Pop Culture Facts from the ’90s You Might Not Know

FULL STORY:  BuzzFeed put together a list of random pop culture facts from the ’90s you might not know.  Here are some highlights:

1.  The Tickle Me Elmo toy was almost Tickle Me Taz . . . you know, the Tasmanian Devil from “Looney Tunes”.  The company that made it didn’t initially have the rights to use Elmo . . . but they eventually got them.

2.  The Spice Girls didn’t come up with their nicknames, a U.K. magazine editor did because they were too lazy to remember their real names.

3.  The original Polly Pockets were tiny because the creator used a makeup powder compact to make a portable dollhouse for his daughter.

4.  Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis used their own money to shoot two scenes in “Forrest Gump” because Paramount refused to increase the budget.  One of the scenes was Forrest running across the country.

5.  The lyrics “Hit me, baby, one more time” from Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” were a mistake.  The Swedish songwriters thought the word “hit” was slang for “call me on the phone”.

6.  Director James Cameron wanted to make “Jurassic Park” before Steven Spielberg beat him to the film’s rights.  He envisioned it being darker and “nastier”, like “Aliens” with dinosaurs.

7.  Steve Jobs wanted the iMac to be called “MacMan”.

8.  RuPaul had an unexpected friendship with Nirvana.  They met at the 1993 MTV “VMAs”.

9.  George Lucas asked Steven Spielberg, Ron Howard, and Robert Zemeckis to direct “Star Wars: Episode One – The Phantom Menace”.  They all said no because they felt Lucas needed to do it.

(You can see more at BuzzFeed.com.)