Speaking of twist and lemon, does anybody remember the fad that was popular for a season- the Lemon Twist? It was a plastic lemon on one end on a rubber string whose other end was a loop that went around the ankle; it was a form of “jump rope”- you propelled the lemon with one foot and jumped it with the other. Even our 60 year old teacher played with one.
I was in fourth grade in Bicentennial (wrote a story about it- called BICENTENNIAL MINUTES- wanna hear it, here it go…) and I remember the lemon twist phase as big at my school.
Re: Bicentennial coins- I remember some people thinking they were counterfeit. We were far more excited about the $2 bill.
I think the ones Maserschmidt’s talking about are the ones where you pushed in two round openings in the top of the can, one to pour or drink from, the other to vent. I remember them, but not specifically when I first saw them.
• The first Apple II computers came out in 1977, not 1975.
• Contact lenses had been popular since the 1950s. Soft contacts became popular in the 1970s.
• Pet Rocks exist only in retrospectives about the '70s. NOBODY BOUGHT THEM.
• CD radio was popular.
• Films: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Nashville, Jaws, Shampoo, Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (didn’t become a cult movie until '76), The Sunshine Boys, Tommy, The Hindenburg, The Man Who Would Be King, The Wind and the Lion, Three Days of the Condor, The Four Musketeers, Mahogany, Funny Lady, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Dersu Uzala.
I wanted to be Evel Knievel, the height of cool in the 1970s. And say what you will about him, he never jumped the shark.
Evel Knievel toys (and their knockoffs) were all the rage at my school. They were little action figure motorcycles with different sized ramps; you pumped up the cycle and then set off to jump over, or better yet crash into, books or boxes or logs or any other obstacles. I grew up in the country so I was able to add fire to the jumps.
He met his end that way. Was properly cremated though.
• The end of draft registration.
• The beginning of Saturday Night Live.
• Top 20 songs of 1975, according to Billboard: Love Will Keep Us Together (The Captain & Tennille), Fly, Robin, Fly (Silver Convention), Island Girl (Elton John), He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You) (Tony Orlando & Dawn), Bad Blood (Neil Sedaka with Elton John), Rhinestone Cowboy (Glen Campbell), Philadelphia Freedom (Elton John), That’s The Way (I Like It) (KC & The Sunshine Band), Jive Talkin’ (Bee Gees), Fame (David Bowie), Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds (Elton John), One Of These Nights (Eagles), Before The Next Teardrop Falls (Freddy Fender), My Eyes Adored You (Frankie Valli), Lovin’ You (Minnie Riperton), Laughter In The Rain (Neil Sedaka), (Hey Won’t You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song (B.J. Thomas), Lady Marmalade (LaBelle), Pick Up The Pieces (Average White Band), The Hustle (Van McCoy).
Best-selling novels of 1975, per Publishers Weekly: Ragtime by E. L. Doctorow The Moneychangers by Arthur Hailey Curtain by Agatha Christie Looking for Mr. Goodbar by Judith Rossner The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins The Great Treasure by Irving Stone The Great Train Robbery by Michael Crichton Shōgun by James Clavell Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow
Wrong. My mom had one. She also had chia pets, wind chimes (inside and out), every gimmicky lamp ever invented, a battery-powered aquarium with plastic fish (and later a battery-powered waterfall), the talking bass picture, black velvet “paintings” (and the art with the big-eyed children), a stuffed gopher with numchucks that played Kung Fu Fighting, a metal dog that pooped when you lit something inside it (like those fireworks snakes) and a whisky decanter with a little boy who dispensed booze via his little penis.
How she acquired this stuff without ever going to a flea market is beyond me.
• Children rode bikes without helmets.
• Sex was post-Pill, pre-AIDS. But “wife-swapping” parties occurred only in Esquire articles and '70s retrospectives.
• 70.8% of TV households had color TV in 1975.
• 15.5% of TV households had cable TV in 1975.
• TV remote controls were rare.
• Betamax home VCRs introduced in US in Nov. 1975; $2,295 w/color TV attached (= $9,086 today). No home video rentals.
• Pinball machines filled game arcades; the only video game was the primitive Pong.
• Feminism was commonly referred to as “women’s lib”.
• The Afro was the default hairstyle for black men. The only question was how big.
• People did not say “groovy”. That ended in '71. “Far out” and “cool” were popular.
• Toys “R” Us flyer from 1975.
• Scores of comic book titles were published every month, with a cover price of 35¢. Every newsstand carried them. Kids, not adults, were the main readers.
Nobody mentioned the Lava Light (or, more properly, Lava Lamp) yet? I think they were developed in the sixties, but were widespread in the early seventies…TRM
Leather athletic shoes were still in their infancy and had only begun to dislodge canvas ones in popularity. My parents scoffed at the idea of paying ten dollars or more for sneakers when Keds and Red Ball Jets were still available for about a third of that.
Jack Kirby left Marvel in 1970 and returned in 1975. Ironically, right after he left, Marvel Comics started outselling DC for the first time, mainly due to Marvel dropping DC as its distributor and DC being stuck with a higher cover price because of the 1972 (?) price freeze.
1970-75 was the golden age of the National Lampoon. SNL began in '75.
You went to MUCH different restaurants than I did!
Salad bars were the new, hot thing.
By the mid-70’S, seniors at my highschool were allowed to leave school property at lunchtime…and girls could wear pants to school any day, not just on snowdays when the temperature was below 20’F or when you paid Pep Club 25cents to wear them for a day.
Milk in the school cafeteria was a nickel.
Somewhere I have a pricelist for McDonalds in 1975…I had the yearbook photographer take a picture of it as a time capsule moment…I think a Big Mac was $1.
This was John Denver’s heyday. He uttered the phrase “far out” at least 20 times in an appearance as guest host on the Tonight Show.
And speaking of John Denver, the early 70’s were the time of the “back to nature” movement(of which John Denver’s song “Rocky Mountain High” was the anthem), with a lot of former hippies moving to the country to live the simple life.
