They gave us three of the funniest sitcoms ever made, in Friends, Frasier and The Office, after all.
But there was a lot about them which really wasn’t all that funny, however hilarious it might have seemed to us at the time.
Below are some of the most irritating characters, pranks and jokes we somehow fell for back then and briefly thought were side-splitting, only to realise our error.
It turns out the 90s and noughties have a lot to answer for.
How many of these do you remember, and is there anything else you can think of which seemed hilarious at the time but less so in retrospect?
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1. Mr Blobby
Looking back, it's hard to see how we as a nation were quite so obsessed during the 90s with the bulbous pink, spotty monster who answered to the rather formal sounding title Mr Blobby. The mischievous character, who communicated using only his own name, first appeared in 1992 on the hit BBC show Noel's House Party, where he pranked unwitting celebrities. His destructive antics made him perhaps a bigger star than the show's host, Noel Edmonds, and he was soon everywhere. He even made it onto Danish TV, though it turned out Scandinavian viewers are more discerning and his stint there was short-lived. At the peak of his popularity, Mr Blobby beat Take That to the 1993 Christmas number one spot with his self-titled novelty single. Did you know that the man inside the suit was a classically trained Shakespearean actor from Bradford, called Barry Killerby, who reportedly called the role 'exhausting and demanding'? | Getty Images Photo: Bryn Colton
2. Singing fish
There was a time during the early noughties that almost every living room or toilet had one of these animatronic singing fish mounted on the wall, ready to catch out unsuspecting visitors. The original Big Mouth Billy Bass and the imitations which followed looked like a stuffed fish but burst into song - usually either Take Me To The River or Don't Worry, Be Happy - when the motion sensor was activated. Of course, the joke soon wore thin, and it was hard to catch anybody by surprise when pretty much every household had one. Big Mouth Billy Bass even gained royal approval, with Queen Elizabeth II reportedly having one on display at Balmoral Castle. | Anastasiia Babakova - stock.adobe.com Photo: Anastasiia Babakova - stock.adobe.com
3. Gunging
It wasn't safe to leave the house without an umbrella during the 90s, given the amount of gunge being dropped. The oozy green slime was a staple of family TV back then and was perhaps most memorably deployed in Noel's House Party, with viewers able to vote for the celebrity they felt deserved a good gunging. Soon, ordinary people were getting in on the act, with gungings becoming a common feature at school fairs and charity fundraising events for Red Nose Day. Gunge has not gone away completely, but there's certainly less flying about these days. | AFP via Getty Images Photo: HENNY RAY ABRAMS
4. Being Tango'd
Another hazard during the 90s was being Tango'd. As the catchline to the famous advert went 'you know when you've been Tango'd'. Unfortunately you didn't know until it was too late. The popular adverts for the fizzy drink, which first appeared in 1992, featured an orange man slapping a Tango drinker on the cheek to symbolise the taste sensation you experienced from the soft drink. Unfortunately, some children thought it was hilarious to copy the advert and slap unsuspecting classmates in the school playground, injuring them. | National World Photo: Martin Bostock
5. That dancing baby meme
It's not the humour on the hit 90s show Ally McBeal we're questioning here, but the Dancing Baby meme which was everywhere in 1996. The clip of an animated baby dancing the cha-cha was one of the first viral internet videos, spreading like wildfire after initially being posted on a CompuServe forum. The dancing baby even made it onto the comedy drama Ally McBeal, in which the title character, played by Calista Flockhart, sees it during a hallucination. | Getty Images Photo: Frank Micelotta
6. Telling people 'you can't handle the truth'
It's one of the most famous lines in movie history, from the classic 1992 legal drama A Few Good Men, written by Aaron Sorkin and starring Tom Cruise, Demi Moore and Jack Nicholson, pictured. But people thought they were being much funnier than they actually were by telling their friends, work colleagues or anyone they could get to listen 'you can't handle the truth'. Quite what Colonel Nathan Jessup, who utters those memorable words in the film, would have made of it all is anyone's guess. | Getty Images Photo: Liaison