1999

I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin'
Could've sworn it was Judgement Day
--Prince, "1999"

Makes me wonder if Prince could predict the future.  But either way, most of y'all reading this probably remember the turn of the millennium and the year that led into it, the glorious 1999.  It was the era of fads like Beanie Babies and Pokemon cards, of silly pop music that made me rock my hips and whoop like an idiot, of early online shorts like Hamster Dance and Combo #5, of nitwits that wanted to survive the grid crash that Y2K would supposedly bring.  Kirby, an adorable black and white papillon, won the Westminster Dog Show that year.  Nicole Johnson won the Miss America pageant while wearing an insulin pump, the first Miss America contestant to do so.  The New York Yankees won the World Series, NASCAR legend Jeff Gordon won the Daytona 500, and the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl, with John Elway (whom my dad hated) being named MVP.  Most of that was a world away from me, of course; indeed, the only one I remember is Kirby, and how he was small enuff to sit in the trophy he'd won.  The rest of it I had to look up, LOL!  As for me myself, I was eleven for most of the year and twelve for the last three months, with thick glasses, shaggy brown hair that had spitefully developed some natural curl, and a pudgy build.  My favorite Beanie Baby was and always will be Valentino, my favorite boy band was and always will be the Backstreet Boys, my favorite American Girl doll was Felicity, my favorite athletes were Mark McGuire and Kurt Warner, and my favorite TV show was Trauma:  Life in the E.R., a somewhat graphic medical program (my favorite cartoon was the more kid-appropriate Rugrats).  I played games like Math Blasters and Reader Rabbit on the old-school desktop computers like this fossil (floppy-disk computers were also still fairly common), hunted real fossils in the gravel pits during recess, and slow-danced with my best friend to Robbie Williams' appropriately-titled "Millennium."  I don't like that song as much as I used to, but at the time it summed up my opinions on what life was like at the time.  As Val from "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" put it,

Life is pretty,

Life is fun,

I am all,

And all is one!

Okay, life wasn't all fun, for me or for other folks.  That was the year that I started getting bullied by multiple parties for my weight and my glasses.  Nope, it sure as hell wasn't Barbie that gave me issues about my body, and Barbie's expanding frame has done nothing to change my opinions about my own waistline!  The whole country also had tornadoes coming out its ears that year, with two outbreaks in the same week of January scaring the living Jesus out of my family (Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City also took it on the chin that season).  In April I broke my arm trying to catch tadpoles at a local pond, and as a result I fell behind in my schoolwork for the first time (but not the last).  In June serial killer Angel Maturino Resendiz passed through my neck of the woods and killed two in Gorham, Illinois.  Resendiz's presence in the area was important because he travelled by freight train and killed his victims near the tracks.  Guess what runs right through my hometown?  A major Union Pacific line, and my house was two blocks from it.  I don't know for sure if our line was the one Resendiz rode while migrating from Texas to Illinois, but it's possible that he came through here.  Resendiz was apprehended in July, but for awhile the whole town was leery of the freight trains and what (or who) they could potentially be carrying.  It was a decidedly interesting year.

Alrighty, y'all probably know where I'm going with this, as American Girls' new 90's twins Isabelle and Nicki Hoffman were released...today?  Yesterday?  Recently!  I'll go with recently.  Now that they're officially a thing I can share images without getting my content flagged.  Here's the dolls themselves; Isabelle is the blonde and Nicki has lowlights, and they both have the bitchy-looking eyebrows that all the new dolls have.  The wiki has conflicting reports about their eye color, but in the group pic both girls have blue eyes.  Notice that Nicki has a sheet of stick-on Grin Pins, just like the old American Girls of Today used to have.

Good night nurse, couldn't AG have picked different names for these two???  Nicki and Isabel are ten years old and represent the year 1999, so that would make their birth year 1989.  In 1989 the two most popular girl names were Jessica and Ashley, and Isabel/Isabelle didn't even make the top hundred for the year (Nicole, Nicki's possible full name, got twelfth).  Modern-day children won't remember Nicki Fleming or Isabelle Palmer, but an old biddy like me does!  Anyway, Nicki and Isabel are both Jewish, though like a great many millennial Jews they probably aren't that devout.  Nicki is a skater girl and something of a tomboy, while Isabel prefers tennis and more "girly" crap.  Ooo, tennis!  That's not a sport that any historical has played yet, or any Girl of the Year either, for that matter.  Their skin appears to be fair, I'm told their eyes are the old-style laser green (YAY!!!), and they have the Josefina mold that every canonical Jewish girl has had so far except for Lindsey (EDIT 3/1/2023:  These two actually have the Joss mold, and Isabel does indeed have the old green eyes).  So these two are cute, though they're kinda stealing Kavi's thunder.  Neither of them will likely be coming home with me anytime soon, but their accessories are another story entirely.  Lindsey Bergman's year was actually 2001, but...well, so what?  First I've gotta find Lindsey; she and Zoe are currently MIA in storage somewhere.

