The '90s Are Totally Back

From the return of scrunchies to an attempted Saved by the Bell reunion, there’s no doubt about it: The ’90s are back in a big way. The New Kids on the Block and Backstreet Boys have teamed up, Pop-Up Video is returning, and Nickelodeon is bringing back a whole slew of shows including Clarissa Explains It All and Doug. Why now? “It takes 15 or 20 years for something to seem cool again,” writes Claire Suddath in Time. But there’s something different about this latest retro craze.

Teenagers wearing ‘60s outfits is one thing. But this new wave of nostalgia is “hitting the very people who lived through it the first time,” Suddath notes. “The generation who grew up with these old Nickelodeon shows are the exact same people who asked us to bring them back,” says a Nickelodeon rep; millions of fans clamored for the old shows on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. But we can’t really recreate the decade, Suddath writes, because we don't want to give up the conveniences and advances of modern life. Instead, we’ll “pick and choose our pop culture mementos and toss the rest. I will watch Clarissa but I will never wear another scrunchie.” (More 1990s stories.)