In a sidebar to an article entitled “Whatever Happened To….” by Rose Madeline Mula, the Saturday Evening Post asks that question. Here’s the list, with the ones I remember in bold:
- Blackjack chewing gum (It and its cousins made a brief comeback in the 1980s.)
- Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
- Candy cigarettes
- Soda-pop machines that dispensed bottles
- Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes (Come on, some retro places still have these.)
- Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
- Party lines (We had them in Jefferson County, Missouri, until 1987 or 1988.)
- Packards (But I do remember Packard Bells.)
- P.F. Flyers (But I do remember Radio Flyers. Metal Radio Flyers.)
- Butch wax
- Peashooters
- Howdy Doody
- S&H Green Stamps (Not Eagle Stamps. See this post from April 2006.)
- Hi-fi systems
- Newsreels before the movie
- 45-RPM records…and 78-RPM records (I still own some 45s.)
- Telephone numbers with a word prefix (e.g., Olive-6933)
- Metal ice trays with levers (See this post from March 2006)
- Mimeograph paper (And the glorious smell of the ink and the warmth of the fresh copies.)
- Blue flashbulbs
- Rollerskate keys
- Cork popguns
- Drive-in theatres
- Studebakers
- Washtub wringers
That makes me 14 of 25, and I am not yet 35. So although this list shouldn’t make me feel old since its items are not older than the 1980s in many cases, I think the ery fact that I have a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post should suffice.
I was going to do this list on my blog but I pretty much remember everything you do, with the exception of the telephone numbers with the word prefix. I still remember mine from when I was little… Mutual 1-8459.