40 Nostalgic Photos That Will Take ’80s And ’90s Kids Right Back

In the '90s, a center-parting the hairstyle for young women. None of that side-parting business, thank you. And did anyone rock this look better than the Spice Girls? Whether you were reaching for the blond dye to really call attention to that parting like Ginger Spice, or you were more into Victoria Beckham’s sleek, center-parted bob, this hairstyle was iconic.

And by train tracks, we, of course, mean dental braces. Even if they caused you serious pain each time you took a trip to the dentist to get them tightened, it was all made instantly better when you got to choose the color of your new bands. And to anyone who made the mistake of choosing fluorescent green back in the day: we feel your pain. 

Sometimes all anyone wants is to wear a nifty ring that changes color if your crush walks past you and smiles. These “mood rings” became a big deal in the '90s, as they were supposed to give mystical insight into the feelings of their wearers... In reality, though, half the time the liquid crystal within would just get jammed between red pride and purple power, leaving an ugly brown color. Which usually meant angst.

Few hairstyles are as synonymous with the '90s as “The Rachel.” Worn by Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green in the decade-conquering sitcom Friends, the highlighted, layered, and bouncy shoulder-length style was imitated by women all over the world. Yet even Aniston admitted that she struggled to recreate the salon-quality style when left to her own devices.

Admit it: either your iPod was engraved — probably with lyrics by Jewel or Fiona Apple, so everyone could tell how soulful and deep you were — or you desperately wished it was. Unless you got it for Christmas, in which case you made sure to always cover up the barf-inducing message from Mom and Dad about how much they love you. Eww. Mind you, we still have a soft spot in our hearts for the design of these bad boys.

Tamagotchis came from Japan and took over everyone’s lives in the late '90s. The handheld digital pets were created by Bandai, and the object of the game was for someone to care for a tiny alien egg and ensure that it grew into a healthy adult alien creature. The better care you provided, the less attention you had to give the little gizmo. Many Tamagotchis died from neglect, of course. It was all very weird — and very '90s. But we're pretty sure there's an app for this now.

In the '90s, Blockbuster Video was a magical place filled to the brim with hundreds of VHS movie options. Many of us went there every weekend. Yes, you had to pay a fine if you returned the tapes late, but that was a small price to pay to watch Titanic for the 17th time. Devastatingly, thanks to the growth of streaming and downloads, there is only one Blockbuster left in the world. Bend, Oregon, we salute you!

One of the biggest dance fads of the '90s was the “Macarena.” The song, by Spanish duo Los del Rio, was released in 1994, and the accompanying dance graced many a nightclub dance floor. It was a fun song, though no one in America really understood the lyrics. Turned out it was about a girl who cheated on her soldier boyfriend with two of his buddies. Who knew?

Truly a workout juggernaut. By the end of the 1970s, Jane Fonda had two Academy Awards for Best Actress to her name. But the next decade would bring her a new fruitful venture: fitness books and videos. And her first taped exercise program, Jane Fonda’s Workout, topped the charts as the highest-selling video for several years. It also boosted sales of the then-new technology to play tapes at home, the VCR.

Back when Transformers were must-have toys for kids, McDonald’s introduced its own version of the robots that could ingeniously morph into other objects. Except, of course, Changeables didn’t become cars: they turned into burgers and fries. From 1987 onwards, the company put “McRobots” in Happy Meals, and mini munchers could collect six in the first offering. Lovin' it!

These days, if you started excitedly regaling a teenager with tales of your schoolyard days playing POGS, they’d look at you with utter befuddlement. Especially when you explained to them that POGS were highly collectible little poker chip-sized cardboard discs that you stacked and then hit with a slammer. The ones that landed face up were then the property of your opponent. Giving away collectible things you’d spent money on — classic '90s fun!

In the '90s, it wasn’t only little girls and teens who wore brightly colored, puffy scrunchies in their hair. Phoebe in Friends was known to rock a side ponytail with a scrunchie, and the girls in Saved By The Bell wore them too. Today, there are countless other options for ladies to tie their hair back, so scrunchies aren’t quite as ubiquitous as they once were. Alas!

Kelly LeBrock became a major sex symbol in the ’80s thanks to the double whammy of The Woman in Red and Weird Science. But at the height of her fame, LeBrock made the shocking decision to take five years off to focus on her family. She returned with 1990's Hard to Kill opposite her second husband, Steven Seagal, but she will always be an '80s icon to us.

