What on Earth did I find in my friend's shed?

I have a friend who lives with his wife, three kids, and grandmother-in-law, in GIL’s house. The GIL has hoarded quite a bit over the years, and, recently, has started allowing some of the stuff to be sold/disposed of/given away/recycled/et cetera.

I’ve been helping with the process, and I recently happened upon some items that neither I, nor anyone in the house, can identify. I was allowed to keep them.

They look like what I could best describe as “really long matches”, with multicolored heads. The box looks kinda “Christmasy” on the outside, though maybe the pattern is just regular old flowers. Only text on the box is “90 sticks - Made in Taiwan”.

Here are pictures of the box from the outside, three of the individual sticks, and the sticks in the box, respectively:

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I found this in an area of one of the backyard sheds that mainly contained stuff from the '70s and early '80s, so these probably date from around then, too. Can anyone identify what these things are and what they’re for?

Matches. Mainly for fireplaces.

They look like matches for lighting fires in fireplaces - I recall seeing similar, way back when. Do they have a fireplace?

They appear to be really long matches. Is there a strike strip on the box?

My mother used matches that long for lighting lots of candles. They can also come in handy for lighting fires in one’s fireplace.

The box made me think that it might be some kind of fireworks or sparkler or incense, but seeing the items themselves, they just look like long matches, like you might use to light a fireplace or a pilot light or an outdoor grill. I have a box, but the packaging is much more mundane and the tips aren’t multicolored.

Totally 100% matches.

Is this like an age gap thing or something? How can one NOT know those are matches? Granted, I have the advantage of remembering using those when I was a kid, but still…

They have a fireplace, though it went unused for quite a number of years, being literally surrounded by junk until just the other month, when it has, at long last, started to be used again. This time, however, it was lit by way of one of those big lighter thingies.

I’m surprised none of them recognized what these things were for. Having met very few people with fireplaces, I had no idea “fireplace matches” were a thing. Matches were, as far as I knew, only about 3-4 inches long. That’s why my best guess was “incense”.

These things are going right back–I have no use for them. The heat here’s electric, and we ain’t got no fireplace. :stuck_out_tongue:

Thank y’all for y’all’s help.

23 year old guy here, who grew up in a “bubble”, unexposed to a LOT of things that’re obvious to others.

Growing up as unexposed as I did means I probably have more questions with obvious answers coming down the tubes. :o

Here’s a funny “sheltered kid” story for y’all–I seriously asked this very same friend, no more than four months ago, as he was making toast in his pop-up toaster:

“How do you make toast in that thing without the butter sliding down into the mechanism?”

Keep in mind, I had only ever used toaster ovens in my life until that point. He looked at me like I was from Mars. :smiley:

They’re definitely fireplace matches. They’re really long so you can reach the back of the fireplace. They’re also good if you need a light a gas grille with a bad igniter.

Yep. We have a pack at home - fireplaces, old-fashioned charcoal grills, woodstoves, those citronella candles in the glass jars, there’s all sorts of stuff that it’s convenient to be able to light from a slightly safer distance than traditional matches can reach.

So, what you’ve got here is a box of really long matches that look surprisingly like really long matches.

Here, I wonder if you’ve ever seen one of these thingies in your young sheltered life? :smiley: What could it be?

Sorry, DoggyDunnit. Just having some fun with you.

Oh, to be young and sheltered and naive again!

Okay, since the OP’s OQ (original question) has been answered, can we have some fun with this thread now? What other things that we old farts grew up with have the up-and-coming cohort probably never seen?

We begin with these offerings from Mental Floss:

11 “Modern Antiques” Today’s Kids Have Probably Never Seen.

And, in a similar vein:

11 Sounds That Your Kids Have Probably Never Heard (Compare Item #1 with my reference in the previous post.)

They are also useful for lighting gas hot water heaters, where you have to reach in to the inside of the heater to light the pilot light.

So probably also useful for lighting other kinds of gas or oil heaters.

My space heater now sparks automatically if the power is connected and the pilot light is out. My hotwater heater sparks on a push on the piezo-electric starter button. I’ve got acquantances whose gas hotwater goes off and won’t start if the electricity goes out (no pilot light at all).

So the need for long matches in my house had dropped to zero.

FWIW, we never used long matches to start the coal fire. We always had good access to the front of the stack.

As a point of reference …

Nowadays there are disposable butane lighters with an extended “wand” about 8-10" long and a handle with some sort of trigger to light it. The OP may have seen these in the grocery store.

Those became commonplace in the US in about 1975. Before that anyone who owned a fireplace or barbeque had a box of 10-12" matches to start it.

Speaking of barbeques … It was about 1965 in Southern California that gas-fired barbeques were invented and began to become popular. They later spread across the country. Prior to then, all barbeques were charcoal or wood fired.

Given the context, shouldn’t this be moved to the Pit?

Well THIS sure is a nominee for the “title that overpromises” award. You can’t even have the common decency to find, like, a foot? I believe a foot is traditional.

Look at the second picture of the OP. Tell me those aren’t a foot. He says optimistically.

Fireplace matches. Really long so you can stick it in the fireplace without getting your arm all the way in. The pretty colors and Christmasy box suggest that someone got them as a Christmas gift. I can remember my parents getting them.

A foot? :confused: