The '90s brought the rise of fashion trends like JNCO jeans and jelly shoes along with crazes for Beanie Babies, Tamagotchi pets, and Pokémon.
Every decade has its trends, but 1990s fads seemed to have their own unique charm. Something about the ’90s made it a golden era for brief, explosive crazes that swept through schoolyards, malls, and pop culture before vanishing almost as quickly as they’d appeared.
While some of these fads endured, many exist now only as relics of a bygone era. From Beanie Babies to butterfly clips, the ’90s were driven by obsessions that have transitioned from trivial to iconic. The question is, why?
It was partly because of timing. Globalized pop culture, the growth of mass consumer markets, and the rise of the internet all converged. And at the same time, a new generation of teens and young adults were looking for connection and a way to display their identities. This need for self-expression led to near-obsessive collections and 1990s fads that came to define the era — for better or for worse.
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Despite their creepiness, Furbies sold out every Christmas season and are still fairly popular today. Amanda/Flickr Creative Commons
Pearl Jam was just one of many grunge bands that exploded in the 1990s. Other big acts included Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden.
Grunge was born in Seattle and was characterized by raw authenticity, distorted guitars, and thrift-store fashion like flannel shirts and ripped jeans. perfectrx/Wikimedia Commons
Rollerblades surged in popularity during the '90s thanks to the X Games and movies like Brink! on Disney Channel. Reddit
Between 1992 and 1997, Stine published 62 Goosebumps books.teakwood/Flickr Creative Commons
Unfortunately for die-hard collectors, Beanie Babies never exploded in value, other than a few rare ones. Yvette Wohn/Flickr Creative Commons
Historically, recipes have varied but often included edible ingredients like vanilla pudding, applesauce, oatmeal, and green food coloring, sometimes with additions like baby shampoo for thickness or for easier cleanup.NickRewind/YouTube
There was also a game element to pogs, and a relatively simple one at that: Stack them, slam them, and keep what flipped.
Like many fads, the hype around pogs quickly died, but for a brief, fleeting moment, they ruled the playground. Nicole/Flickr Creative Commons
From its launch in 1993, it grew from a niche hobby into a cultural phenomenon by the late '90s. Even today, the Magic scene is alive and well.abbamouse/Flickr Creative Commons
Mark McGrath is just one example, but he was far from the only man in the 1990s to rock frosted tips. Most members of NSYNC jumped on the craze, as did celebrity chef Guy Fieri. Spiked up, half-blonde hair was low maintenance but high impact — and very '90s. Lance Nishihira/Flickr Creative Commons
The Beanie Baby Craze And Other Playful 1990s Fads
Collectors have been around for centuries, but the 1990s saw a massive surge in the hobby. Children and adults alike obsessed over items designed to be gathered, swapped, and displayed.
There was an interesting social psychology to these '90s fads. Certain "limited" collectibles — shiny Pokémon cards, bottle caps, etc. — created an artificial scarcity that drove people to make more purchases in the hopes of attaining one of these rarer items. And because they were so popular, these objects also functioned as status symbols. Some people even considered their collections to be an investment, believing the value would only increase as time went on. Occasionally, they were right.
Public DomainThe Ty ostrich Beanie Baby, "Stretch."
But not always.
One of the most infamous examples of this was the Beanie Baby craze. Ty Inc. released dozens of limited runs of plush animals, retired them quickly, and stirred demand by suggesting future rarity. Some families stockpiled their Beanie Babies in plastic cases, convinced they would be worth thousands one day. Then, the bubble burst and people realized they had spent thousands on toys that wound up to be essentially worthless.
After all, Beanie Babies were only ever worth what people were willing to pay for them. The craze took over rationality, and it created an unsustainable bubble. As market historian Jeremy Grantham told Vox in 2022, "It's a flaw in the human character. No one is immune, no matter how smart you are."
Beanie Babies may have been the most notorious example of this, but the same desire to collect things was sparked by various other brands, too.
Pokémon's catchphrase, after all, was "Gotta catch 'em all." Magic: The Gathering is still wildly popular today, and some of the game's cards can fetch unimaginable prices at market: Post Malone bought a card for $2 million back in 2023.
Many 1990s fads started because consumerism was at an all-time high, which was also in direct opposition to many of the larger cultural and social movements of the era. It's odd to think that Tamagotchi and butterfly clips took off in the same cultural context as grunge and JNCO jeans, but that's exactly what happened.
Grunge, Hip-Hop, And Skater Culture
Paul Bergen/Redferns/Getty ImagesDave Grohl, Kurt Cobain, and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana in 1991.
Despite the widespread consumerist conformity — or perhaps because of it — the '90s also saw the emergence of several subcultures that were distinctly rebellious and anti-authority. The three biggest examples of this are perhaps grunge, hip-hop, and skater culture.
Grunge emerged in the early '90s in Seattle and burst onto the scene with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Soundgarden. It was musically raw and lyrically introspective, a visceral rejection of the polished excess of 1980s hair metal. It spoke to a generation of people who, as described in a 1990 Time article, "possess only a hazy sense of their own identity." The authors wrote that those who fell into the grunge scene had "few heroes, no anthems, no style to call their own" — and this new music scene offered all three, albeit in unconventional ways.
Fashion fads of the 1990s followed suit. Thrift store flannels, ripped jeans, and heavy boots trended in a way that was almost "anti-fashion," though it did then inspire companies to make and sell clothes in that style, commercializing an otherwise anti-commercial aesthetic.
Hip-hop had a similar story. What began in the Bronx back in the 1970s had become global thanks to artists like Tupac Shakur, the Notorious B.I.G., TLC, and the Wu-Tang Clan.
Al Pereira/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty ImagesTupac Shakur, pictured with fellow rappers the Notorious B.I.G. (left) and Redman (right) at Club Amazon in New York. 1993.
Like grunge, the music and style influenced fashion, language, and attitude. Baggy jeans, Timberlands, overalls with one strap undone, and oversized sport jerseys also became symbols of identity, rooted in street culture and often defiant of suburban norms. Hip-hop itself was also a reflection of the realities of race, class, and inequality. For many suburban kids, adopting a hip-hop style was a way to signal rebellion, even if the context was very different from the culture's origins.
And both grunge and hip-hop intersected with the rapidly growing skater culture that occupied much of the '90s zeitgeist. Skateboarding was also a rejection of sorts, a move away from organized sports in favor of do-it-yourself freedom. Wide-legged JNCO jeans, chain wallets, and graphic tees spoke to an aesthetic of nonconformity, a pushback against rules and institutions.
But it also provided people with a tight-knit community that valued creativity and grit. Once again, though, the subculture eventually became so popular that it was turned into a commodity by large corporations, which just shows the greatest paradox of 1990s fads: a generation rejecting mainstream consumer culture while simultaneously and unavoidably being pulled into it.
After this nostalgic look back at the biggest fads of the 1990s, check out 29 raw photos of the 1990s rave scene. Then, see our gallery of photos from the LAN parties that dominated the late '90s and early 2000s.
