Kids who grew up in the 90s were blessed with great TV. Not only were the networks putting out decent shows for a younger demographic (even HBO and Showtime had kids series), but Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel were dedicated to producing (or at least, in Disney’s case, re-airing) nothing but kid-oriented series. SNICK, Nickelodeon’s Saturday night lineup, is arguably one of the greatest runs of teen/pre-teen programming ever on TV, rivaling ABC’s TGIF not only in the quirky nature of its shows, but in its variety, too (live-action, skits, and animation).

We’ve covered some of the best cartoons of the 90s in the past, but now it’s time to look at the live-action series. These lists will be broken up into a couple of different rankings that will roll out over the next few months, which is why the focus now is just on Nickelodeon’s lineup. But then again, Nickelodeon deserves its own list — SNICK was rad as hell.

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Image via Nickelodeon

Here’s the methodology for selecting the shows: all live-action kids shows that premiered on Nickelodeon in the 1990s (all of which also featured on SNICK) are included, with the exception of The Journey of Allen Strange (because I couldn’t find any episodes to watch), and the variety shows (Roundhouse, All That, The Amanda Show, Kenan & Kel). This is all about the narrative arc, baby. Also, I’d like to give an Honorable Mention nod to Hey Dude, which doesn’t qualify because it debuted in 1989, but was still a memorable show of the era (watch out for that killer cacti!)

The rankings (from least to best) are based not only on the overall quality of each show, but on how well they hold up. Also, each of the shows below have a Nostalgia Factor, which is an alchemy-based score that considers the show’s relevance in current pop culture, noteworthy-ness to 90s kids today, and just how 90s it feels looking back on it. It doesn’t affect the show ranking, but there is a fairly steady correlation between how good a show is overall, and how it still permeates pop culture.

Get on your big orange couch, and grab some popcorn …

8. Animorphs

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1998-1999

Created by: K. A. Applegate (book series)

Seasons: 2

Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Brooke Nevin, Boris Cabrera, Nadia Nascimento, Christopher Ralph

Claim to Fame: Based on the Scholastic series, kids can turn into animals, and each episode begins with a video confessional by different characters. ”It’s not just about the humans, it’s about the animals! It’s about the whole world!”

Nostalgia Factor: 3/10, not particularly well-remembered outside of book fans.

How Well Does It Hold Up? Not well. The snowy-VHS confessional aspect is creepy now that it’s only ever used in horror movies, and there are random cuts and focus changes that add to the uncanny feeling (isn’t this just supposed to be on a tripod? Who’s filming this within the show’s world?) The show’s plots are ok, but an over-reliance on exposition drags it down, incorporating too many voiceovers and confessionals to explain things that are presumably in the book series.

And while the acting is a mixed bag and the dialogue and editing are painful, seeing all of the old computer tech (which the show relies on a lot) is pretty amazing in a nostalgic way. The show also picks up some points for its use of practical effects with its aliens, but there are few things more frightening than the effects of actual morphing.

7. Space Cases

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1996-1997

Created by: Peter David, Bill Mumy 

Seasons: 2 

Starring: Walter Emanuel Jones, Jewel Staite, Rebecca Herbst, Kristian Ayre 

Claim to Fame: Quirky space show mostly recognizable for Jewel Staite’s rainbow wig. 

Nostalgia Factor: 2/10, cult fans only.

How Well Does It Hold Up? Not as well as you remember it, which is often the case with futuristic series. Space Cases was a seriously low-budget sci-fi show with a wide-range of acting talents and a lot of cheesy plots revolving around a group of misfit kids stranded aboard a spaceship with two adult supervisors. Its intro is also the kind that explains the entire series and introduces every character and their background. It’s quirky, but not in the right ways, and the plots are painfully slow.

But the show also never really had a strong sense of itself, and retooled majorly in Season 2 to its detriment. Like Salute Your Shorts, the series lost one of its best assets and swapped out a major character (Staite’s Catalina), and lessened the adult parts for bigger kid roles. Not always a great idea, and it didn’t work here (even though they eventually brought Catalina back). Still, the show's genuine tenor and unrealized (and underfunded) ambitions have garnered it a fairly strong cult following over the years.

