1.
Tickle Me Elmo was almost Tickle Me Taz — as in the Tasmanian Devil from Looney Tunes. The creators of Tickle Me Elmo, Greg Hyman and Ron Dubren, initially created a chimp that laughed as a prototype toy for Tyco and thought it would make a great Elmo toy. Tyco liked the idea of the toy. However, they didn’t have the rights to make Sesame Street plush toys (only plastic toys), but they did have the rights to make Looney Tune plush toys and thought Taz would work great for it.
2.
The Spice Girls did not come up with their nicknames. It was actually a magazine editor and his staff who came up with them as part of a feature they were running on the group.
3.
TRL was actually a combination of two shows that had run in the summer of ’98: Total Request and The Carson Daly Show.
4.
Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis paid for two Forrest Gump scenes (one was the scene where Forrest runs across the US) to be filmed out of their own pockets. According to Hanks, Paramount refused to increase the film’s budget, so he and Zemeckis agreed to pay for the scenes in return for a larger percentage of the film’s box office gross.
5.
It was shooting Harriet the Spy that led Rosie O’Donnell to create The Rosie O’Donnell Show — but it was actually more out of necessity. The film was shot in Toronto and had long hours. At the end of the shooting days, Rosie noticed that her infant son, Parker, was more attached to their housekeeper. This made her realize she needed a New York–based job with shorter hours in order to spend more time with him.
6.
The Return of Jafar is the reason Disney made so many direct-to-video sequels. It was the second animated sequel Disney ever made and the first to be released just on home video. It was also an incredible success, costing just $5 million to make and grossing $120 million in sales. This led to Disney making lots of direct-to-video sequels for the next decade-plus.
7.
Robin Williams got into a huge fight with Disney shortly after the release of Aladdin. The source of the argument came from him taking a huge pay cut in order to voice the Genie (which he did because he wanted to do it for his kids). The one thing he asked for in return was that his voice not be used for merchandising products or marketing. Disney agreed but then realized that the Genie was really the star of the movie, and ended up using his voice for both of those things.
8.
“Believe” is not only one of the most iconic songs of the ’90s, but also one that would change music forever. However, Cher wasn’t interested in doing a dance song. Still, Rob Dickins, who was the then-president of her label, Warner Music U.K., felt that since her last album (which was rock ballads) had been a disappointment, she should focus on her gay audience and told her to do a dance album. Dickins then reached out to songwriter Brian Higgins to submit songs for a Cher dance album, and “Believe” was among one of the songs he sent in.
9.
“Don’t Turn Around” was a huge hit for Ace of Base in 1994 — when it peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. But the song is actually a cover of a Tina Turner B-side.
10.
The original Polly Pockets were tiny because Chris Wiggs, who created the toy for his daughter, used a makeup powder compact to create a portable dollhouse for his daughter.
11.
Sony originally developed PlayStation as a CD-ROM add-on to Super Nintendo. It was actually called Play Station (two words instead of one) and had a port for SNES cartridge games and a CD-ROM drive for Sony games.
12.
One of the biggest things about The Phantom Menace (I mean, of course, aside from being the first new Star Wars film in 16 years) was that it marked the return of George Lucas as the director — which is something he hadn’t done since the original film, A New Hope. However, Lucas had some doubts about returning to the director’s chair, so he asked Steven Spielberg, Robert Zemeckis, and Ron Howard to see if they would want to direct it.
13.
“…Baby One More Time” has the somewhat confusing “Hit me, baby, one more time” lyrics. Well, that was actually a mistake. The Swedish songwriters of the song, Max Martin and Rami Yacoub, thought that “hit” me was brand new American slang for “call” (as is in “call me on the phone”). So, Britney is actually singing about begging her ex-boyfriend to call her on the phone.
14.
RuPaul met Nirvana for the first time at the 1993 MTV VMAs. According to Ru, Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love approached her on the red carpet and told her that they had tried to see her nightclub show in Seattle but got there too late and missed it. Ru would go on to have a friendship with the band who really appreciated her (they even appeared on SNL together).
15.
Timon and Pumbaa were originally the ones who were supposed to sing “Can You Feel The Love Tonight” in The Lion King. Ernie Sabella and Nathan Lane (the voices of the characters) even recorded the whole song. However, when Elton John found out about it he killed the idea, saying, “I don’t want a big, stinky warthog singing my love song!”
16.
James Cameron wanted to make/direct Jurassic Park, which he envisioned as a much darker and “nastier” movie. According to him, it “would have been Aliens with dinosaurs.” However, Steven Spielberg beat him to the film rights by a few hours.
17.
And lastly, Steve Jobs wanted to call the iMac MacMan. In fact, according to Ken Segall, who was the creative director at Apple’s ad agency, TBWAChiatDay, and came up with the name iMac, Jobs really liked the name MacMan and was “fixated” on it. Jobs did approach the agency just to see if they had any better suggestions, saying, “I have a name that I really like, we’re going to go with it, but if you guys can do better we need you to do better within the next two weeks.”
