Stamps were 15 cents, and then shortly after that they jumped to 17 cents.
My dad brought home this new fangled machine called a VCR, and we watched our first video…Alien.
We didn’t have cable at our house because we lived too far out. We got four channels, including the PBS station, and we had to get up and change the channel.
My mother paid by credit card the clerk had to flip through a book to make sure her number wasn’t On the List.
You could rent both VHS and Beta movies.
Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley aired back to back at 8pm (?) on ABC.
Challenger exploded.
Legwarmers were in style.
Girls used to clip feathers to their hair.
Teachers used to be able to paddle students for misbehaving.
I was born in 1957, and I remember when Italians, Greeks, Jews, Poles, and many other ethnicities were not considered “white”, and therefore were second-class citizens. Blacks were, at best, third-class.
I’ve posted this before, but it just shocks me so much that I have to repeat it.
I rmember when my dad brought home a video disk player (the disks looked like a record, but played movies, and were encased in a hard sheith)
We watched Krull.
Gremlins
GI Joe with Kung Foo Grip
Buster Brown Dress Slacks (uhhgg I hate that word)
The seven TV stations we received on a rotating antenna signed on in the morning and off after The Late, Late Movie. In between, there was…nothing. And when you turned off the TV, the picture dissolved into a white horizontal line across the middle of the screen, that faded into a dot, then blackness.
TV Guides cost a dime.
A gallon of gas for the lawn mower was a quarter.
Not only penny candy, but candies that were 3 or 5 for a penny.
Coke in small, green glass bottles that cost 7 cents.
When Canada got its new Maple Leaf flag.
24/7 TV coverage of Gemini space missions where they floated around the earth.
One play for a dime, three for a quarter in the Rock-Ola juke box, that had remote units at your booth in the restaurant. You flipped the pages to see the titles of the records.
Pizza came in a box of ingredients. You made the dough and spread the sauce on it and baked it yourself. You couldn’t buy a fresh, hot one anywhere, never mind have it delivered!
:eek: I work for…the March of Dimes, the charity that cured polio. We’ve got posters and books and stuff about all those days, and Salk, and the vaccines. I occasionally chat with people who lived through it, but…wow. Just wow.
My dad has polio. He’s got a ton of stories. After hearing them you’d wonder how he’s such a pleasant fellow.
I remember wanting an Inspector Gadget doll I saw at the toy store. My mom refused to spend the money on it. I recently bought the doll on eBay for $90.
I remember my BetaMax VCR with a remote attached with a 10’ cord.
My Commodore 64 (I still use the monitor to watch DVDs on when I work out)
I remember our family being the first ones in the neighborhood to own an automatic coffee maker. Everybody came over to see Mom, & everybody had a cup o joe. Come to think of it, we were the first kids on our street to be allowed to drink coffee on a regular basis. Everybody else was told it would stunt their growth.
Commander Salamander skinny ties
Vans
Parachute Pants
Raybans
Modems that you stuck the phone handset into
Text Adventure
Apple IIe and TRS-80 games
Intellavision
Atari
Colecovision
Donkey Kong
Pac-Man
Defender
Pitfall
Sixteen Candles
Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure
Risky Business
Commando
Star Wars and GI Joe Action Figures.
Ah, to be a teenage boy in the mid-80s!
I remember when all the kids in my neighborhood wanted to come over to see the “computer”. Which was really a terminal hooked up to the university’s mainframe through one of those old modems that had little rubber cups to hold the phone. And we could play Star Trek on it!
Thanks, Bosda - the site you linked also has a section for the Shogun Warriors which were some of my favorite toys and of which I had entirely forgotten.
Duck and cover.
Collecting money for an iron lung for a schoolmate with polio (he died).
Weekly serials at the movie theater.
Bandstand.
Annette.
Hula Hoops.
‘Warming up’ the TV set/radio.
I also remember Iron Eyes Cody. As kids,when someone dropped litter on the ground, we’d scold the person by saying “You made the Indian cry!”
I remember when computers were these gigantic things that printed data on punch cards. Or were fed data on punch cards. Or something like that. You didn’t have them in your house, unless you were doing something cool like combatting aliens or spies.
I remember when a friend was told by someone “Your father is a hippie!” The friend’s father had taken part in an anti Vietnam War demonstration and been on the TV news.
I remember when knobs would come off the TV and you had to use a pair of wire pliers to change the channel (Ka-CHUNK, Ka-CHUNK, Ka-CHUNK). Not that that was a real hassle since you only had a few clicks to see every channel.
