You don’t have to be a ’90s kid to know: Millennial nostalgia is now driving culture
It’s a great time to be a millennial. At least, it is for anyone who enjoys being a favorite customer of the cultural market.
The same day you bought your tickets Beetlejuice juice– a sequence of 36 years later for the bugnuts of the late ’80s – you may have read that the docuseries about Lisa Frank, the leading experimenter of psychedelia in school supplies, is coming to Amazon Prime, and that the catalog of J. Crew , the classic preppy-chic staple, will soon be black mailboxes again.
The world is your oyster—or, more accurately, the world is your menu that reads like a BuzzFeed list of things only ’90s kids will remember.
Once mocked for their penchant for avocado toast, and their penchant for brutalizing everything from diamonds to mayonnaise, millennials have graduated to office. (One of them is running for vice president.) Now they seem to be the audience for almost everything—when they’re not shaping the culture in their own image, that is.
It’s no coincidence that the two biggest movies of 2023—Barbie again Super Mario Bros. Movie—are based on IP popular with kids born in the ’80s and early ’90s, and even made by some of those kids. Now, Beetlejuice juice he follows Twisters and other recent “legasequels” like this one Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire in theaters.
Soon, they will be joined by a new one Transformers movie, new Sonic the Hedgehogand resume live action of Masters of the Universe. But millennial nostalgia for movies isn’t limited to the titles themselves—and it’s coming out Deadpool and Wolverine’s the use of *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye” wink in both its marketing and the film itself. (The boy band group also reunited last year, making their first new single in 20 years for a song Trolls Band Togetherseries based on a children’s toy popular with children in the late ’80s.)
Bringing back old IP for movies is obviously nothing new. Lest we forget, the ’90s themselves were actually full of more nostalgia than most people can remember. And the hits The Brady Bunch, The Addams Familyagain Objective: Impossiblethere were duds as bad as him Mr. Magoo, The Mod Squadagain The Beverly Hillbillies.
It was a moment when studios were chasing the blockbuster success of 1989 Batman and willing to try anything. IP renewal was a new thing at the time, and studios took a disruptive approach to testing the boundaries of what was possible. Now, it’s just a common practice. And what we see lately in your revivals Super Mario Bros. again Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers (starring John Mulaney and Andy Samberg) continues to appeal to some people.
Nostalgia of all media and genre
Netflix has the millennial nostalgia-bait TV market cornered, and shows Stranger Things again cobra kai, steeped in ’80s history, and That 90s Show. Meanwhile, the company Original X Productions is bringing luxury TV to millennials Friends again The office in the real world with live “experiences” that recreate the sets of those games.
But the ultimate live experience that taps into millennial nostalgia has to be music festivals.
While Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Bonnaroo have always included millennial fare in the mix, an entire cottage industry has recently sprung up on the festival scene with this market in mind. There’s the R&B-centric Lovers and Friends, featuring Ashanti, Ja Rule, and Nelly Furtado; indie-heavy Just Like Heaven, which hosts Cutie’s Death Cab and Ben Gibbard’s side project, The Postal Service; and a slot titled When We’re Young, featuring emo kings My Chemical Romance and Dashboard Confessional.
As further proof that millennials’ music tastes have changed in the market right now, consider that Lil Jon performed “Reject What” this year at both the Super Bowl and the Democratic National Convention.
The nostalgia gold rush extends beyond the stage and screen, however. Just about anything millennials have been craving is now ready for a resurgence—whether it’s Dunkaroos, the ’90s snack that made a comeback a few years ago, or Sunny D, which got an adult twist last year as a vodka seltzer.
Never underestimate the marketing power of Hey, remember this? That’s why McDonald’s released Happy Meals for Adults last year, Tamagotchi revived its infamous egg during the smart toy era, and older adults were disappointed recently when the Capri Sun revamp added single-serve bottles to the iconic bag from the target demo’s childhood. . . (Like real millennials: They want it that way.)
An endless cycle
This retrospective correction is like something more than a typical trend cycle, where what’s old becomes new again 20 years later. The current comeback of Juicy track suits and Von Dutch hats is something else entirely.
What’s happening is that the kids who watched Saturday morning cartoons in the late ’80s and early ’90s are entering their late thirties and early forties. Many of them now have money to spend again their children to include their own childhood memories. They’re both a market for faux-vintage t-shirts celebrating BookIt—Pizza Hut’s classic literacy program—and a market to help bring BookIt to a new generation.
And since millennials are now old enough to be created by filmmakers like Greta Gerwig and Emerald Fennell, expect more movies about the millennial experience, like Lady Bird’s high school illustration in 2002 or Saltburn’s college interpretation in 2006. It feels like we’re 10 seconds away from a fantasy movie during dubstep!
Millennials entered the cultural scene as the laughing stock of baby boomers, and later endured a few years of being ridiculed by Gen Z for their love of Harry Potter and the idea of being too “grown up”.
Now that they’re old enough to represent major financial power, however, they can trick a studio into doing it Avocado Toast: The Movie by making enough TikToks to claim it. They may be getting the last laugh.
