Nehru jackets (in the West)
Leisure suits.
Mood-everythings (rings, pens, bracelets)
Streaking
Yup.
And before that, 23 skidoo.
IIRC that was called a “footsie”.
Some of these old fads strike me as slightly insane.
So, people just swallowed live fish whole? Doesn’t that…do something to you??
It’s sort of like the pole sitting fad. People actually sat on top of a pole for days?? How did they sleep without falling off? What about bathroom breaks? It boggles my mind!
The other thing I think is amusing is to consider that fads have always been a thing. At one point in the 1890s bicycles became hugely popular, and Egyptomania spread across America in the 1920s after the discovery of King Tut’s tomb.
IIRC, one of the more famous flagpole sitters drilled two holes into his platform and kept his thumbs in them while he napped - so if he started to lose his balance, the sudden pain in his thumbs would jolt him awake.
Like when HMS Pinafore became so popular in the late 1870s that people started randomly inserting “What, never? No, never!” into conversations, the same way we’d say “That’s what she said!” or “Bueller?”
Here’s a great example of the Charleston, featuring Lucille Ball, her daughter Lucie, and Ginger Rogers.
I came here to say “tulips”. I’m surprised it took so long for anyone to mention it.
See also Charles Mackay’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which tracks the rise and fall of such early/mid-19th Century memes as “Quoz!” and “What a shocking bad hat!”
Killer whales wearing dead salmon
And now recently, smashing into small boats.
Wacky Packages were huge in my neighborhood in the early 70s:
Yo-Yo fad’s seem to appear briefly every generation.
Mine was in the 9th grade. It usually only lasts for a year. That’s long enough to learn the tricks. Show off and compete with classmates. Yo-Yo’s get boring after awhile. I’ve never played with one again. It wouldn’t be fun without my peers.
I’ve talked with friends and coworkers that had similar experiences.
Rubiks cube.
Pogo sticks were popular when I was a kid, along with hula hoops (I had both). White low-top sneakers were a brief fad, as were trench coats when in junior high. An oil company started putting an orange ball on your car antenna as a ad gimmick, but it caught on as a brief fad.
The twist.
The jerk.
The locomotion.
Baby on Board.
BeReal.
Livestrong bracelets in the mid-2000s.
I could list about a thousand things I financed for my kids growing up. But nah, you don’t wanna hear all that.
These fads come and go.
When I was coming up the funniest fad I recall was tight rolling your jeans, at the ankle. This lead to straight leg, slim and super slim jeans. Then jeggings.
It’s all going back to lose and baggy jeans from what I can see with the grandkids.
Not really historic. But fashion is a thang.
About a million historic fashion fads in women’s wear. Corsets, bustles, leg-o-mutton sleeves.
I like the fad of women wanting to look pale and sick, the white make-up was very popular and the corset often made them faint, so then we get the fainting couch.
Of course now it’s the heroin-addict look.
Peeps be weird.
And again in the late 1970s. He’s my favorite honky.
I can’t believe no one has said Tide pod eating, the cinnamon challenge and many of the trending social media things
That might be a different thread.
Probably resulted in a hell of a carp the next day.
The Coué method. “Every day in every way, I am getting better and better.”
Cupie Dolls
Goat glands