 

6. The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1996-1998

Created by: Alan Goodman

Seasons: 4

Starring: Irene Ng, Pat Morita

Claim to Fame: An amateur sleuth solves crimes in and around her school. And though many of these SNICK series were diverse, this is the only Nickelodeon series to not only feature Asian cast members, but to focus on a nontraditional family (Shelby lives with her grandfather).

Nostalgia Factor: 2/10, one of SNICK’s most obscure former series.

How Well Does It Hold Up? Shelby Woo is a series whose references and jokes are really meant to appeal to an older audience (not just teens, but their parents), which gives it a surprisingly decent shelf life. Still, the series’ shaky-cam effect makes it look amateurish, and the plot point that Shelby is an “intern” at the local police station is bizarre (plus the show’s use of puns is horrendous). But it’s essentially a procedural, a structure that (again) helps it when it comes to how well it holds up.

The show also teaches deductive reasoning, as Shelby lays out a myriad of clues and evidence as she goes through each crime (some of which are really dark, like when a school nurse is caught injecting cafeteria food with a poisoned syringe to justify her job during budget cuts). Shelby and her friends have a great rapport, and the acting is fairly consistent. Plus, Morita’s only role is essentially to walk into a scene, tell a joke, and leave — which is actually still pretty funny. Also this:

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Image via Nickelodeon

5. The Secret World of Alex Mack

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1994-1998

Created by: Thomas W. Lynch, Ken Lipman

Seasons: 4

Starring: Larisa Oleynik, Darris Love, Meredith Bishop

Claim to Fame: After a freak truck accident coats her with a volatile chemical, a teenage girl gains the powers of telekinesis, shooting electricity out of her fingers, and most memorably, can turn herself into water.

Nostalgia Factor: 7/10, if nothing else, most people vividly remember the puddle effect.

How Well Does It Hold Up? Not as well as one might guess. The Secret World of Alex Mack is actually a fairly standard superhero story dressed up in 90s grunge, which is to say its just a pretty chill tale of a girl who can turn herself into a puddle. Alex is a self-proclaimed dork who suddenly gets awesome powers, and even says in the show’s opening that “I guess I’m not so average any more!” Along with her super-smart sister and best friend Ray from next door (a recurring theme in several of these shows — the best-friend-boy-next-door, that is), Alex hides from the chemical company who wants to experiment on her (where her own dad works!)

Though Alex ultimately doesn’t do much with her powers, and mainly just goes about facing regular teen issues, she’s likable and relatable, (her sister Annie is also secretly one of the show’s greatest assets). The effects aren’t bad for the time, but aren’t consistent (neither are the plots, which sometimes don’t make a lot of sense even for a show like this). While I remember it being one of my favorite shows of the era, the slow pace and casual nature of its narratives fails to inspire many memorable moments when returning to it (and over-acting adults don’t help). The fashions are outstanding, though.

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4. Clarissa Explains it All

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1991-1994

Created by: Mitchell Kriegman

Seasons: 5

Starring: Melissa Joan Hart, Jason Zimbler, Elisabeth Hess, Joe O’Connor, Sean O’Neal

Claim to Fame: Like a female Zach Morris, Clarissa talks to viewers and gives advice on life as she experiences it. Also, there was the unforgettable Ferg-face.

Nostalgia Factor: 9/10, one of the most well-known series of the 90s.

How Well Does It Hold Up? Yet another strong female-led series in SNICK’s lineup, Clarissa relies almost entirely on Melissa Joan Hart to carry the show — and she does. She’s a charming narrator, but the show dates itself with a ton of 90s-specific references (Barbara Bush! Lady Diana! Pee Wee Hermann!), and the outer edges of fashion. The show is the only one on the list to feature a laugh track, and one of the few to feature a traditional 3-camera set-up. It feels more like a modern sitcom than any other series on SNICK, which is both good and bad.

Still, it carved out a unique niche for itself thanks to a strong cast, really memorable characters, and unforgettable little moments like Sam’s guitar riff entry when he puts his ladder up to climb through Clarissa’s window. Clarissa’s well-honed voice and sense of self (she knows who she is and makes no apologies for it!) was also what made this the most successful of SNICK’s girl-power series.

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Image via Nickelodeon

3. Salute Your Shorts

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1991-1992

Created by: Steve Slavkin

Seasons: 2

Starring: Kirk Bailey, Danny Cooksey, Venus DeMilo, Tim Eyster, Heidi Lucase, Megan Berwick, Erik MacArthur, Blake Soper, Michael Ray Bower

Claim to Fame: The Awful Waffle, and the fear of Donkey Lips sitting on your face and farting.