Most of the items that I love are Nicki's, since she and I were both tomboys in our youth.  To my delight, one of the items is a Book It! set, complete with badge and certificate for a free personal pan pizza.  Oh, and the pizza itself.

I kid y'all not, nothing could get me reading like the promise of a personal pan pizza and a sticker for my Book It! badge.  I still have my old Book It! badges, dating clean back to 1994.  I was a slow reader so I rarely completed my badges (they all had five slots for stickers), but oh man, was it fun to wear them!  Oh, this whole accessory set takes me back, as those little coupons meant pizza for the whole family; when I got my little pizza, Daddy would order a big one for the rest of us.  If I was still hungry (at the time I rarely was) then I could share the big pizza.  Back in those days a personal pan pizza was enuff for me.  Ah, those were the days, when I wasn't a glutton and didn't weigh what I do.

Nicki's bedding makes me giggle, largely because of the alien pillow.

My parents were fond of The X-Files when my sister and I were little.  We kids were too young to get much out of the program, but my sister was TERRIFIED of the opening music!  She'd whimper and hold her ears while Daddy and I teased her and Mama razzed us for teasing her.  I think that was the year that Daddy found a small alien doll and tossed it in Sister's Christmas stocking, to the amusement of all except her (yep, even Mama laughed at that one).  The alien doll was your stereotypical alien with the huge, slanted eyes, green coloration, and oversized, somewhat ovoid head.  As a result I can't ever look at aliens like that without having a giggle.  The bedding set is definitely Lindsey's speed, so that's another must-have for her.  It should be no surprise that I'm now a small-time fan of Mark Snow's music, LOL.  

Since they're new Nicki and Isabel don't have much yet, but Nicki does have an inflatable chair that (unsurprisingly) I like.

When I was Nicki's age one could collect the backs of those small-size potato chip bags and redeem them for various prizes, and the item I wanted was a neon green inflatable chair, kinda like what Nicki has.  I never did get the thing, and I doubt it would've lasted long in my house anyway (even then we had cats galore), but I can live through whoever gets this little chair...I said Lindsey, didn't I?  Anyway, Nicki also has the old Grin Pin storage banner, something that I...never really wanted, actually!  I had a nice jewelry box to store my Grin Pins and my other baubles, but I definitely will not pooh-pooh Nicki's decision to have the banner.  Indeed, online scuttlebutt insinuates that despite being the tomboy Nicki is the American Girl fan of the family...or maybe both girls like them.  Their computer has some AG-themed stickers, and y'all know darn good and well that both girls will be using that computer.  Isabel's bedroom accessories also include a miniature American Girl Magazine.  Awww heck, I may as well show y'all that set, because look what else Isabel has.

SHE'S GOT A TAMAGOTCHI!!!  See the little blue thing, between the diary and the daisy pillow?  My sister and I both had one of those.  No, take that back, we had a spin-off called Nano, and they were...well, they were fun but they were also a distraction.  We weren't allowed to take them to school, so Daddy had to take care of them while we were gone.  Then we'd have to wake up early to feed these critters, and clean them, and play with them...LOL, they were a handful, but they were fun.  I remember when Sister's pet died the screen said "Bye-bye!  I love you!"  I admit that I had to wipe my eyes when that happened.  The phrase "I love you" has that impact on me when it's sincere, even if it comes from a goofy little toy.  At least I knew what to expect when my pet died!  Didn't stop me from crying a little (again), but I at least knew what to expect.

At the end of Courtney's review a few years back I said that when AG released a 90's-era doll I'd feel old.  Well, Nicki and Isabelle are here, and...I don't feel old!  I feel happy, happy to see that some of the things I loved from childhood are being remembered, and happy at the possibility of owning these items that pay tribute to kid life in the millennial stage.  I do have to wonder, though:  is twenty years too recent to be considered historical???  Yeah, 1999 was twenty years and some change ago, and for me those two decades seem like the blink of an eye.  But then again, it also sometimes seems like an eon ago.  Part of me wonders if Nicki and Isabel will ever have a Furby, or a few Beanie Babies in their collections?  As I said in the intro Beanie Babies were big in 1999, and Furby was too.  LOL, I wanted a Furby when I was a kid, but my parents politely but firmly said "NO."  Furby was expensive, and apparently he didn't have an off switch so he wouldn't shut up.  Like, ever.  And just so y'all know, my family likes its sleep.  Since my mom taught we had to all get up ridiculously early, so a toy that had no off switch and talked well into the night was a no-no.  Apparently I didn't miss out on anything by not having one, because a couple'a my friends did and they reported long nights with no sleep at the hands of this cute little gremlin.  But just the same, it might be a cute accessory for...hmmm, if Isabel has the Tamagotchi then she's probably the nurturing type, so she'd likely have the Furby.  But Furby or no, I presume that American Girl was hoping to trigger nostalgia among a wave of aging millennials, and if I presume correctly then it worked on me.  I don't love the dolls so much, but I do love their collections (especially Nicki's).  This gives me an opportunity to flesh out Lindsey's collection a little...once I grub Lindsey out of storage.

Best wishes,
RagingMoon1987