With paper bags, you could set them down and the bread would stay INSIDE the bag. With plastic bags, everything falls out as soon as you put them on the car seat. Personally, I’d prefer boxes if I didn’t have to get rid of them afterward.
Boy, your definition of “mundane” is very different from mine. I don’t think that word means what you think it means. :dubious:
I don’t think they had re-closable cardboard milk cartons (the kind with the spout in the side) when I was a small child.
Cookie dough in a plastic tube
Ear thermometers
The grocery stores around here don’t even *have * paper bags. It’s plastic or nothing.
My dad spent either his 7th or 8th birthday in an iron lung thanks to polio. I doubt that he’d consider the vaccine mundane. In fact, none of those things was mundane when invented. VCRs and CDs were hot items when they came around. Buying a PC was a major investment for many people. For cell phones, I think their size reduction might be considered mundane, but not their existence.
One of my coworkers was comenting the other day how she use’s them on her kids and would never stick a rectal thermometer up their asses. My mother insisted on using them on me 'till I was about 5 or 6 :eek: . The last time I actually bit her arm (& and drew blood).
I remember the first time I saw a plastic drinking straw as opposed to the old wax paper type - my grandmother used to wash them out and keep them!
How about those daisy-toe ring things you could put on your big toes connecting them so when you were sunbathing your feet wouldn’t flop apart potentially exposing the uhmm… more crotchular region of your swimsuit? Seems pretty mundane to me.
What? I’ve never heard of these, never seen them. Must Google!
As I recall, you put one ring on each toe and they are connected with a daisy thing so your feet will stay together. Even if you fall asleep you won’t be exposed. What a boon to modest sunbathers!
This is mundane:
Plastic two litre soda bottles that don’t have that black plastic cup at the bottom. That is mundane.
Let’s see…cars without running boards (I miss those)…transistors…tape recorders (they used wire when I was young)…LP albums…stereo players…seat belts…refridgerators with ice and water in the door…ball point pens…touch phone rather than rotary dial telephones…Xerox and other such machines…air conditioning in cars…electric garage doors…self cleaning pool systems…microwave appliances…color TV…quartz watches (not strictly true as the govt had some very large quartz timers)…nuclear weapons and power…MRI/CAT scanning…jet aircraft…ATVs…SUVs…digital cameras…optical cameras with automatic settings for light and focus…lithium batteries…lasers…98% of all plastics used today…Surgeries to improve vision accuity…power steering…radial tires…systemic insecticides…latex paints…etc
I’m pretty old, it seems.
Oh…forgot to add…I don’t really consider the items in my previous post as mundane…just having fun…
Mundane things that have disapeared in my time, replaced by mundane inventions:
Cardboard milk cartons without that pyramidal “easy open” spout (they had waxed paper plugs that went into a roun hole in the carton)
Glass milk bottles with waxed-paper lids (delivered to your door!)
Glass deposit soda bottles
Glass no-deposit soda bottles with a plastic “shell”
Steel soda cans without pull-tops
Steel soda cans with pop-tops
Mutant interesting attached pop-top-like openings no longer used (like the one with two circular holes you push down)
Supermarket “Cost Calculators” – push-button counters and tablet-stryle ones that used a stylus and abacus system.
toys made from shaped sheet metal (tin and steel) held together by bent tabs
Playskool toys made entirely or largely from wood.
Mr. Potato Head kits that required real potatoes.
Mr. Potato Head kits that came with plastic foam potatoes.
Filmstrip Projectors with audio portions on LP phonograph records for classroom use.
Seat belts standard in all cars. Shoulder belts. Baby car seats.
Cup-a-Soup (discovered this when I was in college).
Cordless phones
Colored phones (they were all black)
Direct dial (when I was growing up, the town next to mine didn’t even have dial phones: you called the operator for each call).
Owning your own phone (I bought my first in 1974 – before that, you rented them from Bell Telephone)
Permanent press shirts.
CDs
Toaster ovens
Bagel slicers
Hot sauce other than Tabasco
Sandwich bags – invented when I was in high school)
Fold-lock tops for sandwich bags
Ziploc bags
Plastic garbage bags (prior to that, you used the paper grocery bags)
Plastic ice-cube trays (the metal ones were very hard to use)
Digital clocks are nothing new, if you count antique ones that use an analog mechanism to turn the numbers. The people across the street from us, when I was a kid, had a beautiful brass digital clock whose mechanism would flip the numbers over when the time came. The digits weren’t on continuous spools, but rather on separate little cards, like tiny Rolodexes. I think it was electric, but it could very well have been windup, and the outer body was in a sort of Art Deco style.
In hindsight, I realize there were a lot of interesting things from that era in their house, some of which probably accented the office of the man’s father when he was governor of California in the 1930s (Olson, if anyone cares, one of few American public officials to avow atheism. At that time, too. Amazing.).
Some of the more important ones (ranked in order of importance)
-cheeze whiz (what did we ever do without cheese in aerosol cans?)
-scratch-and-sniff strips!
-those things that make your toilet water blue! (I don’t know what they do)
-cheese-flavored dog foof (“finally, your dog is getting enough cheese!”)
-thong swimsuits
-feminie hygeine spray 
I take issue with your inclusion of thong swimsuits. They are most definitely NOT a mundane invention… and in my book are quite possibly the most important and significant invention of the 20th century. 
Not invented in my lifetime, but the ball point pen has to be included in this list. You can buy a 20 pack at the supermarket for $0.99, and for the most part, they all work great. I can’t imagine having to go to school and write with a fountain pen in today’s age. Big impact on society… YES. Mundane item in everyday use… YES.
Post-It[sup]TM[/sup] Notes.
Those self testers on batteries where you would sqeeze the ends with your fingers. On the commercials there would be a highly accurate bar telling how much charge you had left. In reality the whole thing would turn yellow. I’m convined those things never did anything.
The first digital watch I saw was a red LED watch and it was on the Johnny Carson Show. It was like something from outer space and I think it cost $2000. The state of the art watch before that was a battery powered watch that used a tuning fork to count time. You could hear it buzzing.
Early calculators also used red LED lights. And they had crappy buttons that clicked when you pressed them and eventually you had to mash them to make it work. So I’ll add the rubber based button pads as the mundane invention that people take for granted. Without it our calculators and remotes would SUCK.
Back in the day (early 60’s) they use to sell a little cork item for bottles that had holes in it. You took an empty beer bottle (they were all recycled back then) and filled it with water. It was used to sprinkle water on clothes while ironing. Oddly, I can still remember the sound it made when my mother ironed. Another mundane invention that’s built into irons now.