Hi, I’m Stellar, and I still like misleading people with the endings of my posts. I know I promised a Top 20 Fall Out Boy Songs list, and I did start writing it, but I just wasn’t feeling how it was coming along. Besides, I realized that this is the last post I’ll write before I start my junior year of high school, and that terrifies me. Before I go into my future, I think it would be cool to reflect on my past. This is like your average Buzzfeed post (like this one), but instead of claiming it’s “(however many) Things Every 90s Kid Loved”, these are specific things that are mainly nostalgic to me. I was born in 2002, and my childhood was full of stereotypically girly things, as you’ll see below. I’m going to be breaking it down into categories, choosing five movies, five books, five TV shows, and five toys that I really loved during my childhood. I’ll talk a little about each one and maybe share a funny anecdote if I have one relating to the subject.
Movies
-This specific Disney Princess Sing-Along Songs DVD
One very stereotypically girly thing I loved to death was Disney Princesses. I had Disney Princess birthday parties two years in a row, my room was Disney Princess for a time, and I had dress-up dresses for Belle, Snow White, Aurora, and Cinderella. My favorite princess was Belle at the time (now it’s Mulan because she saved everyone instead of getting saved herself), so I should have chosen Beauty and the Beast, but this specific disc is where my heart lies. It’s not really a movie, it just features a bunch of the classic Disney Princess songs with the lyrics on screen so you can sing along to your heart’s content. I wouldn’t mind watching this DVD to this day, honestly. Despite the fact that the DVD is marketed to a significantly younger audience, it’s basically a compilation of some of the best Disney songs ever and you can rarely go wrong with a Disney song. Some personal favorites are “Part of Your World” from The Little Mermaid, “A Whole New World” from Aladdin, and “I Won’t Say I’m in Love” from Hercules (yes, I know Megara from Hercules isn’t technically a Disney Princess, but that song is on there and I LOVE IT).
-High School Musical
I’m pretty sure every girl my age has nostalgia for High School Musical. I was a little too young for a lot of the Disney Channel stuff around the same time (Zack and Cody, That’s So Raven, most of Hannah Montana tbh), but my grandma showed me High School Musical because she’s always loved musicals. Ever since then, it’s had a special place in my heart. I guess I’m specifically singling out the first one because it was the first, but truly, this spot belongs to the entire trilogy. Is it cheesy, melodramatic, and cliche? Yes. Is most of the acting mediocre? Yes (although obviously, Zac Efron has improved a ton since this came out). Do I still love it. DUH. My favorite is the second one, and my favorite song from the series is “Bet On It”.
-Shrek
Ironic how the one non-Disney movie I have is actually a parody of classic Disney. Dreamworks movies can be hit-or-miss, but I think we can all agree Shrek is a great, hilarious movie. It takes all the Disney tropes and completely subverts them. The hero isn’t a handsome prince, it’s an ogre. The princess appears to be beautiful at first, but she’s secretly an ogre once night rolls around. The seemingly beautiful, wholesome kingdom is actually full of oppressed fairy tale characters. It’s sort of the middle finger to Disney movies, and although I adore Disney, I can’t help but love Shrek too. Plus the movie spawned tons of memes and made “All Star” by Smash Mouth the Internet’s favorite song. What a movie.
-Tangled
Unlike most of these things, Tangled came out at a later point in my childhood. Most of these things came out when I was in preschool or kindergarten, but I was in third grade when Tangled came out. It still counts, because it’s too fantastic for me to leave it off. A year ago, I said that this was my favorite movie, and it still is. At first I was turned off because the marketing made it seem like a stupid action buddy comedy sort of thing, but my parents surprised me and took me to see it in theatres. I loved it way more than I expected it to. It’s just an incredibly well-rounded film. It has action, romance, humor, compelling characters, plot twists, stunningly beautiful animation, and above all else, heart. As I’ve said before, this is the type of movie where you can tell everyone involved put their heart and soul into it, trying to make it the best it could be. It’s a movie you can watch over and over again and not get sick of. I loved it as a kid, I love it now, and I’ll always love it to death.
