Nostalgia is a strange thing. It’s become a powerhouse in contemporary pop culture, especially for 90s kids. “Do you remember this or that? Then do we have something you’ll love!”
Take, for example, Nickelodeon’s landmark Saturday Night Nick — or SNICK — programming. If you’re part of the segment of the population that just thought “the hell’s a SNICK?” then this might not be the blog for you. The rest of you that went “oh, hell yeah” are gonna want to hear the story of how SNICK started.
Vanity Fair took a deep dive into the programming block’s origin and one of the most fascinating things bout it is who ended up with the famous couch.
That’s because Shaq ended up with it. I know. And all he had to do was ask!
What happened to the original sofa? “Oh my god,” says a laughing Darby. “I don’t think anyone has it.” Jokes Hecht, “I will tell you where the couch is. Remember the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark?”—a reference to the giant government storage facility that houses the Ark of the Covenant.
In reality, there were multiple orange couches. One had black piping and was used for promos; another was trucked around for events with fans. As of 2017, one of the originals is still at Nickelodeon headquarters. A second is owned by former N.B.A. star Shaquille O’Neal. According to O’Neal’s manager: “he liked it, asked for it, and they gave it to him.”
Here’s a promo that featured the couch, if you don’t remember it and have no idea why Shaq would want an orange couch for himself.
The rest of the piece is nuclear-grade nostalgia if you’re into that kind of thing, but it’s also super fascinating if you grew up on the other end of the television screen watching shows like Are You Afraid of the Dark? and Clarissa Explains It All. It also officially gives you one more thing to be jealous of Shaq over.
And if you still don’t know what SNICK is, let Clarissa explain it to you here.
Man. Sometimes parents really just don’t understand.