Singing along to your favorite songs was a lot trickier in the 1980s. That's why you got commonly misheard lyrics such as, “It doesn’t make a difference if we’re naked or not,” courtesy of Bon Jovi’s 1986 track “Livin’ on a Prayer.” And it’s no surprise: looking up lyrics basically didn’t exist back then unless you were lucky enough to find them printed in the cassette insert.

Nobody has ever watched The Goonies and not longed to go on an epic adventure. All of the characters are iconic — and we all wanted to be one of them at some point in our lives. True, parts of the film have not aged well when viewed through a modern lens. But there's no denying the utter joy and sense of fun that permeates the film.

It could be argued that we’re in a golden age of gaming, with consoles such as the PlayStation 5 and the Xbox Series X pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Yet before those machines went on to blow our minds, a simple hand-held device changed everything. Of course, we’re talking about the Nintendo Game Boy. What was your highest score in Tetris?

JTT first came to prominence as a child actor in the TV show The Bradys, a reboot of ’70s favorite The Brady Bunch. But his break really came as the voice of young Simba in the hit movie The Lion King. He didn’t just have an attractive voice, though, as he proved by playing Randy Taylor in Home Improvement. His looks captured tween hearts, catapulting him to a level of fame few others got to taste.

While franchises such as Transformers and Masters of the Universe helped define the 1980s, Pokémon did much the same for the 1990s. After starting as a video game, it branched out into a television series, ahead of the creation of trading cards. Since then, the Pokémon brand has generated around $90 billion. And if you're lucky enough to have saved your Pokémon cards from the 1990s, they could be worth a fortune, too.

While Pokémon was becoming a worldwide phenomenon in the 1990s, Beanie Babies also emerged as a hugely popular brand. It all started back in 1986 when a man named Ty Warner formed his own company. Then, some seven years after that, Ty Inc. began to release its first batch of stuffed animals. And that's probably around when we first started to become obsessed.

When you cast your mind back to crazes from the 1990s, you’ll no doubt think of the Furby toy line. These strange-looking dolls were all the rage following their release in 1998, as kids became enamored with their robotic features. To give you an idea of the numbers, more than 40 million units were purchased over a three-year period. And we probably made 20 million of them.

While the kids of the '80s enjoyed plenty of classic television, people who grew up in the '90s had their fair share of fun as well. One of the most popular series from that period was the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, a live-action show that kick-started a craze. The original show itself began in 1993, before concluding three years later. It has lived on in various other incarnations — but the original will always be the best!

James Cameron’s Titanic is perhaps the essential ’90s film. Following its 1997 release, the disaster epic smashed records, winning 11 Oscars and generating well over $1 billion at the box office. It also pushed its two leads into superstardom. In this photo, Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio can be seen turning heads at the 1998 Golden Globes.

Sure, it’s hard to see now why girls fell for groups of guys with spray tans prancing around in skin-tight pants. But boy bands have been a part of the culture for years, and they were a very big deal in the '90s. It helped, of course, that the music videos for "I Want It That Way" and "Everybody" were instantly iconic.

Dazed and Confused is a '90s film that is kind of anti-nostalgic about the 1970s — yet it makes us nostalgic for the 1990s! Weird, right? Maybe it's just because it introduced us all to Matthew McConaughey and his iconic line, "All right, all right, all right!" Or maybe it's because it's genuinely one of the greatest films ever made.

If there ever was a picture that screams "1980s!" more than this snap of the cast of The Lost Boys then we haven't seen it. The hairstyles, the fashion, the makeup, just... everything. It's the perfect combination for a nostalgic hit. And we're not going to lie, every time we come across this film on TV, we can't help but sit down and watch it.

Sure, they used to break without more than even touching them a little too firmly – but that didn’t matter when you could end a call with such a theatrical flourish. SNAP! And if your phone didn't have the game Snake on it, then what were you ever really going to use it for? The Snake competitions at our high school were intense!

Unless your parents were super cool, you probably got your belly button pierced under the radar — and then spent weeks trying to hide the resulting crusty mess from them. Parents have two people to blame for the popularity of the naval piercing. The first is model Christy Turlington, who proudly flaunted her pierced belly button at a fashion show. And the second is Alicia Silverstone, who got hers pierced in Aerosmith's music video for "Cryin'."

