I haven’t been young in ages, but the first credit cards I got were from gas stations.
Same here. At a combo Esso-wand car wash. Or maybe a Gulf. The proprietor said to fill out the form. So I did, and the card came in the mail a week or two later.
A little while after that, obtaining a MasterCard and any other was no problem.
Somewhere around the mid-1990s, they quit issuing dedicated credit cards for gas stations and department stores, etc… and moved to co-branded real credit cards with discounts.
I remember- I wanted to go the route of getting a gas station card and working up from there, so that there was little temptation to buy a TV or something stupid, but all they had when I went to look were things like “Shell Visa cards with 5% of your gas purchases back!”
I do find it interesting that places like Target have apparently come full circle and are offering specific Target cards nowadays.