New Kids on the Block, and they sold 50 million albums, had nine top 10 hits beginning with "Please Don't Go Girl" in 1988, and saw their faces smile on everything from T-shirts to lunchboxes.

Well, the door slams shut on everything eventually, and after living in the global glare for several years, the vocal quintet - Donnie Wahlberg, Jordan Knight, Jonathan Knight, Danny Wood, and Joey McIntyre - threw in the NKOTB-endorsed towel following the disappointing sales of 1994's Face the Music. "I just couldn't wait to get out on the corner and hang out," Jordan Knight told the Boston Globe. But where did they go from there?

"One of the most hurtful things about the New Kids experience is that I dreamed of being Rocky," group founder Donnie Wahlberg said to The Improper Bostonian, "of walking down the street and some guy in a sub shop would yell, "Hey, Donnie, alright.'" Instead, Wahlberg retreated to his Braintree, Mass., mansion. His mother recalled watching him wash the car: "He said, I gotta learn to do these things."

Wahlberg had harbored dreams of starting his own production company and making cartoons ("Real wild sh*t," he told Dirt magazine in 1992). Instead, he went to New York and signed with an agency. Wahlberg became an actor. His first film, Bullet, co-starred Tupac Shakur and Mickey Rourke, but saw a theatrical release only after Tupac's untimely death in 1996.

But Wahlberg continued to find work. He was a kindhearted kidnapper in the 1996 Mel Gibson thriller Ransom, then took the lead in the 1998 independent film Southie, set in his Boston hometown. For his highest-profile role to date, as a suicidal heroin addict in 1999's The Sixth Sense, audiences hardly recognized him. To get into character, Donnie had lost 40 pounds of muscle and slept in the streets.

He will next be seen in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, the $120 million drama follows soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division from basic training to the capture of Hitler's command post in Berchtesgaden, Germany. Wahlberg has also spent time in the studio, producing acts for Aureus Records.

For Jordan Knight, the group's lead singer, it was a longer journey back into the spotlight. He released his self-titled debut album on Interscope in 1999 and even scored an impressive hit with the Jam & Lewis-produced "Give It to You." But first he had to overcome a bad case of stage fright. So he went to a Boston piano bar.

"What I did first was just go to the piano bar and just watch," he told Oprah Winfrey in February. "And then I got enough courage to actually go up and sing a song. But I would go incognito at first. Then the next week I would take my glasses off. Then the next week I would take my hat off. Then the next week I started asking the piano guy, 'Could you play a little faster?' I think after that it was like, 'I can do it.'"

Knight formed a songwriting partnership with Robin Thicke, the son of actor Alan Thicke, and financed his debut himself. "He was willing to take his time and do it right," Thicke told People. Jam & Lewis have returned to produce his sophomore album, due out this summer. Jimmy Jam recently told MTV News that new single "Around the World" "is sort of Dean Martin meets Sisqo. This is the next level of quirky."

While Jordan overcame his stage fright, his brother Jonathan Knight had a longer history of panic attacks, which he discussed on the February Oprah episode. "From 1994 to 1997 I did nothing," he said. Jonathan retreated to a country farm and "slept and slept and slept. If I was awake I had to deal with things. In order to avoid that I would just stay in bed." In 1997, however, Jonathan sought medical help. He has since become a successful real estate broker with no plans on re-entering the pop world.

Danny Wood, whose earthy looks suggested either a future or a past as a street fighter, has kept the lowest profile of anyone in the group. In 1997, it was reported by Entertainment Tonight that he was working with underprivileged kids in Massachusetts. He has also moved into production and initially worked with the Orlando trio LFO, best known for their 1999 hit "Summer Girls."

Wood and Wahlberg both contributed to Stay the Same, the 1999 solo debut by the youngest New Kid, Joey McIntyre. When NKOTB broke up, McIntyre tried to get into acting, but although he appeared in Michael Ritchie's 1995 adaptation of the long-running musical The Fantasticks, the film wasn't released until last year. "I really was that earnest young man," he told the Boston Globe, "and I'm sure the director saw that in me."

Chastened by his Hollywood experience, McIntyre moved back to Jamaica Plain, Mass., and seized his destiny. He originally wanted to record big band music in the manner of hero Frank Sinatra, but Wahlberg talked him out of it. Instead, the pair began writing with former NKOTB producer Phil Green. When labels closed their doors on him, McIntyre paid to make his own album and sell it through his Web site.

"For a while I woke up telling myself, 'If I sold 35 million records, man, I don't need to do this!'" he explained to Rolling Stone in 1999. "But that doesn't matter. It's what have you got now?" However, when music exec Don Ienner heard his music on a Boston radio station, he signed him to his C2 label.

McIntyre returned to the studio and released Stay the Same. The album has since gone gold, but most important for McIntyre, it's been an entree into MTV, now larded with videos by Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, 98 Degrees, and the rest of NKOTB's progeny. McIntyre has become their tousle-haired Ed Sullivan, subbing for Carson Daly on TRL and hosting Say What Karaoke.

But what about a NKOTB reunion? Well, it almost happened in 1999 at the MTV Video Music Awards. Joey told the Boston Globe that the idea was nixed when Jonathan Knight opted out. "It was just too hard," he said. Knight admits that when the gang gets together, "We always joke about it." For now, the group members are happiest working on growing older with dignity. 'N Sync, we hope you're paying attention.

Jordan Knight answers his fans' questions on his Web site.

Jonathan and Jordan Knight on Oprah.