Bart Simpson, Ninja Turtles, Barbie, strange contortionist dogs, this parade had it all!
Reacting to the 1990 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Bart Simpson, Ninja Turtles, Barbie, strange contortionist dogs, this parade had it all!
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I went to a couple with my family in my early teens (so mid 90’s). I just remember it being rather cold, unpleasant, and difficult to see… of course, I was like 14 at the time, so I was likely bitter and jaded towards pretty much anything I attended with my family around that stage of my life. I do remember I enjoyed getting breakfast at the two floor McDonald’s at Time Square. It’s unfortunate really, as looking back in retrospect, I realize that had I been a little older, OR a little younger, I probably really would have enjoyed it… but being a 14 year old ne’er-do-well, the chances of me liking anything were slim to none. Also, how are you not more familiar with who Kid n’ Play are?!? They had their own cartoon even! I mean, I suppose it really isn’t YOUR fault, but it’s another typical story of a privileged, entitled white youth growing up completely oblivious to a musical act that was integral to the black experience in this country in the early 90’s. Okay… maybe not “integral to”… What’s that phrase I was thinking of… “ancillary to!” That’s it! Kid n’ Play were ancillary to the black experience in this country in the early 1990’s! Still though… I would expect you to be a little more well versed in multicultural icons of the early 1990’s.
As an unrelated aside, while I didn’t attend the 1990 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in person, I definitely watched it on TV, as I have vivid memories of the the Turtles and their bizarre, futuristic, shiny, silver, phallic rocket car. Wow. Looking back in hindsight, 1990 was a great year to a be alive. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were coming out of their shells, after their big screen debut grossed more than any other independent film at the time (a record it would hold until being unceremoniously dethroned by The Blair Witch in 1999,) The Simpsons were embarking on their first two seasons of what would go on to become one of the greatest television shows of all time (for the next decade at least, until their quality plummeted faster than Channel Awesome’s viewership numbers following the Change the Channel movement.) The Ultimate Warrior was the undisputed WWF Champion, having decimated the Immortal Hulk Hogan in the Ultimate Challenge at Wrestlemania VI back on April 1st, and would remain undefeated for the rest of 1990. While it was clearly destined for an untimely demise somewhere on the horizon, McDonald’s continued it’s Pizza experiment, serving full sized pizzas after 4:00 throughout the year of 1990, the perfect post-TNMT Movie meal. Kool-aid Points were still valid and could be traded in for a variety of fabulous prizes. Lego had just introduced the red, black, and translucent neon green space sub-theme, M-Tron, with real working Magnets. Finally, a little film called Home Alone would change the way people thought about home defense systems. Yes, 1990 was truly a magical year.
Final moment: Those are sousaphones, not Tubas.
I typically tune in and out of the Thanksgiving Day Parades, but I did see that Tiny Toon Adventures float/show thing in 1990; I was channel surfing and I landed on it. There was no real reason for it to be there except that Tiny Toons debuted that year; WB just wanted to promote it. I remember another year they did a similar thing for Taz-Mania.
Phelan already covered TMNT’s Comin’ Out of Their Shells extensively, so no need for me to quip on it, except to say when I saw this, I distinctly remember spotting how the Turtles didn’t have shells here. To borrow a joke, I guess they came out of them.