knmajorblogs:

discoursedrome:

kontextmaschine:

The Burger King Kids Club, representing all the ‘90s identities:

Black
Hispanic
Nerd
Tomboy
Disabled
Stacy
Geek
Dog

Technically I think the short butchy-looking guy is the nerd and the guy with the backwards cap is a “coolkid”, which is a distinct genus. This may seem like splitting hairs, but it’s important that we recognize the cultural distinctiveness of coolkids in order to honour their sacrifices during the Cola Wars.

The coolkid was a kind of cyber-Fonz, a “women want him, men want to be him” archetype as targeted toward twelve-year-old dorks with chunky white sneakers. It was a laboratory-designed hybrid of nerd and greaser engineered to target the market sector of the former using the charisma and popularity of the latter. Toward the late 90s there was some further crossbreeding with rappers in order to counteract the diminishing relevance of greasers, but in the early 90s that was still too threatening for mainstream white suburbanites with money.

Anyhow, I went looking for some more vintage examples but it’s surprisingly hard to find ones that aren’t later parodies so I’ll just link this fucker.

Zack the Lego Maniac is, for me, the prototypical coolkid character