There is just something about fall that makes me nostalgic anyway, but fall in the 90s was on a completely different level.
I don’t know if it’s because we were kids and everything felt more exciting back then, or because life really was just simpler, but I swear fall used to feel like an actual season.
You went back to school with your brand new school supplies. Eventually the weather started getting cooler. Halloween decorations slowly started showing up. You started thinking about your costume. Halloween came, then Thanksgiving, and THEN it was time to start getting excited about Christmas.
Everything didn’t seem to happen all at once.
And we weren’t watching other people’s perfectly curated fall lives on our phones all day either. We were actually outside jumping in leaves, watching whatever Halloween special happened to be on TV that night, and walking around the neighborhood collecting as much candy as our little plastic pumpkin buckets could possibly hold.
I was thinking about this recently and realized there are SO many little things about fall in the 90s that I had completely forgotten about.
Then, as soon as I remembered one, about ten more came flooding back.
If you grew up in the 90s too, I have a feeling you’re going to remember a lot of these.
1. Those Plastic Halloween Costumes With the Masks
I have to start here because these Halloween costumes were truly something else.
If you know, you know.
You’d get this thin plastic costume with a picture of the character you were supposed to be printed right across the front of it. Because apparently actually looking like the character wasn’t necessary.
Then there was THE MASK.
That hard plastic mask with the tiny eye holes and the little elastic string that was supposed to hold it onto your head.
You couldn’t see.
You couldn’t breathe.
Your face was sweating.
The elastic string was digging into the back of your head.
And you thought you looked AMAZING.
I would love to hand one of these costumes to my kids now and see their reaction.
Actually, I already know what their reaction would be.
Absolutely not.
Meanwhile, we happily wore them for hours.
2. McDonald’s Halloween Buckets
Please tell me I’m not the only person who gets ridiculously nostalgic when I see the old McDonald’s Halloween buckets.
Those things were everywhere.
And they weren’t just Happy Meal containers. Once Halloween rolled around, they became legitimate trick-or-treat buckets.
I don’t remember us having all of these adorable personalized Halloween bags that kids have now. You grabbed a plastic pumpkin bucket and headed out the door.
And after Halloween, those buckets didn’t get thrown away.
Of course not.
They became storage.
Crayons. Barbie clothes. Random Happy Meal toys. Hair stuff. Markers.
Those buckets had a second career after Halloween.
3. The Sears and JCPenney Catalogs
I don’t think our kids will ever understand how exciting a catalog could be.
There was no scrolling through 4,000 costumes online.
You waited for the catalog.
Then you sat there flipping through it over and over and OVER again, studying all of your options.
I could spend forever looking through catalogs as a kid.
And you’d circle the things you wanted like this was some kind of official order being submitted directly to your parents.
Apparently drawing a circle around something meant, “I have selected this. Please purchase it.”
The confidence we had was incredible.
4. Picking Out Brand New School Supplies
I still love school supplies, and I honestly think growing up in the 90s is partly responsible for that.
There was nothing like walking into the store before school started and seeing all of those notebooks, folders, pencils, pencil boxes, and brand new crayons.
A fresh box of crayons was basically perfection.
Every crayon had a point.
None of the wrappers were ripped off.
Nobody had snapped the black one in half yet.
Everything was still possible.
And for about the first week of school, I was absolutely going to be the most organized person who had ever lived.
Obviously.
5. Lisa Frank EVERYTHING
Speaking of school supplies…
Lisa Frank.
If you were a 90s kid, I probably don’t even need to explain this one.
There were neon colors, dolphins, puppies, unicorns, rainbows, tigers, and approximately 700 colors happening on one folder.
Nothing matched.
Everything was bright.
Subtlety was not invited.
And I LOVED it.
We live in a world of beige and neutral everything now, and meanwhile 90s kids were walking into school carrying folders that looked like a rainbow had exploded on them.
Honestly, bring it back.
