I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I am a ‘90s kid, through and through. In fact, in my article about movie and TV memories that I share with other ‘90s kids, I discussed key moments in entertainment that I’m pretty sure every ‘90s kid remembers. But, out of all things that could have possibly slipped my mind, how in the heck did I forget to mention Nickelodeon?
Ah, Nick, the home of slime and silliness. For me to leave out all the great ‘90s Nickelodeon TV shows in that list is a gross oversight that I plan to rectify today! Because, while yes, kids back in my day likely saw the Jurassic Park movies, and look back fondly upon the Disney Renaissance, we also spent hundreds of hours wishing that we could be on one of its game shows, or watched its cartoons and live-action programs endlessly.
Now, with such a vast selection of shows, SOME of your favorites are not going to make this list. For example, I was never a big fan of weird Nicktoons like Aaahh!!! Real Monsters or Ren and Stimpy, so even though I know they were popular, they just weren’t for me (I LIKE weird stuff–you should just hear me talk about Tim and Eric’s Chrimbus Special). But, SOME of your favorites will be on this list, because how could they not be? We Nick kids think alike.
Clarissa Explains It All
Starring Melissa Joan Hart (before she was a teenage witch), Clarissa Explains It All was about a teenage girl just being, well, a teenage girl. She talked about stuff like pimples, boys, and school, usually breaking the fourth wall, Deadpool style, and was always funny about it. In every way, it was a show that likely spoke to teenage girls.
Which is why it’s so surprising that I was such a big fan since I definitely WASN’T a teenage girl. Unlike The Adventures of Pete and Pete, which is another popular Nick show that just didn’t click with me, the weirdness of Clarissa Explains It All felt more self-contained and manageable. Like, even though Clarissa would talk about boys she was attracted to, she also talked about They Might Be Giants, video games, and her pet alligator, Elvis. The show lasted for five seasons, but you never had to consistently watch it. You could just tune in whenever and have a good time, which is why it ends up on this list.
Rocko's Modern Life
I know I said that I didn’t like weird shows like Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, but I LOVED Rocko’s Modern Life. The show was about an immigrant wallaby and his bizarre friends. And O-Town, which was where he resided, was pretty much a character of its own. In a lot of ways, Rocko’s Modern Life felt like baby’s first Seinfeld, as the plots were usually nonsensical and more a means to an end to slide in more adult humor. (Chokey Chicken, anyone?)
It also led the way for the even more bizarre, sometimes risque, humor of SpongeBob SquarePants, which makes sense, because Rocko’s creative director created SpongeBob (RIP, Stephen Hillenburg). The show ran for four seasons, but honestly, every episode felt pretty much the same. (In a good way!) I can’t be the only one who loved this offbeat show, since it got an out-of-the-blue modern revival a few years back, which just goes to show that we Rocko fans back in the day knew what was up.
Double Dare
Nickelodeon’s first game show may not be its best, but it’s probably its most classic. Hosted by Marc Summers (the first version of the show, anyway), Double Dare consisted of quiz questions and physical challenges, with the challenges usually being hilarious, and almost always messy. In this way, you would think that Family Double Dare, which added parents, would be a lot more fun, but I always preferred the original to all the spin-offs.
The major conceit of the show is the actual daring portion, where if kids didn’t know the answers, they could dare (or double dare) the other kids to get more cash prizes. The last obstacle course, which involved pulling a flag out of a nose, will forever live in my memories as Peak TV. You think I’m joking!
Nickelodeon Guts
While Double Dare seemed like fun, Nickelodeon Guts seemed like work. And, being a big boy back in the day who wore big boy pants (size 40 at age 13), I knew Nickelodeon Guts was the kind of show that I could watch, but never even dared imagine myself being on it like Double Dare. Hosted by Glee's Mike O’ Malley, and reffed by Moira “MO!” Quirk, Guts was all about athleticism, one elastic harness at a time.
The events were always really fast-paced, and the show always ended with contestants scaling the Aggro Crag (Later the Super Aggro Crag on Global Guts). Interestingly, the show was always moving, and it almost seemed like the kind of game show that you’d see being made for kids today with their cell phone addled, short attention spans. So, even though I d-d-d-d-didn’t have it, I could still openly appreciate Guts for being the enthralling show that it was.
My Brother And Me
Goooo Punch! Sure, there were a lot of great Black sitcoms in the ‘90s, but none of them had predominantly kid casts like My Brother and Me. Lasting only one season, it was about the Parker family just living out their lives. That’s it. So, why is it on this list then?
Well, it might be because it was about Black characters, but it never made a big deal about it. This was a show that was just about kids being kids. You had storylines about first kisses and trying out for basketball, and they were just wholesome, enjoyable episodes with relatable characters, who just happened to be Black. And for that, I loved it.
