The Cultural Significance of Snick

Ask any 20-something. You meet someone at a party, the ultimate ice breaker, or inevitable topic of conversation will be early ‘90’s Nickelodeon programming. Specifically, Snick. Saturday nights, we all spent our childhoods enraptured in front of a screen that played two hour blocks of awesomeness. Certainly, Nick Toons also played a part in raising us, we all ate dinner in front of Doug and Rugrats. But Snick was cool, and everyone wanted their very own big orange couch.

It’s somewhat sad, on a level, that we relate to each other through television rather than some other culturally significant happening. Other generations don’t bond over H.R. Puffinstuf or Banana Splits the way we wax on about Clarissa, how she explained it all, how cool her room was, or how great it was when they played that sound effect when Sam put the ladder on her window. Other generations don’t smile softly to themselves when they think about sketch shows, but ours will when they reflect on All That. Remember the girl that played Ross Perot? Or the “li-bary, NO NOISE!” skit? Any young adult today can talk to any other young adult and ask, “Didn’t you always want to be a member of the Midnight Society?” and be sure of an enthusiastic response.

But what is it about these seemingly silly shows that makes us filled with candy-coated nostalgia? Some would argue that television played a larger part in raising our generation than any before it, and that as such we developed the kind of relationship with it that one might have with a real person. It’s true that TV has only gained dominance in our households since its inception. It’s true it’s often used as a baby sitter. Perhaps, though, what made Nickelodeon so significant was that it was the first network for kids, just as everyone was beginning to get cable. Sure, other networks had shows for kids, but Nick was specifically, very cleverly targeted towards kids and promoted kid-power. They “slimed” adults with green goo, as if to show us they as a network were on our side. They set trends, everyone wanted some Gak. Nick became our friend, something comforting and reliable as our worlds became more complicated. They knew we would all be home Saturday night, waiting to see Alex Mack turn into a puddle. Oh, Alex. You had us from the moment you were hit by a truck.

Everyone thinks the generation they grew up in is more innocent than the one proceeding it, mostly because when they were children, everything was uncomplicated. The ‘50’s lived through the Bomb scare, the ‘60’s through incredible turbulence at every turn, the ‘70’s had crisis after crisis, and the ‘80’s had Reagan. No generation lived without a greater “problem.” What the greater problem was in the ‘90’s is up for debate, what isn’t is that the world grew darker and more complicated as the years wore on. We are referred to at different times as the Technology Generation or the 9/11 Generation. Those are things that define our era. And what do we have to hold on to that takes us back to a time when things were simple? When you could sing along to the sardonic tunes of Ren & Stimpy, when you could laugh at the dad in the motorized armchair on Roundhouse? We have Snick, a collective part of our childhoods that will forever bond us. We are the Nickelodeon Generation.