6. Trapper Keepers
A brand new Trapper Keeper made me feel like I had my entire life together.
Never mind the fact that I was a child and my biggest responsibility was remembering to bring my spelling words home.
That Trapper Keeper meant BUSINESS.
There were folders.
There were pockets.
There was Velcro.
I was organized now.
At least until a few weeks into the school year when there were crumpled worksheets shoved everywhere and I couldn’t find anything.
But those first few days were glorious.
7. The Scholastic Book Fair
Nothing happening during the school day should have been as exciting as the Scholastic Book Fair.
But it was.
You’d walk into the library or whatever room they had transformed into the book fair, and suddenly school didn’t feel like school anymore.
There were books everywhere, obviously, but let’s be honest.
Half the excitement was all the other stuff.
The posters.
The pencils.
The bookmarks.
The weird erasers.
All of the tiny things strategically placed where children would immediately decide they absolutely could not live without them.
And then you’d go home with that little paper catalog and start circling things.
Apparently circling things in catalogs was a major part of childhood in the 90s.
8. Goosebumps Books
Fall was MADE for Goosebumps.
I can still picture those covers.
They were creepy and colorful and just scary enough to make you desperately want to know what happened inside.
And there were so many of them.
Seeing a whole shelf of Goosebumps books at the library was basically the 90s kid version of having unlimited entertainment.
No Kindle.
No tablet.
No downloading a book in ten seconds.
You had to actually get your hands on the book you wanted.
Which somehow made finally getting it even better.
9. Are You Afraid of the Dark?
Why were we voluntarily terrifying ourselves?
Seriously.
I remember watching scary shows as a kid and then being completely freaked out afterward.
Did that stop me from watching again?
Of course not.
There was something about Are You Afraid of the Dark? that was PERFECT for fall.
The campfire.
The creepy stories.
That opening.
Even now, anything that reminds me of it immediately takes me back to being a kid.
Although I’m pretty sure if I watched some of those episodes again now, I’d wonder why anyone thought, “Yes, this is perfect programming for children.”
The 90s were wild.
10. TGIF on Friday Nights
Friday nights were an EVENT.
There was no sitting there scrolling through Netflix for 45 minutes because nobody could decide what to watch.
You knew what was coming on.
You knew what time it started.
And if you missed it, that was your problem.
There was something so exciting about getting home from school on a Friday knowing you didn’t have to go back for TWO WHOLE DAYS.
Then Friday night came, you had your snacks, and you watched TGIF.
Boy Meets World.
Family Matters.
Full House.
Sabrina the Teenage Witch.
Just hearing those names makes me want to be sitting on the floor in front of one of those giant wooden entertainment centers again.
11. Halloween Episodes of Our Favorite Shows
I LOVED when regular TV shows did Halloween episodes.
Because you couldn’t just search for “Halloween episodes” and watch 25 of them whenever you wanted.
You had to catch them when they aired.
And when October rolled around, suddenly all of your favorite shows started having Halloween storylines.
Everyone was wearing costumes.
The houses were decorated.
Something spooky was happening.
It made Halloween feel like an entire season instead of just one night.
And if you missed the episode?
Too bad.
Maybe you’d catch a rerun.
Maybe you’d see it next year.
Maybe it was simply gone forever.
Kids today will never know this level of television-related stress.
12. Hocus Pocus
I don’t think I could write about 90s fall nostalgia without mentioning Hocus Pocus.
It just FEELS like Halloween.
And again, part of the fun was that you couldn’t watch it whenever you felt like it.
You waited for Halloween movies to start showing up on TV.
When something you loved finally came on, you watched it.
Commercials and all.
And somehow the commercials didn’t even ruin it.
They gave you enough time to sprint to the kitchen for a snack and yell at everyone that the movie was coming back on.
13. Halloweentown and Disney Halloween Movies
And then there was Disney.
Halloweentown came out toward the end of the 90s, and it basically became instant required Halloween viewing.