Nostalgia Factor: 9/10, if you can’t sing the theme song, you weren’t a 90s kid.

How Well Does It Hold Up? Surprisingly well. The show takes a regular camp experience and turns it into something surreal by never showing anyone other than the small main cast, who seem to be imprisoned there indefinitely. The campers spend a lot of their time pranking each other and suffering through Draconian punishments at the hands of Ug, as well as hilariously sad updates from the never-seen camp director Doctor Kahn: “Don’t bother hurrying to breakfast, I’ve already removed the prizes from all the cereal.”

The jokes are still funny (and showcase kids being terrible to one another, instead of necessarily learning lessons), and the show stands out not only because of the caliber of most of its acting, but because of how it subverted typical tropes. The new kids to camp were instantly cool, popular and well-liked, and it was the de facto bully, Budnick, who was easily the most compelling and interesting character, as he rose and fell from power throughout the short series. There are a lot of things to love and respect about Salute Your Shorts (including its terrifying Zeke the Plumber episode that should have been an Are You Afraid of the Dark crossover) but one question remains: Team Michael or Team Pinksy?

2. Are You Afraid of the Dark?

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1990-1996

Created by: D.J. MacHale, Ned Kandel

Seasons: 7

Starring: A lot of different people

Claim to Fame: Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society … a truly terrifying kids show.

Nostalgia Factor: 10/10

How Well Does It Hold Up? It depends on the individual episode, but overall there has never been another show for kids like Are You Afraid of the Dark since it went off the air (Goosebumps, for those wondering, was its contemporary). That may be a good thing; the show is still legitimately creepy (especially its opening credits sequence), and though some of the stories are hokey with their effects or their twists, many are actually frightening still to this day. But more than just being memorably haunting, it’s worth noting that most of the stories are actually really well-written and well-edited together. And though the members of the Midnight Society changed, the intros and outros were never the most interesting part. (The series was a revolving door and showcase for a lot of young acting talent who went on to bigger projects, so its overall quality stayed pretty consistent throughout its long run).

“The Tale of the Lonely Ghost,” “The Dead Man’s Raft”, “Laughing in the Dark,” the “Gastly Grinner” … go back and watch them. The suspense and the reveals are still surprisingly spine-tingling, but what really sticks with you are the sinister suggestions they make about mundane objects: that invisible killers can live in swimming pools, a ghost world exists through mirrors, there are shadow-people living among us we cannot see, and dolls — of course — have dark intentions.

1. The Adventures of Pete & Pete

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Image via Nickelodeon

Initial Run: 1993-1996

Created by: Will McRobb, Chris Viscardi

Seasons: 3

Starring: Mike Maronna, Danny Tamberelli, Alison Fanelli, Hardy Rawls, Judy Grafe, Toby Huss, Michelle Trachtenberg

Claim to Fame: Two brothers with the same name, a mom with a metal plate in her head, Petunia the tattoo, Artie the Strongest Man in the World … and the most 90s show on the list.

Nostalgia Factor: 10/10

How Well Does It Hold Up? Exceptionally well. The Adventures of Pete & Pete may have weathered time better than any other show of the era, thanks to it being both firmly rooted in a place (the 90s fashion, the soundtrack and theme song by Polaris) yet completely in its own world. Everything is so incredibly weird and gloriously unique. From the exclamations (“blow hole!” “Kill me with a brick!” “rat fink!”), to the mystery of Mr. Tastee, to chowing down on riboflavin, to Krebstar, to Endless Mike, and so much more, the show created a fantastic fictional world that felt (and still feels) completely real. It’s so insular and so bizarre, and yet, grounded through the authentic emotional moments the Petes and Ellen experience. It’s also still really, genuinely funny.

If the kid psyche of the 90s could be distilled into a spirit, it would manifest as The Adventures of Pete & Pete. (Plus, the celebrity cameos — Iggy Pop, Steve Buscemi, Michael Stipe, Janeane Garofalo, and many more — cannot be matched). No series on the list had a stronger sense of itself, and executed that vision more perfectly than this one. You are missed, my little Viking.

[Note: This feature was initially published at a prior date, but in an effort to continue to highlight Collider's great original content, we've bumped it up to the front page.]

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Image via Nickelodeon