-Enchanted
Similar to Shrek, Enchanted subverts the Disney tropes and does it in a funny, inventive way. It takes a really clever premise of “Hey, what if we take your stereotypical over-the-top fairy tale Disney characters and put them in New York City?” and runs with it. Amy Adams is fantastic as Giselle, bringing light and happiness to every scene she’s in. I also love the drastic difference between Prince Edward from the fantasy world and Robert from the real world. Robert is probably my favorite character because he was the first Disney character to ask why everyone’s singing all the time and say “Is getting married to a man you barely know really a good idea?” I also really like how Giselle and Robert develop and change each other as they get to know each other. Not only does Giselle become more realistic and slightly cynical, Robert also becomes more optimistic. I got this movie as an Easter present as a kid and it was one of my favorites. It still is amazing now, to the point where I wish I put it either as an honorable mention or on my top 10 list proper.
TV Shows
-Hi-5
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| Wow, this show looks horrifying in this picture. |
This is definitely the most obscure of the five shows I picked, and you’ve probably never heard of it unless you were an avid watcher of Discovery Kids back in the day. I had to bring it up because I was OBSESSED as a kid. It’s been about ten years since I last watched Hi-5 so my memories are a little fuzzy, but I remember it being about these five people (probably teens/young adults) who sang and danced a lot, and there were bright colors and puppets. The thing I really remember is that I was obsessed with asking people what their favorite this or their favorite that was as a kid, and I asked my brother who his favorite was. His response was “Curtis is my favorite...which one’s Curtis?” He was about three at the time, but we still give him crap for it ten years later.
-Blue’s Clues
I’m guessing a lot of people within my age range have nostalgia for Blue’s Clues. This show was about a guy named Steve (later replaced by his cousin Joe because Steve went to college, causing most of our first heartbreaks) who lives in a house with his dog Blue and a bunch of talking appliances. Everyday, Blue leaves paw prints all over the house so Steve, Joe, and the viewers can figure out what her plans are for the day. I liked this show because they do a lot to get the viewer involved and learning, as opposed to a lot of preschool shows which are mainly just entertainment. I also liked a lot of the songs (especially the planet song- sorry for the bad-quality video). One other thing I think is cool is that they subvert color stereotypes by having the blue dog be a girl while the pink one is a boy! Truly progressive.
-Bear in the Big Blue House
Continuing with the blue theme is Bear and the Big Blue House. I actually wasn’t huge on this show when I was a kid (probably because I was afraid of puppets that weren’t from Sesame Street), but I watched it a lot because my parents liked it for some reason. It’s about a bear who lives in a big blue house with his brightly colored puppet friends, as you can guess. We had a few DVDs for this show that I enjoyed watching, a potty training one and a nighttime one, I think. Those DVDs were downloaded onto the family iPad, along with a bunch of other movies, to watch while we take long car trips. A few years ago, we were coming back from Easter and my brother and I were watching the potty one and we thought it was the funniest thing in the world. Clearly I have a sophisticated sense of humor.
-Sesame Street
Okay, I’m not gonna talk much about Sesame Street because what’s the point? Generation after generation of kids grew up watching Sesame Street, and everybody can name at least five characters. Elmo, Cookie Monster, and Big Bird are pretty much cultural icons at this point. I think it’s probably my favorite preschool show now (not that I watch any currently, of course) because it can actually be pretty clever with the cultural references. I remember thinking this cookie monster Hunger Games parody was the funniest thing ever in middle school. The songs are also really good for a kids’ show, from the classics like “C is for Cookie” and “Rubber Duckie” to the new stuff like this song Bruno Mars did that my youngest brother enjoyed. Sesame Street has also always been very inclusive, talking about serious issues like death, racism, and 9/11 and featuring disabled characters. Thanks, Sesame Street, for positively influencing kids to be good people.