I think that’s part of what made seasonal movies feel so special back then.
We didn’t have access to EVERYTHING all the time.
There were certain movies and shows that you associated with a particular time of year because that’s when you actually got to see them.
Waiting for something made it exciting.
Imagine that.
14. School Halloween Parties
Do schools even do Halloween parties like they used to?
Because these were a BIG DEAL.
You’d go to school that morning knowing that eventually normal school was going to stop and the good part of the day was going to begin.
The cupcakes would appear.
The juice boxes would come out.
Somebody’s mom would arrive carrying approximately 900 napkins with pumpkins printed on them.
There would be candy and little plastic spider rings and treats everywhere.
And absolutely nobody was thinking about math anymore.
This was basically our Super Bowl.
15. Homemade Treats at School
This one really makes me realize how different things are now.
People brought homemade food to school.
All the time.
Somebody’s mom made cupcakes? Bring them in.
Rice Krispie treats? Sure.
Cookies? Absolutely.
Popcorn stuffed inside a clear plastic glove with candy corn fingernails?
Obviously.
We didn’t need ingredient labels and individually sealed packages and three forms of identification from whoever baked the cookies.
Somebody’s mom made them.
Good enough for us.
Looking back, I’m not entirely sure how we all survived the 90s, but we did.
16. Halloween Parades at School
If your elementary school had a Halloween parade, you KNOW how exciting this was.
Everybody got into their costumes and walked around the school while the parents watched.
It was your moment.
You got to see everybody else’s costumes.
Everybody got to see yours.
And there were always about 15 kids dressed as whatever character happened to be insanely popular that year.
Power Rangers had a STRONG showing in the 90s.
17. Trick-or-Treating for HOURS
Trick-or-treating wasn’t a quick activity.
We were out there to accomplish something.
You started when it was getting dark and kept going until your feet hurt, your bucket was heavy, or your parents finally decided they were DONE.
And we walked.
House after house after house.
If you filled your little pumpkin bucket, that didn’t necessarily mean you were finished.
You dumped that candy somewhere and KEPT GOING.
We took Halloween candy collection very seriously.
18. The Houses With Full-Size Candy Bars
There was always a rumor.
“There’s a house over on THAT street giving out full-size candy bars.”
Suddenly, nothing else mattered.
We needed to find that house.
And if the rumor was actually true?
JACKPOT.
Getting a full-size candy bar on Halloween felt like someone had handed you a $100 bill.
You remembered that house, too.
Next year?
We knew exactly where we were going.
19. Dumping Your Candy on the Floor
This might have been my favorite part of the entire night.
You’d get home, dump ALL of your candy onto the floor, and see what you had.
This was when the serious business started.
You had your good candy.
Your okay candy.
Your candy you were willing to trade.
And then there was the disappointing stuff.
Raisins?
Why.
An apple?
Please explain yourself.
Meanwhile, if you had siblings, negotiations started immediately.
I’ll give you two of these for one of those.
Absolutely not.
Throw in a Reese’s.
Halloween turned us into tiny business executives.
20. Carving Pumpkins With Those Tiny Orange Tools
Every year we somehow believed pumpkin carving was going to be a nice, simple activity.
Then you cut the top off and remembered the inside of a pumpkin existed.
So much goo.
So many seeds.
And if you were using one of those pumpkin carving kits, you had that tiny orange plastic saw that looked like it should absolutely not be capable of cutting through a pumpkin.
Yet somehow, eventually, it did.
Of course, the pumpkin almost never looked like the picture.
One eye was bigger than the other.
A tooth accidentally fell off.
Something cracked.
But then you put a candle inside, turned off the lights, and suddenly it looked amazing anyway.
21. Fake Spiderwebs EVERYWHERE
You couldn’t decorate for Halloween in the 90s without fake spiderwebs.
It was apparently against the rules.
You stretched that stuff across bushes, railings, windows, porches, and anything else that didn’t move.
