What a great choice! Also- serious interest in telekinesis/ESP, Jonathan Livingston Seagull and stuff like that.
some other ideas–
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Slim Whitman
Lorene Yarnell just died a few days ago. See here.
Every Christmas season we are ass deep in Johnny Mathis songs. He is the voice of Christmas.
Pfft. Hardly!
Poltergeist is 30 years old and is still on almost every “Top 100 Horror Films” list. “Completely forgotten” wouldn’t be how I’d describe it.
My addition to this list would be Max Headroom. Gigantic, then… nothing.
Remember when reincarnation was huge in the '80s?
oMg-- I forgot about all these!
And Transactional Analysis, and Past Life Therapy, and I remember when all these friends-of-friends on Nantucket Island were getting ROLFED!
----- Resulting in me getting ROFL’ed.
We read Pearl Buck in high school. I can’t imagine that changing. Isn’t she up there with Kipling and e. e. cummings? Lit class wouldn’t be the same without them.
When was the last time you read about the industrial prowess of Japan and MITI? Or heard the phrase “digital divide”?
Boxing. Can one person in a hundred name the heavyweight champion? There are probably about five now. Men like Ali, Louis, Marciano and Dempsey used to be national figures.
In the 1950s people would argue about whether a man could run a mile in less than four minutes. Roger Bannister was an international hero when he did. If someone set a new record now, would it be on Sports Center?
Thank you, I wanted to say this. I just watched it the other day and still think it was a great movie. Granted, it’s pretty boring for the modern audience, in that it doesn’t show people being flayed, torn to pieces, disembowled, or dismembered while still alive, but I’m a simple minded type and content with old fashioned attempts at going ‘boo’.
I was going to say beanie babies, but I see it’s been mentioned. Never Mind!
Before those, there were Cabbage Patch Kids! They were notorious for causing violence among groups of parents, as in this article from 1983-
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,921419,00.html
I’ve only heard this second hand, but apparently it was also really trendy for westerners to adopt Indian mysticism - people would go to Kashmir to try and become swamis, gurus or lamas
Business trends! Learning Japanese! Studying Sun Tzu’s The Art of War! Walking on hot coals to build teamwork!
Featured fairly prominently in Fallout 3, with a couple songs on the GNR set including the song that opens the game. One of the most popular mods for the game adds a ton of other music to the playlist including nearly an album’s worth from The Ink Spots. Which isn’t to say they aren’t mostly vanished.
Man, what are the odds that all those Americans were national figures? 
Country musicians who once were pretty big, but disappeared:
Doug Stone - Had hits like A Jukebox With A Country Song, I’d Be Better Off In A Pine Box, Why Didn’t I Think Of That, and Too Busy Bein’ In Love. MIA since about 1995.
David Ball - Thinkin’ Problem, Look What Followed Me Home, When The Thought Of You Catches Up With Me were some of his hits. Not heard of since about '96, except for a one off hit with Riding With Private Malone in 2001.
Clint Black - was huge in the early 1990s, although overshadowed by Garth Brooks. Was regularly on the charts in the '90s, but pretty much disappeared by 2000.
Mary Chapin Carpenter - I Feel Lucky, He Thinks He’ll Keep Her, Down At The Twist And Shout, and Passionate Kisses were big hits. Nothing of hers has charted really since about '98 or '99.
Joe Diffie - Third Rock From The Sun, John Deere Green, Bigger Than The Beatles, Ships That Don’t Come In were all popular. Hasn’t had a hit since It’s Always Somethin’.
Wade Hayes - He had a string of hits from the mid-late '90s, includingOn A Good Night, Old Enough To Know Better, Don’t Stop, and I’m Still Dancin’ With You. His last big chart success was The Day That She Left Tulsa (In A Chevy In A Hurry) in 1999.
Hal Ketchum - He did pretty well through the early 1990s, with hits like Small Town Saturday Night, Past The Point Of Rescue, and Hearts are Gonna Roll, but trailed off about 1995.
Mark Chesnutt - Was a reasonably big star throughout the 1990s, with hits like Goin’ Through The Big D, I’ll Think Of Something, Blame It On Texas, and Gonna Get A Life. Charted irregularly after about 1997, and hasn’t hit the charts since about 2002.
David Lee Murphy - Dust On The Bottle, Party Crowd, and The Road You Leave Behind were his biggest hits, most of his other hits were as a songwriter. His only hit as a performer since his heyday was Loco in 2004.
Lee Roy Parnell - Had some big hits like What Kind Of Fool Do You Think I Am, Tender Moment, and Hearts Desire. Not heard of much since about 1998.
Others would include Collin Raye, Shenandoah, Sammy Kershaw, Pam Tillis, Diamond Rio, Restless Heart, Daryl Singletary, Lorrie Morgan, Travis Tritt and Sawyer Brown.
No one is remotely interested in it? You’re so obviously not a gay man.
Music - the Police (Sting’s old band)
Books - Snow Falling on Cedars
Film - the Piano, Sling Blade, Shine
I’ve become familiar with lots of old radio shows through podcasts: Fibber McGee and Molly, Inner Sanctum, The Whistler, Lights Out, Crime Classics, Lux Radio Theater, Have Gun Will Travel, Frontier Gentleman, and Escape.
Lots of jokes or tag lines from popular radio shows made their way into Warner Brothers cartoons; it’s fun to re-watch these and really get what the characters are referencing. Are kids familiar with older cartoons today? They’re obviously not shown on Saturday mornings anymore, and I’m not sure if any network besides Boomerang airs them on a regular basis.
How about this, Patsy Ruth Miller was a silent movie actress in the '20s, her biggest role was apparently as Esmeralda in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. He legacy however is that many girl babies were named after her. I am amazed at how many women are named Patsy Ruth espesially given that she wasn’t one of the “big name” stars. She was big enough that my grandmother who lived way in the country liked her enough to name a daughter after her. Said daughter hates the name so much that if someon called asking for Patsy we all knew it was no one who knows her.
Point being she was well know in her time but is pretty obscure now.
70s stars:
Peter Frampton
The Captain & Tennille
Movie Genres:
Westerns (mentioned previously)
Musicals
It has been, what, 35 years since “Saturday Night Fever”?
I’m still hoping my leisure suits and platform heels come back in style!
Is Donna Summer still around?
Speak for yourself, I love that book. I also used to work in a bookstore and it sold fairly regularly. It’s ranked at about #8000 on Amazon which isn’t bad for a book that’s been out for decades.
The Good Earth is doing even better. It’s ranked at about #700 over at Amazon so it hasn’t exactly disappeared. This thread reads less like the OP’s proposed subject and more like people extrapolating their own narrow tastes to an entire population.
Has anyone mentioned Boyz II Men?
I mean, yes they’re still somewhat remembered, especially by chart enthusiasts. They broke the record for longest running Billboard number one single three times, and their single with Mariah Carey, ‘One Sweet Day’, still holds that record (16 weeks).
But I rarely see them mentioned today, and their style which was so popular at the time has all but completely died out now. None of their songs are still hugely famous (at least not as famous as they should be considering they broke so many records). Their current status is disproportionate with their previous popularity. The group continues to record but they haven’t had a top 30 hit since 1997, and their last album charted at 114!
Considering there are acts still going strong from that time who didn’t have as much commercial success as they did, it seems strange they’d be so forgotten now.
(I don’t have a problem with the group, by the way, in case this sounds like I’m beating them down because I’m a “hater”)