bathe in it. Oldest son Peter adores Bruce Springsteen and Cindy Crawford, boy-crazy sister Paige decks her room with
90210
posters, and youngest kid Jason writes computer viruses and is obsessed with
Star Wars
.
    Amend majored in physics, and it shows, especially in hisdead-on portrayal of brainy, geeky Jason. When Jason and pal Marcus plan a snow fort, it has twelve missile silos. After they see
Jurassic Park
, Jason writes a letter to PBS telling them Barney should be eating the kids. His diorama on the Great Depression features Kirk, Spock, and Bones jumping back through a time portal.

    But you don’t have to know Klingon to feel like the Foxes are part of your family. Jason may play Nintendo instead of baseball and own an iguana instead of a beagle, but like
Peanuts
,
FoxTrot
has a universality and a heart that defies time periods. And Jason’s moved from loving
Star Trek
to
Star Wars
to
Avatar
, from iMacs to iPads, without batting an eye—or aging beyond age ten. The geek shall inherit the earth.
    STATUS:
FoxTrot
ended as a daily comic strip in 2006, moving to Sundays only.
    FUN FACT: In one episode of
The Sopranos
, mob boss Tony and son A.J. are seen reading
FoxTrot
in their Sunday paper. Maybe Jason makes them an offer they can’t refuse.

Free Willy
    W hen the title of your movie makes an entire theater full of preteen boys collapse in a fit of giggles and snort Orange Crush out of their noses, you probably want to fire whatever focus group told you it was a good idea. 1993’s
Free Willy
had one of the worst titles in cinematic history. They couldn’t have come up with a different name for the whale? How about Steve? Steve is a good, middle-of-the-road whale name. And, most important, doesn’t make people think of a wang.
    Terrible