Back in 1992, Nickelodeon decided to bury a time capsule, a little snapshot of everything that made that exact moment in the nineties feel like the nineties. And they sealed it up with strict orders. Nobody opens it until April 30, 2042.
So what did they decide screamed 1992? A Game Boy. A pair of Rollerblades. A Barbie doll. Home Alone on VHS. A jar of Gak, a piece of the Berlin Wall, even a set of Reebok Pumps. A perfect little snow globe of the whole decade.
And tucked in among all of it, a sealed copy of Michael Jackson’s Dangerous.
Nickelodeon’s own look back at the 1992 time capsule
Here’s the fun part to picture. The year 2042, when they finally crack that capsule open. The Game Boy will be a museum piece. The VHS tape will need a machine almost nobody owns anymore. The Rollerblades will look gloriously, hilariously dated.
And the Dangerous album? It’ll sound exactly as sharp as it does right now. Smooth Criminal, Black or White, Remember the Time, Jam. Fifty years sealed in the dark, and it’s the one thing in that whole box that won’t feel one bit old.
Footage of the actual 1992 burial
The capsule itself has done some traveling over the years. It started out in front of Nickelodeon Studios in Florida, and after that park shut down it eventually made its way to the Nickelodeon animation studio in Burbank, California, where it sits waiting today.
What’s inside, and the wait until 2042
There’s something fitting about the whole thing. They buried a pile of nineties gadgets to remember the decade by. But the item most likely to still matter when that lid finally lifts is the music. Trends fade out. Michael doesn’t.