-iCarly
I watched iCarly after all the other shows, but it still was important to my childhood so I couldn’t leave it off. I got into iCarly after my best friend told me it was really funny in second grade. I decided to watch it and liked it immediately. The premise is that Carly, Sam, and Freddie are your average teenagers...except they create and star in iCarly, a hugely popular web show. The actual web show looks pretty dumb nowadays, but the adventures that happen outside of the show are wacky enough to keep me hooked. I actually still watch iCarly quite a bit now because TeenNick plays reruns of it all the time. Even though, in my opinion, it got significantly worse once they promoted the character Gibby from comic-relief fan favorite to a starring role, it’s still a consistently good kids show. It was sort of a gateway drug that led to me getting into other non-preschool Nick shows like Victorious, Big Time Rush, Drake and Josh, and SpongeBob Squarepants.
Books
-The Rainbow Magic series by Daisy Meadows
I’ve said before in some other post that Rainbow Magic was the series that got me into reading. I’m not sure if that’s true because I loved reading picture books even when I was very young, but the Rainbow Magic series had a major impact on me as a kid nonetheless. Pretty much all of the books have the same plot, just with a different fairy: Two girls named Rachel and Kirsty find a fairy, try to rescue the fairy’s magic object from Jack Frost and his goblins, and save the day. However, I was young so I didn’t care much about cliches and adored the series. I think I had 34 of the books and I loved pretending I was like Rachel and Kirsty and was friends with fairies. I distinctly remember playing by a vent in my old house, pretending to save a fairy, and my dad yelling at me saying “The fairy should be smart enough to not go into the vent”.
-The American Girl books (All of them) by a bunch of people
As a child, I always wanted the American Girl dolls, but they were really expensive. I got one of the less expensive baby dolls and a Target knockoff one, but I never got the real deal. As sort of a consolation prize, my parents got me a bunch of the American Girl books. I had a bunch of the more modern ones and the self-help ones (like The Care and Keeping of You), but most of my nostalgia is from the historical ones. I have a bunch of these treasuries which had all of the books for each girl, as well as the holiday one pictured above. My dad would read them with me every night. Even though they were essentially tie-ins for toys, they were legitimately good books and were pretty historically accurate. My favorites were Molly, Samantha, and Felicity.
-The Magic Tree House series by Mary Pope Osborne
I distinctly remember being assigned to read a Magic Tree House book for my reading group in first grade and throwing a tantrum. I think it’s because I was a hipster before I knew what a hipster was, hating the books because they were popular with my class. I ended up really loving the books and I read a ton of them in elementary school. Pretty much all of these books had similar premises: Siblings Jack and Annie go in their tree house, are sent on missions to find something, or complete a task, and have to go back in time to do it. My favorite one was Moonlight on the Magic Flute, where they go meet Mozart. I liked this one because it was about music, which has always been my passion and my favorite thing in the world.
-The Dork Diaries series by Rachel Renee Russell
I could have chosen Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is very similar to Dork Diaries in premise and was another childhood favorite, but I like Dork Diaries more. It’s essentially the girly version of Wimpy Kid, and being female, I naturally enjoyed it and related to it more. Nikki, the main character, has the most vapid and stereotypical-teenage-girl voice ever, but that’s what makes her so endearing. The way she talks and describes things cracks me up. Naturally, going with the whole music theme, my favorite was Tales from a Not-So-Talented Pop Star, where Nikki enters a talent competition. There have actually been, like, ten books published in this series that I haven’t read, but maybe I should?
-The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan
To this day, the Percy Jackson series, as well as its spinoff series Heroes of Olympus, is still my favorite of all time. It’s better than it has any right to be, not just a good kids’ series but a good series period. Like Tangled, it’s just incredibly well-rounded. It’s mostly action-based, but it’s got hilariously funny moments, romance, suspense, tearjerking moments, plot twists, and some of my favorite characters in all of fiction. Percy is one of the best characters I’ve ever come across in anything, being your archetypal kick-butt hero and the son of a Greek god while still being realistically flawed and emotional. The premise is also very clever, centering on the children of Greek and Roman gods and their dangerous adventures. Rick Riordan is not only a great writer, but a truly good person as well. His books are incredibly diverse, including LGBTQ+ characters, people of color, characters with mental disabilities, what have you. He does this because he knows how powerful it can be for a child to see themselves represented in the media. He wants to be a good ally and inspire his readers to be supportive and accepting of people who are different from they are. I can’t respect him enough for that.
