Before Mac Arthur, before Greenbrier, before Lynnhaven, there was Pembroke Mall. And inside Pembroke was our very own Orange Julius! Does anyone know what an Orange Julius is, and why in God's name you would want to order a hamburger from something called Orange Julius?

According to Wikipedia, an Orange Julius is a mixture of orange juice, powdered milk, egg whites, and crushed ice. Way to take advantage of the 80's raw-egg-white-drinking-to-build-protein craze.

This awesome pen set is available at made-in-china.com and is sure to enliven your AP Euro notes.

I don't know who came up with the idea of colored / flavored sugar in a tube to be consumed straight-up, but he clearly had world domination in mind. Pixy Stix controlled a large portion of the our middle school behavior, between hyping us up and causing us to spend time scraping up enough change to buy more.


I suppose that they had different flavors, although it was hard to tell the difference once your mouth was coated with the powdery stuff. I have to admit, though – the purple ones were not my favorite. For those of us who liked things sour, colorful, and/or cheap, there were those neon ones from the Dollar tree. How annoying was it when neither end would open up all the way or when it was humid outside and it all got stuck together?


Of course, the texture of the original Pixy Stix lended themselves quite well to being snorted. I'm not really sure that we were trying to imitate doing drugs so much as we were fascinated by the idea of a quick delivery system. It was also unbelievably entertaining to be out trick-or-treating and to hear somebody say “whoa, my snot is blue!”


Ah, pure sugar. It's too bad that we refine our tastes as we grow older.

(photos via copyrighteous, flickr x 3)

According to Wikipedia, pogs originated in Hawaii, where the bottle caps of a Passionfruit, Orange, and Guava drink were used to play a game. It then made its way to the continental states where, in the mid-90s, it became one of the most memorable fads of my childhood.

I was constantly begging my dad to take me to the local comic shop so I could pick out the latest pogs I wanted. I had some really awesome metallic ones for a while, but some jerk kid stole them out of my desk. Eventually I started collecting sets of pogs: Peanuts, presidents, states, etc. That went over a whole lot better with my dad, anyway – much more female-appropriate than 8-balls and skulls.

Many a free afternoon was spent making stacks and smacking them down with my lucky slammer of the moment. I only played for keeps when it was a kid (usually a boy) I didn't like; otherwise, it was just friendly matches. I was good at making the boys cry, though, let me tell you!

These days, all of my sweet pogs and slammers live in their green and black tubes, probably in my grandparents' place in Flushing. Do you still have yours? Care to join me in a game?


(photos from Campaign Coalition and bearsilber's flickr)

Ah, the taste of a radioactive-green citrus soda. We all believed that it had more caffeine than any other soda and the fact that our parents hated it - well, that just made us love it even more.

For me and my nerdy KLMS friends, it spawned our version of a margarita: Surge with a healthy dollop of lime sherbet. Oh yes.

Sadly, now that we're adults, we know that it contains less caffeine than Mountain Dew and thus was not pulled for any controversial reason. It was all about the sales. It always was.

(Wikipedia)

Friendship bracelets. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

First came the trip to Michaels for the following supplies:

You probably taped the knotted end of your newest project to the underside of your desk, to be worked on whenever the teacher wasn't looking. If you were really seriously anal retentive like me, you had a clipboard. After some nimble finger work, you'd end up feeling like you accomplished something and were ready to share it with the world.


Finished product, ready for your BFF of the week. (final photo from wikiHow; all others from Joann product pages)

Sanrio tins were all the rage in 1996. Where I went to middle school, in Chesapeake, there was a very small Filipino population, so we banded together in the only way we knew how: by not telling the white girls where to buy Sanrio. Oh, they would beg. "Pleeeease tell us where you bought your purse!" But no, I had been sworn to secrecy by my older sister and my Filipino friends. They would have to be happy with their Girl Scout uniforms and Baptist church youth group meetings. They may have had the collective wealth of white America at their backs, but I, I had my Sanrio tin. "Vivian, that is so racist." Yes, we were incredibly racist.

(Image via Hello Kitty Junkie)