Calling All '90s Mallrats: Here Are the Things Only You Will Remember (2024)

Your mom probably took you here to buy you those wardrobe staples that you were constantly growing out of.

The shopping-mall bookstore B. Dalton basically rode on the back of malls' success from the ’60s through the ’90s (and then lost popularity when they did). It provided the literary competition to Waldenbooks, another now-defunct shopping-mall bookstore.

The Nature Company was an eclectic, out-of-the-ordinary shop — selling amethysts and tiger eyes, telescopes, and other random "nature" bobbles—and for that reason, it was a welcome balance to the regular clothes shopping.

Wet Seal took over Contempo Casuals (a '90s store made immortal in Clueless) and for a time delivered on teens' need for ruched tube tops and the shortest denim skirts.

F.Y.E. had the latest music and the clothes to make it look like you knew a lot about music.

Seemingly just one small step up from Lisa Frank, the color and glitter of Limited Too enabled pre-adolescents to keep up with the older kids, proffering training bras, sparkly nail polish, and girls' first bikinis. (And let us not forget Myra, the Disney star with the 2001 hit cover of "Dancing in the Street.")

If you don't have a strip of four photos with your friends of missing the first shot, goofy faces, kissy faces, and serious faces, did you even live through the ’90s?

Whether for C.O. Bigelow rose salve or to discover your signature scent by spritzing yourself with all the body mists, supplied adolescent girls with entry into the cosmetic world of women. The musky scent of Moonlight Path elevated your age by at least a grade level.

Since malls had become meccas of teenhood by the ’90s, they also became the site of many a celebrity tour. Here we have Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tiffani Thiessen on a Saved by the Bell Tour in 1990.

Charlotte Russe seemed to have everything you needed to make a whole new outfit, including tons of dresses for when school dances came around, but the cheap jewelry, hair accessories, and Refuge jeans were a particular draw.

Whether you needed batteries, chargers, or tape recorders or were a nerd more interested tech like robot coin banks and remote cars, the personal electronics store had you covered.

Alt teens who probably dabbled in listening to Korn came here for JNCO jeans and punk-style tees.

If you didn't have access to a Glamour Shots at your local mall, then you at least had the portrait center at JCPenneys, where you and your siblings were likely forced to take a cheesy annual photo together. And let us not forget Arizona Jeans Co. and its casual cool clothes and jeans for the new school year.

Like this 10-year-old, we'd all flock to Sharper Image to test out the massage chairs that we'd likely never buy.

A trip to the mall was not complete without a snack or lunch break. The huge, cinnamon-laden spiral of warm dough smothered in icing was almost worth the visit in itself.

Once an independently owned chain, record shop Sam Goody's was bought by the American Can Company, which brought it to malls in the late 1970s. By the 1990s, big-name music groups were showing up at the store to sign their records and play a gig … In their prime, in 1997, the Hanson brothers performed at Sam Goody's.