1990 - Dick Tracy,

1990.  Does it count as the first year of the 90's, or the final year of the 80's?  On one hand, it should be counted as the first year of the 90's.  But then again, you don't count 0 through 9, you count 1 through 10, 11 through 20, 21 through 30, 91 through 100, and so in that sense it should be 1991-2000.  But you know what?  Let's just stuck with the idea that it's 1990-1999.

The year is 1990.  The 80's are over, and the 90's are in.

Gone is this:

(80's funk.  Funkytown.  April O'Neill.  Jem and the Holograms.)

In place is this.

(Mortal Kombat II.  Donkey Kong Country.  Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.  Martin.)

There was a certain realness to the 90's, a certain sense that everyone is a teenager or mentally a teenager.

VIDEO-GAMES.  There's two systems out with games coming out: the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, and the 16-bit Sega Genesis.  There's also the handheld 8-bit Nintendo Game Boy.

MOVIES.  Dick Tracy.  1989 Batman was such a big success among an audience older than young children, shattering the expectations and earlier beliefs, that it made possible other comic book adaptations.  Thus we get to Dick Tracy: an immortal classic that can be watched again and again.

There was a certain realness to movies in the 1990's, compared to the 2000's and 2010's.  Nobody had a billion-dollar budget to simulate a gorgeous house, with million-dollar curtains, a million-dollar car, a million-dollar TV.  No - movies would come out looking like this, as if they might have filmed it at your friend's house.

NEWSPAPER COMIC STRIPS.

Newspapers are printed in black and white, printing in color only on Sundays.

Sunday comic strips are better, because they're longer.

Sounds awesome, right?

RACE RELATIONS.

Everyone's actually functioning like one, at last.

Okay, so racial integration really took place in the 1960's.  Racists were mad that their white Christian nation now suddenly had to accommodate non-whites, as equals instead of servants.  So although the Jim Crow laws ended in the 60's, racism itself still remained alive and at large, particularly for older folks.  In the 1970's, it was still very possible to be denied housing, jobs, and many other nice things because you're black instead of white.  Racists complained that Affirmative Action was hurting whites by depriving them of jobs and letting some COLORED person have an office job instead which was meant for the genetically more qualified white person.  (Okay, so racists weren't generous enough to use the word "colored".)

But guess what?  Kids at the time didn't see it.  Kids saw Americans - tall Americans, short Americans, white Americans, black Americans.  The notion of "whites only" was, for the most part, over with.  If you were a kid, you didn't see things in racist terms unless you were personally spoon-fed such views by your parents (which I never was).

Born December 1987, I spent the year 1990 being 2 years old.

Although the Jim Crow laws were over with since the 60's, it really took until the 80's for the majority of America to let go of racist anger, and for everyone to co-exist in peace.  However, the peaceful co-existence still wasn't too far away from the Jim Crow laws, where people of different colors stayed apart from each other and maintained a peaceful existence.  But in the 90's, everyone was truly playing together like equals, whether it be shooting hoops at the basketball court, TV, movies, music.

In the 90's, kids at school had to be taught that there was ever a time when everything was divided across towns between white and black sections.  That looked laughably outdated and Flinstonian to 90's kids.

TV.  There were only 3 channels from the 1950's through the 1970's.  The 1980's added the 4th channel: FOX.  But by 1990 there were almost 100 channels to choose from.  A whole other state of luxury compared to the days when there were only 3 channels on TV.

Maybe the old way was better.  Everyone knew what Starsky and Hutch was in the 70's, because there were only 3 channels.  With nearly 100 channels, it was a little more stretched out.

DRUG EDUCATION.  Children were all being educated about drugs.  Smoking is bad (cigarettes).  Drinking (alcohol) is bad.  Drugs are bad - marijuana, cocaine, heroin.  It's important to educate children so that some seedy drug-pusher doesn't get to them later on in life.

COMPUTERS.  Not many people own a laptop yet.  Mostly, those are meant for business professionals.

CELL PHONES.  If you see a man talking into a cell phone, you can be certain of two things: he is rich, and he holds himself to be a big-shot.  Nobody had quite done the "Henry Ford" effect yet on cell phones.

STORES.  There is not yet a Super-Wal-Mart in every small town.  Regular Wal-Mart was, to us 90's kids, like Super-Wal-Mart.

Going to McDonald's was a thing.

Here are the Happy Meal Toys one saw in the year 1990.