I Saw You Kiss Her

Sock'Em Boppers & Bob's Furniture drama, Limited Too cosmetics, 25 versions of "Girlfriend" 🥊

Feb 29, 2024

Happy Leap Day! Hope you’re watching an Ashanti and Ja Rule music video (Mesmerize, Always on Time, Happy, Down 4 U, etc.) to celebrate Ja’s 48th – or is it 12th? – birthday.

In this issue:
🍒 Catch up on Nicstalgia, with Kelli from Laguna Biotch
🐰 The Sock’Em Boppers vs. Socker Boppers Mandela Effect
🎞 Lost Media: Everyone Knows That, Bob’s Discount Furniture and Limited Too Beauty Products
📲 Pink, green, and zebra bedrooms, Daddy/Mother/Babygirl/30-Year-Old Teenage Girl, keeping up with [working for] the Kardashians, Monica Lewinsky’s redemption arc, the Nicole Scherzinger cover I desperately needed, Something Corporate reunion, a puzzle I’m really bad at, Nick Jonas restaurant
⏳ Opening this week’s time capsule: Selena’s Grammy, Cher’s “Believe”, Britney’s Onyx Hotel Tour, Usher’s “Yeah!”, Avril’s “Girlfriend”

Support Nicstalgia with a paid subscription for less than a bottle of Limited Too nail polish.

Nail polish currently for sale on Mercari for $18.57. I get into depth about the LTD2 Girl Care line of cosmetics, toiletries, and beauty products below. The font unlocks a memory and makes me super nostalgic! 🥲

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Huge thank you to Nicstalgia supporters who I will love forever: Janine, Marie, Liv, and Mitra!💐💐💐

🍒 Catch Up on Nicstalgia

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Watch/listen the full episode: YouTube • Spotify • Apple Podcasts

Can I just say how hard it was to edit down a social clip of me and Kelli, my fellow pop culture connoisseur, podcaster, Celine Dion fan, former member of Team Brian, and New Englander, in an hour-long conversation?? In the clip above, we discuss the iconic “I Saw You Kiss Her” episode of Laguna Beach. (They recap it on Back to the Beach with Kristin and Stephen too.) I had a blast chatting with Kelli and also took notes specifically to share with her after watching Laguna Beach for the first time last year. (I thrifted the DVDs during my Physical Media Renaissance™!) Here are my notes with no further context:

🐰 Down The Rabbit Hole: The Sock’Em Boppers vs. Socker Boppers Mandela Effect

I came across an IG post from Only 90s Kids Know this week of 90s jingles to come across one that I’ve had stuck in my head on-and-off for 25 years. Sock’em Boppers! More fun than…a pillow fight!!!!…OR IS IT??? It was actually a commercial for Socker Boppers. It was the greatest Mandela Effect to ever happen to me – more than Shazam, the non-existent movie starring Sinbad that everyone is definitely confusing with Shaq/Kazaam, or The Berenstain (not Berenstein) Bears.

I was in a state of confusion and disarray – my memory rarely serves me wrong. Plus, “sock ‘em” means to hit someone. Wtf does socker mean? Don’t insult my intelligence. I asked my IG community, and 92% agreed it is in fact “Sock‘em Boppers”. I refused to give up on this. Luckily, all it took was a quick Wikipedia search and the discovery of a Reddit post from the owner and sales manager themselves to find out the real, whole truth:

1974: The product was called Socker Boppers and was among the top selling toys for boys. They tried to relaunch later and were unsuccessful.
Spring 1996: The company relaunched the product and the owner, Sam Harwell, received a call from someone who had filed for the same trademark. He said Harwell could have the trademark if he paid them a royalty. He said no and discreetly tweaked the name to Sock’em Boppers on all packaging/in all promos.
Fall 1996: Over 1,000,000 units of Sock’em Boppers through Walmart, Kmart, Toys"R"Us, Target, etc. (Now THIS is the era Millennials know and love!)
2002: Mattel sued Big Time Toys for $1 million for trademark infringement over the use of the name Sock’em Boppers, claiming that the name infringed on the name of their toy Rock’em Sock’em Robots. So unfortunately, Big Time Toys changed the name of the product back to Socker Boppers. Dumb!
2005: Socker Boppers saw their greatest sales growth in almost a decade due to increased online availability. Nice for Zoomers to get in on the fun too.

