While the Mickey Mouse club was far superior in comedy and singing talent, Kids Incorporated did heavily promote the trend of the side-ponytail. I recall Britney and Christina attempting it, but little Filipino girls do not identify with girls baring blond hair, blue eyes, and fair skin. The more culturally diverse Kids Inc. was always the more appealing of the two shows and inspired my choice in playground hair styling…

By the time the late 80’s rolled around, skateboarding, surfing and other “alternative” lifestyle activities had had a few years to thrive in Southern California cities and were beginning to permeate the suburbs and mainstream culture. By 1988, Nintendo (like in all other aspects of tweenlife) had a big hand in this – and the following three NES games are great examples…

Let’s just face it – you were lame if you didn’t own a Starter Jacket. I can remember the exact day when I realized that my blue Air Force replica coat just wasn’t going to cut it. It was in the fourth grade and even a girl who never talked to me went out of her way to make fun of my lack of officially licensed sports apparel. What was a guy to do? I mean, Christmas didn’t roll around for another couple months and I wasn’t going to be caught dead in that nerdy knock-off military jacket. Literally overnight, the faux badges and stripes that adorned my outerwear stood for “dork” and “social outcast” instead of “valor” and “honor” as they once had. So, unbeknown to my parents, I coatlessly bared the Ohio December until that glorious morning where I opened the wrapping paper of my very own Cleveland Indians pullover…

Fashion. Not the most important thing to a kid. Sure, I demanded to wear my Superman pajamas out in public (it had a cape, none of my other clothes had a cape) but other than that, my appearance was limited to what my mother deemed fitting (I now realize she dressed me way too long after it was seemingly appropriate to do so). Then, like noticing girls or realizing that Police Academy isn’t the funniest movie of all time, a flip was switched in my brain and I became… self-aware…

Every kid who watched Nickelodeon game shows from 1988 to the mid-90s knew about the BK Dymacels, but I never met a single person who owned them. To me, these shoes had only two purposes — they were the consolation prize on Double Dare and the basketball shoe of choice for all the characters in NES’s Arch Rivals. Every Double Dare episode wasn’t complete until Harvey nasally told the losing kids they had just won a pair of bootleg tennis shoes while they disappointingly wiped whipped cream off their goggles.

The whole consolation prize thing cast a certain “loser” stigma over the shoes and they never recovered to compete with the larger shoe companies. For kids, Nikes and Reeboks were the ‘trip to Space Camp’ of sneakers and the Dymacels were what you got stuck with when your teammate couldn’t find the damn orange flag in time…