You may not have known what half the settings on a Baby-G watch did, but it was only ever meant to look cool. And look cool they did — even though they were seriously chunky! We enjoyed playing with alarm and stopwatch features as well as testing out just how shock-absorbant they really were! Oh, and they'd maybe also let you know the time and embarrass you when it beeped in class.

Your locker was practically a shrine to Chris Carrabba. Most recesses were spent staring into his gorgeous brown eyes the same way that he stared into your tortured emo soul. The band reached its peak popularity with the release of "Vindicated" — a song that played over the credits of Spider-Man 2. And if you really want that nostalgia hit, you can still catch Dashboard Confessional gigs today.

Every ’90s bookworm had a collection of Goosebumps paperbacks that they now remember with an unsettling mix of fondness and terror. This is probably because these kitschy tales of mild suburban horror captivated teenage readers and made author R. L. Stine a U.S. bestselling writer for three years running. The man has sold over 400 million books — and probably scared just as many young kids...

Is butter a carb? After it came out in 2004, Mean Girls was your life – in every sense. And whether or not you actually wore pink on Wednesdays, high school was all about catty comments and burn books, so of course you had to keep up. All together now: "Stop trying to make 'fetch' happen!"

98 Degrees were the thinking girls' group of choice. Sure, they were a bunch of hot boys who liked to sing and frolic on the beach together — but they were real artists. The band was certainly quick to tell people that they wrote (some) of their own songs and that they barely did any dance moves... Still, though, Nick Lachey sure is dreamy.

They were ugly, short, and had colorful furry hair — not exactly the best recipe for a winning collectible, right? Wrong: accumulating Trolls was an unstoppable fad that swept the world, fueled in the ’90s by video games and cartoon series. They held such nostalgic value that two all-star movies were released about the Trolls in 2016 and 2020.

Hot Wheels debuted in the late 1960s and was still going strong in the ’90s when kids would collect small replicas of NASCAR racing cars as well as classic models. Most probably they would leave them scattered across the carpet, inciting rage from weary moms and dads everywhere. Ah, the joys of childhood! Fingers are crossed that we get the long-promised Hot Wheels movie at some point soon.

The Spice Girls were everywhere in the 1990s. And the ongoing schoolyard debate was, which one are you? Sporty, Baby, Ginger, Posh, or Scary? Whichever one you chose, there was no escaping their cries of "Girl Power!" or their incredible catchy tunes. And let's face it, we all still know all the words to "Wannabe" — even if we don't understand them! "I really, really, really wanna zigazig ah."

Even Ben Stiller didn't think this scene would be believable, and Cameron Diaz nearly backed out of it altogether. While in a public setting, Diaz's character notices a, ahem, "personal substance" on Stiller's ear, which he claims is hair gel. She decides to take some for her own hair, resulting in a rather Flock-of-Seagulls look. Gross? Yes. Acceptable now? Unlikely. Iconic scene from the 1990s? Absolutely.

The McDonald’s exec who came up with the idea of putting toys inside Happy Meals was basically a genius. This concept prompted kids around the world to incessantly nag their parents to head to the burger chain just to get their hands on the latest surprise gift. In the ’90s, these could have been in the shape of Mario Kart or Batman Car figures and were as vital to kids as oxygen.

These vaguely creepy dolls were the must-have item for any self-respecting ’90s girl. Their odd vacant expressions and perfectly coiffured hair brought delight to many a pre-teen — and the more you owned, the better. And we must have bought a fair few. After all, Mattel ended up buying the company that made American Girl dolls for $700 million in 1998.

They say necessity is the mother of invention, and this was certainly the case when Blink-182 wrote “Dammit.” One of the band’s most beloved songs was actually written in 10 minutes while Mark Hoppus noodled with an acoustic guitar that was missing two strings. When creating the main riff, Hoppus had to skip over the absentee strings, and he felt this gave it a one-of-a-kind sound. He was right!

Of course, viewed through the lens of today’s standards, many 1990s comedies contain material that would now no longer be considered acceptable. You only have to look at the vast amount of online pieces about Friends’ more questionable moments as proof. However, the first Ace Ventura movie is on a different level. We can't imagine anybody getting away with what he did in those movies. Ah, the '90s!