I found a commercial of the version that I remember, so now the case is closed and I can sleep at night.

🎞 Lost Music: Creepy “Everyone Knows That” Song

Ironically, no one seems to know anything about “Everyone Knows That”, aka. EKT. A video went viral on TikTok this month featuring this song, a piece of lost media that has not been released, recognized, or recovered. Lots of people find lost media “creepy” or “scary”, but I think that’s due to the static. It’s ominous.

Anyway, DAZED recently came out with an article about Everyone Knows That: how the internet became obsessed with lostwave. But people have been making their own full-length versions of EKT for YouTube and discussing this song on Reddit for almost a year. So far, there has not been a consensus on what this lost song is. There are theories of varying believability and plausibility, including but not limited to:

It’s an unreleased track from Dee Dee Kenniebrew from The Crystals
It’s a song from Spanish singer Leopolo called, “Tell Me The Truth”
It has the same singer as the guy who sings the Pokémon theme song, although he doesn’t remember singing this song even if he did
It’s sung by a Japanese singer whose native language is Japanese, not English
And my favorite, which is completely incorrect and categorically false, as stated in a YouTube comments section, “there’s a good chance it was savage garden”

I personally am not obsessed with lostwave; I prefer to research and challenge things I already have formed existing memories around. Speaking of which…

🎞 Lost TV: New England Furniture Stores Catchphrase Drama

Bob’s Discount Furniture is a furniture store founded in Connecticut. In 1997, they broadcast roughly 500 commercials a week. If you’re from CT, you grew UP with Bob!!! This man could not be escaped!!!! Also there was a free candy cafe inside of his stores that I vaguely remember going to as a kid. Anyway, I distinctly remember Bob rhetorically asking through the TV if you could find a better deal elsewhere. “I DOUBT IT!” he exclaimed. However, despite the overwhelming ubiquity of these commercials, there is no proof of him ever saying this (at least online).

Now here’s where it gets messy. Dean’s Home Furniture, another furniture company from nearby Massachusetts, apparently used the tagline “I doubt it!” first. But there’s no proof (on the internet) of Dean saying it either. There are several Reddit and Twitter threads on this with no resolution. Was Bob parodying or doing a callback to Dean, or did he steal the catchphrase from his competitor?

This would not be Bob’s first offense; he stole his most recognizable slogan – “Come on down!” – from Boch Toyota, car sellers from Massachusetts. Dean’s other slogans include the very similar “Come on home!” and “It’s a no brainer!”, pronounced in an extremely thick Boston accent. Either way, Bob’s ended up on top, at least from a business perspective. Dean’s Furniture ultimately had to pay restitutions to customers they deceived in an illegal going out of business sale in 2000.

Dean’s Home Furniture is not to be confused with another ubiquitous, Massachusetts-based advertiser you’ve undoubtedly seen during Red Sox game commercial breaks: Jordan’s Furniture. Their commercials have seemingly not been ripped off by Bob, who probably drew the line when Jordan’s opened their Mardi Gras/Bourbon Street-themed showroom. Jordan’s CEO Elliott, who has a lush white ponytail and prominent Boston accent, stars in its commercials. And as if this wasn’t all random enough, the largest indoor ropes course in the world is located inside of Jordan’s Furniture in New Haven, Connecticut, bringing it full circle to Bob’s Discount Furniture’s CT roots. Am I going to give up on finding proof to settle this New England furniture chain debacle? “I doubt it!!!!”

🎞 Lost Catalogue: Limited Too Beauty Products

Like probably many of you reading this, I was a full-fledged Limited Too stan. My Grammy knew all of the sales associates on a first-name basis. I lived, laughed, and loved in this store. However, I’m deeply upset by the fact that I can find absolutely no trace of my favorite LTD2 cosmetic product: a bottle of gel/temporary dye that you would squeeze and then comb through your hair. I had it in blue. The only way I could probably find it again is if I came across an old catalogue on eBay. (I’ve looked!)

