Twilight Zone (when it was new)
One Step Beyond
The Outer Limits
Lost in Space
Wild Kingdom
Disney Sunday's
Star Trek
I Dream of Jeanie
Bewitched
The Avengers (British show)
Wild Wild West
Get Smart
Batman (original TV show)
The Green Hornet
Night Gallery

Cigarette Commercials

Shake a Puddin
Jello 1-2-3

Crazy Straws
Clackers

Life cereal and the Mikey likes it commercial.

Followed by urban legend that Mikey from the commercial died from consuming a mixture of Pop Rocks and Coca-Cola...and 20+ years later Mythbusters comes along and has to ruin all the fun with their "science".

Quebec Nordiques
Smoking in public places

Looks a lot like the big Zenith that was the only TV in my familoy's house for many years.

No one has mentioned "Princess Bride" as an 80's phenomena yet - so there ya go ;)

I remember everyone dressed as a Star Wars character for Halloween because it was such a big deal. My sweet mother hand-sewed my Princess Leia robe, and made the round hair coils from yarn. It was a warm robe too!

That's not true. "Princess Bride" is a timeless phenomena.

I LOVE Princess Bride. I still own the movie on VHS, even though I don't have a player anymore.

The cigarette and smoking posts made me think of: Candy Cigarettes! Can you imagine what would happen if some candy company released those today?

Maybe not, cause I just searched for them and apparently they are still sold - even Staples has them for some odd reason. Perhaps its online only. At least back in the 80s you could go to any toy store / pharmacy and get them. This might be more appropriate for this thread since these definitely are no longer around, at least in the US: cigarette vending machines.

Oh, and buying cigarettes for your parents/grandparents as a kid. A 10 year old could walk out with a whole carton.

I'm glad there are several posts from children of the 60's and 70's. I'm not in the oldest group here. :P


Kitchens are like carbon dating, you can immediately tell what decade it was last updated. The original kitchen in my childhood home had the brown-orange color for the stove and oven - leftover from the 60s.

Hair bands on their first tours, not their fifteenth reunion tours at the local casino.

Metallica before everyone else knew their music. (not me - I was "introduced" along with everyone else).

The rock stars hadn't yet gone 'clean and sober'.

Erector Set toy.

Wood and steel toys being the norm.

From the UK I remember a few things.

4 TV channels

No TV channels airing after 11pm, nothing but static all night long

Early morning B-movies every day starting at 6am.

Old TV shows like Bread, Spitting Image, Black Adder, Monty Python, Are you being served, Brookside, Only Fools And Horses, The Bill, Allo Allo, Countdown, The Crystal Maze, Dr Who, Worzel Gummidge, To name but a few :P

Old Cartoons like Count Duckula, Transformers, Visionaries, Thundercats, Bananaman, SuperTed, The Wombles, Dogtanian and the 3 Muskehounds, TinTin, Jayce And The Wheeled Warriors, Fraggle Rock, The Racoons, To name but a few :P

I will add more if and when I remember them :)

EDIT: Ah yes, my first taste of Japanese Anime. Laputa, The Flying Island also known as Castle In The Sky.

Airlines of yesteryear
Young and Attractive Stewardesses...Now we have Old and Fugly Flight Attendants.
Smoking on Airplanes...that must have been hell on earth for us non-smokers.
Decent meals on airplanes
No TSA goons groping your junk
Check-in at the gate of departure

We had a Beta VCR and, while the picture was great, it became very hard to rent movies. By the time Nicholson asked about dancing with the devil, we had a VHS. I remember seeing Batman on release, then buying the VHS tape on the day of release. I remember Ma..ma..max..head..head..room! as well as Ronnie Headroom. Here's one for you. My first TV was a Magnavox black and white 12" TV and I had to set my Atari 2600 to BW for a long time. I still remember how cool it looked when I was able to plug it into the 19" color TV in the living room.
We were also the first ones on the block to own a personal computer (Apple II+). I remember the day I put in a 5" Diskette labelled "Ultima from California Pacific Computing Company" and another labelled "Flight Simulator by Sublogic". The first game I ever got, though was called "Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure".
New Coke and Clear Pepsi are gone... as are the original Jolt Cola, C&C Cola, King Cola, and Zima (OK, that's from the 90s). Orangina still does exist, though, and it is available in places like Famima Market in downtown Los Angeles (I work in LA and sometimes drink Orangina).

If you really want to feel old. though, think about...
women using space-helmet-like bubble umbrellas on rainy days,
"You deserve a break today",
"Fox on the run",
Star Trek animated in first run,
Odyssey II by Magnavox,
or, and we had this back in 1977,
Fairchild Video Entertainment system (Channel F).
Do you remember Vectrex? How about Intellivision and Coleco Vision?
Oh, there are way too many to remember...
Oh, I still remember those early Metallica days. I first heard them on an album called Metal Massacre, then, when I bought Kill 'Em All on Megaforce records, everyone asked me who the Hell they were. After that, those same idiots started accusing me of jumping on the Metallica bandwagon as they played their Elektra major label Metallica cassettes.
If anyone needs proof, I still have both Kill 'Em All and Ride The Lightning on Megaforce vinyl with silver labels.
Actually, vinyl records are making a comeback and just today I noticed there are more turntables available in the electronics store than there were 20 years ago. Still, collecting vinyl is an excellent hobby.

So I have noticed. I have been collecting them for the best part of 20 years now and only bought my first brand new LP just last week. It's nice seeing actual albums being stocked in the shops again. I am not into the itunes thing.

I'm definitely down with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five. I also miss De la Soul and The Fresh Prince & DJ Jazzy Jeff. And the fact that back in the day, they weren't all posers, the dudes rapping about pimping usually actually had pimped.


Also, Mama said knock you out.

Ugh, AKA "operation change the formula to remove sugar and add HFCS and hope no one notices". I noticed when Classic Coke came back jack asses and back then they did not list the ingredients. But it was still better than New Coke and any other soda.
AKA "the worst three months of beverage drinking in my life", I had to resort to RC and Pepsi, because New Coke was just awful.