Toys
-Webkinz
I’ve talked about my Webkinz obsession in this specific post, and I kind of just want to copy and paste what I said there but I won’t. Anyways, Webkinz are stuffed toys that come with a special code, and you enter the code onto their website so you are able to play with them online. My brother and I were obsessed with Webkinz, and combined I think we had at least 100. We loved playing on the website, but we played with the stuffed animals just as much, if not more. We created a whole world, giving our Webkinz jobs, families, spouses, and extensive backstories. I also loved watching YouTube videos about them, even though my parents told me I was too young for YouTube at the time. Fun fact: Webkinz were actually how I got into YouTube! Now look where we are.
-Barbies
I don’t know which toy had a bigger impact on me as a kid: Webkinz or Barbies. Both toys defined my childhood in every sense of the word. Barbie was everything to me when I was four or five. Going hand in hand with my Disney Princess obsession, I had a bunch of dolls and I loved pretending they were princesses. I loved dressing them up in fancy gowns and making them go to the ball, even though I only had a few male dolls for them to dance with. I also loved a bunch of the direct-to-DVD Barbie movies, specifically 12 Dancing Princesses (which the doll I have pictured is from!), and Diamond Castle. There’s been a recent meme of Bibble, the blue sidekick from Barbie Fairytopia, singing (examples here) and it makes me super nostalgic because I almost completely forgot about Bibble! One last thing about Barbie I have to mention is that Barbie got me into the Internet. I loved borrowing my dad’s laptop to play on the Barbie website and I fully admit that’s how my Internet obsession was born. Ten years later, I’m still addicted to the Internet and I even write a blog on it! Also, shout out to GameKidGame, this website I found that has a ton of my old favorite Barbie games. GameKidGame, you da real MVP.
-Calico Critters
There’s this one toy store I used to go to a lot as a kid, and they mostly had educational stuff for younger kids. We went there one time and I found Calico Critters, these cute little animal figurines. I wanted them so badly and I was obsessed. Eventually, my parents caved and bought me some, and five-year-old me was ecstatic. I think they still sell these, because I’ve seen commercials for them on Nickelodeon. Every time I see those commercials, it’s a huge nostalgia bomb.
-Razor scooter
The Razor scooter is, in my humble opinion, the flyest mode of transportation out there. I kid, I kid. But seriously, I loved my Razor. I think I got it for my birthday one year, and at first I was like, “HMM, WHAT IS THIS?” Once I figured out how to use it, I was obsessed. One of my neighbors had an electric version, which I got to use a few times and loved riding. I really don’t have much to say about my scooter. It’s just that...a scooter.
-Littlest Pet Shop
I’m now starting to realize that little Stellar really loved her cute animal toys, what with Webkinz, Calico Critters, and now Littlest Pet Shops. Littlest Pet Shops are basically plastic animal bobbleheads are shaped like cute animals. Similar to Webkinz, both me and my brother were pretty into these. We had like, an iguana and a turtle that he particularly loved. We named them all and made them have adventures. I had a few Littlest Pet Shop books, too. Finally, I’d like to single out this specific Hideaway Haven game I have pictured. I had this game, and I’m pretty sure it was like a Memory sort of thing. I played it with my family all the time.
Wow, writing this post really took me back. This is basically a crash-course in my childhood, highlighting most of the basics. I’d like to make a sequel at some point, maybe focusing on other shows and especially songs from my childhood. I like writing pretty much all of my posts, but I must say, this was a particularly fun one to write. I’m not sure what I have in store next week. I start school next Tuesday (I cry), so I’m thinking it might be a breakdown of everything that happened. However, my track record of revealing my posts a week prior is kind of horrible, as you can tell. So who really knows what I have in store? All I know is that you can tune in on Wednesday to read it! I’m Stellar in Neverland, and I’ll see you then. Peace!
Stellar
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