And the more stretched out and stringy it got, the better.
Then there were plastic spiders stuck inside.
Maybe a skeleton.
Maybe a witch hanging somewhere.
Halloween decorations were allowed to just be Halloween decorations.
Nobody was worried about whether their skeleton coordinated with their throw pillows.
I kind of miss that.
22. That First Actually Cold Morning
This was one of my FAVORITE parts of fall.
You’d been back in school for a while, but it still didn’t really feel like fall.
Then one morning you’d walk outside and…
COLD.
Finally.
You could wear the new sweatshirt or jacket you’d been waiting to wear.
There was that crisp smell outside.
The leaves were changing if you lived somewhere that actually had seasons.
It just felt different.
And if you grew up somewhere warmer, that first cool morning was even more exciting because you knew it might be hot again by lunchtime.
You took what you could get.
23. Jumping in Giant Piles of Leaves
If you grew up somewhere with lots of leaves, you know exactly where this is going.
Raking leaves wasn’t work.
It was preparation.
You needed to build the BIGGEST pile possible.
Then you’d back up, run as fast as you could, and launch yourself directly into it.
And immediately destroy all of the work you just did.
So naturally, you raked them up again.
And jumped again.
And did this until an adult finally decided they actually wanted the leaves cleaned up.
No bounce houses.
No elaborate backyard toys required.
Apparently all we needed was a pile of dead leaves.
24. Making Handprint Turkeys
The second Halloween ended, elementary schools everywhere apparently received the same memo.
It was time to make turkeys out of our hands.
Every single year.
Trace your hand.
Your thumb is the turkey’s head.
Your fingers are the feathers.
Color it.
Add a little beak.
Done.
We were artists.
And our parents had to act surprised and delighted every November when we came home with yet another piece of artwork created from the exact same hand we’d used the year before.
Honestly, I get it now.
When your kids make you something, you keep it.
So there are probably boxes all over America right now containing 30-year-old construction paper turkeys.
25. Fall Actually Felt Like It Lasted
This is probably the thing I miss most.
Fall felt LONG.
Not in a bad way.
It felt like we actually had time to enjoy it.
Going back to school was its own thing.
Then eventually Halloween started getting closer.
You thought about costumes.
You watched Halloween shows.
You carved pumpkins.
You went trick-or-treating.
THEN Halloween was over.
Then came Thanksgiving.
And only after all of that did Christmas really start taking over.
Now it feels like everything happens at the same time.
Fall decorations come out while it’s still summer. Christmas stuff is in stores before Halloween. We’re constantly thinking three holidays ahead.
I know some of that is probably just adulthood.
When you’re a kid, three weeks can feel like three months.
But I also think life really did move a little slower.
We weren’t constantly being shown what came next.
We were just enjoying what was happening right then.
And I think that’s what I miss when I think about fall in the 90s.
Fall in the 90s Really Was Different
I know every generation looks back at their childhood and thinks they grew up during the best time.
But I’m still going to say it.
Being a kid in the 90s was pretty great.
Especially in the fall.
We didn’t need an elaborate fall bucket list.
Nobody was worried about creating the perfect pumpkin patch picture for social media.
We didn’t have to document every single thing we did.
Sometimes a great October Saturday meant watching cartoons in the morning, playing outside all afternoon, eating something completely questionable for dinner, and watching a Halloween movie that night.
Halloween didn’t need to be Pinterest perfect.
Our costumes were sometimes terrible.
Our pumpkins were crooked.
Our school party cupcakes came from somebody’s kitchen.
Our trick-or-treat buckets were from McDonald’s.
And we had the BEST time.
Maybe that’s what makes me so nostalgic for it.
It wasn’t perfect.
It wasn’t supposed to be.
We were just kids, and fall felt magical because we were actually living it instead of trying to make it look magical.
And honestly?
I’d go back for one more 90s October in a heartbeat.