Salute Your Shorts
We hold you in our hearts, Salute Your Shorts! Lasting only two seasons, this series was about a bunch of campers at Camp Anawanna, and the hijinks they got into. Like a lot of the Nick shows of this era, the episodes were throwaway, but the characters were indispensable.
Of course you had Budnick, your resident jerk with a mullet, Michael (and then later Ronnie in Season 2) as your everyboy hero, Kevin “Ug” Lee as your older bully, and my personal favorite, “Donkey Lips” Eddie Gelfand. The show worked because it was irreverent and almost seemed a bit counterculture (as opposed to the super lame Hey Dude, which lasted much longer). In summary, Salute Your Shorts was about jerky kids being jerks, and it actually made you like them. Sounds legit.
The Secret World Of Alex Mack
Depending on whom you ask, Alex Mack was a lighthearted adventure series about a girl who got splashed with chemical waste and acquired superpowers. Or, it was a show about shady scientists who were trying to cover up their malfeasance, and would do so by any means necessary, even if it meant assassination. This is because the series changed dramatically over its four seasons, kind of like Harry Potter over the course of its seven books.
Rarely has a show so completely compared the struggles of acquiring superpowers with going through puberty, though. Alex (the super charming Larisa Oleynik) was just trying to find her way in the world, and she thought it was both cool (and scary!) to have powers, just like growing up itself.
Kenan & Kel
Kenan & Kel was like a version of The Three Stooges, but minus a Stooge. That’s not to say that Kenan and Kel would be bopping each other on the bean or anything like that. But, you always had a dynamic where one of them was always trying to scheme (Kenan), and the other would always inevitably mess it up (Kel).
Believe it or not, this formula worked for four whole seasons. It might be because the show often liked to break the fourth wall, and it stayed fresh with both actors being masters of goofball comedy. Kenan and Kel reunited on SNL recently, and it meant a lot to us old fans. For a time, they were the funniest guys on TV (and in movies as well, with Good Burger), so seeing them at any point together is always a good time.
Rugrats
Today, any kid will tell you that SpongeBob SquarePants is Nickelodeon’s most famous cartoon, but anybody who grew up in the ‘90s will tell you that it’s Rugrats. Tommy, Chuckie, Phil and Lil, and Angelica were the primary babies and toddlers, but we’d later get Susie, and Tommy’s baby brother, Dylan, in later years.
The show ran for nine seasons (Damn!), and was basically about a day in the life of a baby, and what they might possibly imagine as they go on little mental adventures together. It was cute, it was quirky, and it was funny, and America loved it. What can we say? Babies are adorable.
Legends Of The Hidden Temple
Six teams with outrageous names like the Blue Barracudas and the Silver Snakes competed in both mental and physical challenges, all while a talking stone head named Olmec flapped its gums like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.
Legends of the Hidden Temple was a top tier game show, mostly because of its final obstacle course, which had contestants assembling statues and running all about, while temple guards could jump out of nowhere and scare the crud out of them. It wasn’t as wacky as Double Dare, or as athletic as Guts, but it was somewhere in-between, making it a nice little variation on the tried and true formula of quiz game meets challenges.
All That
Basically SNL for kids, All That, which ran for 11 seasons, was a sketch comedy show that featured the likes of Amanda Bynes, Kenan Thompson, Kel Mitchell, Lori Beth Denberg, and even Nick Cannon, just to name a few. The jokes could be kind of corny, and, if I’m being honest, it was never really all that funny, but, it was just cool to see a sketch comedy show with young actors making silly jokes just for us kids.
There were also musical guests, like Coolio, AZ, and Nas, and I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the intro song by TLC. The biggest takeaway, though, is that you really had to be there. This wasn’t SNL. It wasn’t Mad TV. It was All That, and it was all for us, making it special in its own sort of way.
Are You Afraid Of The Dark?
If All That was SNL for kids, then Are You Afraid of the Dark? was The Twilight Zone for kids. It was an anthology series where kids would hunker down around a campfire, and then tell spooky stories, where we’d actually see visual representations of their tales.
The show ran for five seasons, but was brought back a couple of times for revivals. That initial run is what I really remember, because some of the episodes were truly scary, like “The Tale of the Phantom Cab,” “The Tale of the Nightly Neighbors” and “The Tale of the Thirteenth Floor,” all of which really freaked me out as a kid. It might not have been bone-chilling, but it did its job.
Again, I know shows like Doug and The Adventures of Pete and Pete didn’t make the list, but there were just too many popular shows to put on here, so I settled with 12. But, which ones were your favorite? For more news on Nickelodeon, be sure to swing by here often.