Limited Too’s parent company had a beauty think tank called Gryphon, started in 1988. Gryphon’s plan was to launch toiletries and cosmetics for their brands like Bath & Body Works, Victoria’s Secret, and Abercrombie & Fitch. (Obviously they were wildly successful.) The Girl Care line was launched for Limited Too in 1997, which included personal care products, toiletries and fragrances, including but absolutely not limited to: nail polish, bubble bath, body splash, hand lotion, hair styling gel, hair dyes, body glitter, bath beads, hair spray, etc. There were dozens of trademarks filed, all of which were ultimately abandoned or canceled by 2006, when LTD2 was bought by Tween Brands (Justice). Tween Brands was subsequently acquired in 2009 by Ascena Retail Group (Dress Barn, Ann Taylor, LOFT, Lane Bryant).

Here are the MANY formerly trademarked names of Limited Too’s Girl Care products, all with incredible dELiA*s-esque letter stylization. Please tell me you remember them!

📲 I’m Just a Simple Girl in a High-Tech Digital World

My fav things from the internet rn:
Enjoyed reading the latest issue of

Shop Rat by Emilia Petrarca

with guest shopper Allison P. Davis. I’m immediately deeply invested if Versace, Hot Topic, and Ethan Allen are mentioned in the same breath. Allison isn’t the only one who’s nostalgic for a trashy sleeping setup. Bridget from LiteralTrash2004 and I talked on Nicstalgia about both having bedrooms with pink, green, and zebra print in the late 2000s.

Enjoyed this Bustle article about the internet nuclear family, Daddy, Mother, Babygirl, and the 30-Year-Old Teenage Girl, but I enjoyed even more so Daisy’s take that didn’t make the piece: Babygirl = a man who can’t regulate his emotions; Daddy = a man who can regulate his emotions; Mother = a woman who can regulate her emotions; 30-Year-Old Girl = a woman who can’t regulate her emotions.

I was enthralled by

Jessica DeFino

’s essay on working for the Kardashian-Jenner Official Apps in 2015: 'Beauty Felt Like A Second Job — One I Couldn't Afford To Keep'.

I absolutely love Reformation’s collaboration with Monica Lewinsky and Vote.org. She looks incredible. The media and our society did this young woman so dirty in the 90s. Despite her character and reputation having been destroyed by the affair – a gross, egregious abuse of power by a man who was twice her age, not to mention the literal POTUS – I’m happy to see her redemption arc in support of a political cause.

Enjoy Nicole Scherzinger on Jimmy Fallon doing the Wheel of Musical Impressions, performing Celine Dion’s "My Heart Will Go On" as Led Zeppelin. Despite her um…love for the spotlight…her solo albums have been commercial flops. (Fun fact: Paris Hilton’s 2006 debut album sold twice as many copies as Nicole’s 2010 debut album.) I would LOVE to see a rock album from Nicole tbh, although I won’t hold my breath. (Sorry, had to.)

Something Corporate is reuniting! They released an Office Space-inspired video to announce their Out Of Office Tour 2024. When I went to see Andrew McMahon in the summer of 2022, he played “Konstantine”, which I think everyone has the right to see played live.

Nick Jonas and John Varvatos are opening a Mexican restaurant in Downtown Miami. They already have a fragrance and clothing collab, so I guess this is just the natural progression of this partnership?

Vulture came out with a new game called The Cinematrix, where you guess 9 movies in a matrix organized by actor and category. There’s a new puzzle each day. As much as I find it fun, I’m absolutely terrible at this!!!!!!!!! I wish there was one about music!

⏳ Let’s Go Back, Back to the Beginning

A time capsule of this week:

1994: Aries queen Selena becomes the first Tejano music singer to win a Grammy Award.
1999: Cher’s “Believe” reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100, making her the oldest female artist (age 52) to do so. She also set the record for the longest span between #1 singles (33 years).
2004: Britney Spears embarks on The Onyx Hotel Tour (yes you can watch the full video on YouTube) to support her fourth studio album, In The Zone.
2004: Usher’s “Yeah!” reaches #1 on TRL for the first time. They say that that song that was #1 on your 14th birthday is the soundtrack of your life, and mine is this. That tracks.
2007: Avril Lavigne’s “Girlfriend” was released. This is my favorite Avril song, and I’m so happy there are 25 versions of this song in 8 languages. I watch the low res season 3 So You Think You Can Dance jive routine to it starring Anya and Danny (RIP ❤️) regularly and no one can stop me.