Lower population density – more resources. All of that with modern media, health care, technology, etc.
I haven’t had a Budwine in a long long time…
The Concorde. Flew it twice - NY to Heathrow, and then Heathrow back to NY… Something really amazing about flying Mach 2 and being able to see the curvature of the earth from inside a plane. 
My hometown had 12,000 people, but enough stores that people rarely had to leave town to get what they needed. No malls, no Walmarts, no fast food franchises. I wish it were that way again.
Standards of dress, certainly. Soldiers with their shirts tucked in. Kids playing in the neighborhood.
I’d like the three martini lunch and the Mad Men liquid workday without having to be, because I’m a girl, the one who pours it all. I’d like to pick and choose, but I’d like everybody dressing like Don and Betty Draper, please.
Gays in the closet. They could still be GLBT, but the news and political infighting would be reduced considerably.
Abortion made illegal again. All of those street doctors lost their livelihoods when their professions were made legal.
Jim Crow laws. Why should we have to share a drinking fountain? We’d have to add a new category for Hispanics, though, which would be modern rather than going back to nostalgia.
Get rid of airbags and seat belts in cars. Back then, consumers chose their own destinies rather than letting the liberal, leftist government do all their thinking for them.
Balthisar, did you even read the OP, or did you just go straight to Undiesinabunchtown?
We definitely need pudding pops again. In fact I’m going to try to make my own this weekend.
Saturday morning cartoons. In my area channel 5 and channel 6 had cartoons from 6 AM to 11 AM. Now channel 6 has news from 6-9 and then other crap from there on out. Channel 5 has Degrassi High until 9 and then I think there is TMNT, then some crap incarnation of Yu-Gi-Oh and then infomercials. These days I just watch BBC America.
Book stores. There is one Borders and one Barnes and Noble within about 15 miles of me. Over several months I kept checking them for a specific book and they never had it and I even asked if they would order it for me and they said sure but it might take a couple of weeks. So I told them to forget it and I just went and bought it on Amazon.
Damn you Amazon! Your awesomeness is destroying America.
Balthisar, that’s one of those posts where a nice little “Just kidding” – or even a 
might have been appropriate.
Lawn darts.
I’m pretty sure he just read the title, skipped straight past the OP that clearly stated this came out of a discussion of what really blew about the “good” old days, and decided to make a post that assumed everyone here was a bunch of morons with selective memories.
I apologize. I was really not trolling, and just trying to inject some humor. I forgot to add the smiley. 
Okay, a serious response in the real spirit of the thread: I’m nostalgic from the days when travel by flying was something that not just anyone and everybody could do or expect to do on a whim. The quality of fellow passengers and the quality of service, has come down to reflect the quality of the traveler.
Stands and applauds. Well stated!!
Jell-O Pudding Pops are available right now, at least around here. I bought some just a couple months ago.
Granted, they’re not quite the same as I remember since they brought them back a few years ago. They’re made by Popsicle now, and they’ve surely changed the formula. I think the chocolate ones are too much like Fudgesicles, but the vanilla ones are pretty nostalgic. They’re all still good, and they do exist.
I certainly don’t want to drag the pit thread into this, but there was a choice quote in there (snipped to avoid some entanglements):
I don’t think this nostalgia is as chimerical as wishing for the Wall Street boom of the eighties or the Dot Com boom of the nineties (though some folks made off quite well). I think — and nostalgia is almost by definition rooted in assumptions — that the prosperity and global domination of the fifties, bolstered by an odd sort of optimism (yes, there was the cold war, but there was a much clearer sense that we were wearing the white hats) that made for an interesting time. In addition to being a geopolitical leader, and having a burgeoning service industry, we also had a substantial manufacturing and resources base.
Perhaps that could be said of the Gilded Age too, or other periods of allegedly long and general prosperity (heck, bring me some Pax Romana), and of course, there were plenty of flies in the ointment to keep the time from being Utopia, but in general, ** Weird With Words ** point is a good one. Forgetting for the moment about being individually rich, the national wealth created some (nostalgically) interesting times.
The Pop Shoppe stores, where you could mix and match your own case. You can get Pop Shoppe pop now at some convenience stores where I live (Ontario) but it’s just not the same.
The dingy old arcade that used to be in our mall. To a little kid in the 1980s, it was dark and creepy, and I was scared to go to the very back, where the pinball was, because I could barely see the front from there. Not to mention the scary old lady who doubled as a change dispenser/game savant.
Saturday morning cartoons.
We DESPERATELY need the Saturday Night Creature Feature back on television, complete with campy, scary host (usually the noontime news anchor in bad makeup, bad accent, and bad vampie costume). And if possible, the Saturday Afternoon Shock Theater as well. “Attack of the Crab Monsters”, “The Giant Behemoth”, “Forbidden Planet”, “Bride of Frankenstein”, and any of the sadly overlooked yet classy Hammer horror films. I know some of these movies make it onto TV, but they just aren’t the same without a local-celebrity hilarious host yukking it up between commercial breaks. (We had this kind of thing when I was young, and Baron Daemone is a GOD in the history of broadcasting here.)
I would raze many hideous sprawling suburban enclaves of McMansions and somehow magically restore the fields and forests. And I would dig some ponds and stock them with fish and waterlillies and frogs. (I miss my own little Hundred Acre Wood where we had a fort and went “camping” - there’s a roller skating rink there now, which of course has been closed for years.)
Drive-ins, definitely! My dad was a manager of one and my first job was actually making pizza at the food concession.
Root beer popsicles for a dime!
Eating at the table. Or, more specifically, not eating walking along the street.
Got some.
Me too!