10 Hypes That Took Over America in 1993

The Talkboy

Kevin McCallister had one in Home Alone 2, and kids wanted it too: a silver tape recorder that could slow your voice until you sounded like a grown man. The catch was that the Talkboy was only a movie prop when the film came out in 1992. Tiger Electronics made it a real toy for Christmas 1993. The Deluxe Talkboy sold out, and parents called the company looking for one. With the movie on VHS and a Talkboy ad on the tape, kids saw the gadget every time they watched Kevin book a hotel suite.

Free Willy

Free Willy made kids cheer for an orca’s leap to freedom, then left them wondering about the real whale behind the movie. Keiko lived in a small tank at an amusement park in Mexico City, and viewers began calling to ask how they could help him. More than 300,000 people called the number shown at the end of the film. Keiko was eventually flown to a larger seawater tank in Oregon in 1996. For many kids, the movie was their first push to try to change something in the real world.

X-Men: The Animated Series

When X-Men: The Animated Series launched on Fox Kids in 1993, its theme song sent kids running to the television. Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Rogue, Gambit, and Jubilee made up a team of mutants trying to protect a world that hated them. The show let stories stretch across episodes, and its characters argued and sometimes lost. Kids debated who would win in a fight, while X-Men action figures were already waiting on store shelves.

Magic: The Gathering

Math professor Richard Garfield designed Magic: The Gathering, a card game that began spreading through cafeterias, comic shops, and basements in the summer of 1993. Players used creatures, spells, and enchantments to bring an opponent’s life total down to zero. The decks were different because players bought packs, collected cards, and traded for the ones they wanted. A starter deck cost about eight dollars, and the game sold out by October. Wherever two kids had decks, a game could break out, often followed by an argument over the rules.

Doom

Doom arrived on December 10, 1993, and quickly became a problem for university networks. Its first episode was free to try, and so many people tried to download it that the University of Wisconsin network went down twice as the game launched. The game put players on a moon base full of demons, with a shotgun in hand and friends to hunt in multiplayer. Universities banned it, while companies pulled it from office computers. The joke that Doom would cause lost productivity turned out to be a pretty good prediction.

Aladdin on VHS

Disney released Aladdin on home video on October 1, 1993. The film had been a theater hit, with Robin Williams voicing a Genie who talked fast and rattled off impressions. On VHS, it became a family staple. Around 16 million copies sold in three weeks. By December, sales had passed 21 million, making it the best-selling videotape at the time. Disney’s limited-time release helped convince parents to buy the tape before it disappeared, and many kids watched it until the VHS wore thin.

Michael Jordan’s three-peat, and the day he walked away

On June 20, 1993, the Chicago Bulls won their third NBA championship in a row. Michael Jordan was Finals MVP again, and kids across America wanted his shoes and copied his tongue-out dunk on driveway hoops. Then Jordan retired on October 6. He said he wanted to leave before his skills faded, after a summer in which his father had been murdered. The announcement stunned fans. The posters stayed on bedroom walls, but their hero had walked away at the height of his career.

Mortal Kombat

Mortal Kombat came home to consoles in 1993, backed by a $10 million marketing campaign and a launch day called Mortal Monday. The Sega Genesis version kept its blood and fatalities behind a code, while Nintendo’s version toned the violence down. The code became playground knowledge. Parents and politicians took notice. In December, Senator Joe Lieberman held a hearing on violent video games, with Mortal Kombat in the spotlight. The debate helped lead the industry to create the ESRB rating system in 1994, the labels that still appear on game boxes.

Beavis and Butt-Head

Beavis and Butt-Head premiered on MTV on March 8, 1993. Two teenagers on a couch, laughing at music videos and repeating “Cool,” became a hit with kids. Teachers banned the laugh in class, and parents often needed only a few seconds to decide they had seen enough. After a tragic Ohio fire, MTV banned the characters from saying “fire,” removed some episodes from reruns, and moved the show to a later time. Creator Mike Judge rejected the claim that the show was responsible. It kept running, and its mix of controversy and forbidden laughs only made kids more eager to watch.

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park opened on June 11, 1993, and made dinosaurs feel real. Steven Spielberg brought computer animation and giant animatronic creatures together, from the first brachiosaurus reveal to the rippling glass of water that warned the T. rex was near. The film opened with more than $50 million, a record at the time, then became the highest-grossing movie ever made. The merchandise followed: toys, shirts, lunchboxes, sleeping bags, and video games. Kids learned dinosaur names, replayed scenes at recess, and carried the movie into a summer of dino-mania. For some, the craze began in a theater. For others, it came through a friend’s retelling or the toy aisle. Either way, 1993 was the year dinosaurs came back to life.