kevinb120

JIFFY POP! And remember the rage that was home popcorn makers for a while??

Hell Im 36 and you can nix home video games and microwave ovens too, nor helmets for skates/skateboards/bikes and tricycles....Only the elite had VCR's let alone laser discs. I had to play a lot of my fathers music he had still on vinyl or reel-to-reel even! We were also exposed to a lot more good old chemicals and hence aren't a bunch of whiners allergic to EVERYTHING. Best seat in the car on long trips was the package shelf

And we played dodgeball at lunch because our sensitivities weren't such that we realized getting hit in the face with a big red ball made you a LOOSER for that moment in time-it even made the you're-a-big-fat-looser noise "wooshSMACK-pinnnboiiiing........... boing......... boing .....boing boing boing'...

Oh yea, and don't forget that whole COLD WAR thing!

Funny is that I was born in 71 and a LOT of the old-school things died with children only a couple years younger. My generation still had Nuclear school drills of the 50's until second grade, Sunday mornings on the UHF stations were still all: our gang/little rascals, Blondie!, tarzan, the three stooges and b&w westerns EVERY SUNDAY. Daytime cartoons still included the VERY politically incorrect 1940's bugs bunny shows, and the regulars included the flintstones, popeye and tom&jerry(both the originial versions) and many others that were from the 50's and 60's. Not tomention HR Puffandstuff and Land of the Lost and when Speed Racer was new...

And the best educational programing ever known to mankind- Schoolhouse Rock. And marked the pinnacle of the progression of education in this country.

The first of the new gen cartoons like the Smurfs and He-man, the new GI Joe and the like came about as I was outgrowing cartoons(until South Park of course ).... Of course we also had andy griffith and the Adams Familly, batman and the like in the summer and if you played sick they ran daily before soap operas.... People only 4 years younger then me missed most if not ALL of that stuff.

And great TV shows like Archie Bunker's place, Welcome Back Kotter, Taxi, MASH, The Muppet Show(that adults watched as much as kids), St Elsewhere, CHiPs, Hill Street Blues, Cheers with the original Coach, The real Tonight Show, and so many other great shows. I tried a few times to watch 'modern' law and order or the rediculous CSI shows, what a suckfest network TV is these days. Once the censors laid back in the 70s and programs like the Gong Show and obnoxious sexisisim on Three's company were around, Network TV today is nowhere NEAR as racy as it used to be. Everything is rehash after rehash with the edges dulled these days. Anybody who thinks Family guy is controversial has never watched Archie Bunker on a rant...


“Goodbye, Farewell and Amen” was the final episode of M*A*S*H. The episode aired on February 28, 1983 and was 2½ hours long. It was viewed by nearly 106 million Americans (77% of viewership that night) which established it as the most watched episode in United States television history, a record which still stands.

They don't make em like they used to....

kaboom10

I remember when communication with a friend was 2 tin cans and some string. Now it's cell phones and texting or email. Well I do enjoy the internet and have adapted to the changing technology.

boduke0220

did the tin can and string **** really work? i wanted to believe it when i was younger but i couldnt just bring myself to believe it

Mackitraz

Haha, I'm 35 and I lived your comment! I think it's a good thing that people place emphasis on the health and well being of kids, because who is going to say that's a bad thing. But where did it turn into making kids into germ-vulnerable hand sanitizer worshipping couch potatos who won't go outside and play for fear of getting hurt!

I'm not going to say I had it rough, because I didn't, but I'll say I had it closer to right than you get now!

On the other hand, I'm going to have to disagree about most of the TV shows. I love MASH, but I used to try to sleep in a little more if I could just to avoid shows like Land of the Lost. And the endless string of 50's and 60's reruns wouldn't have been bad, if they had picked good shows where I lived, but something about Captain Kangaroo never caught my attention. I was a Superfriends junkie instead. And yes, it was not worth faking being sick just for the TV, because hours of Days of our lives, or Young and the Restless is just not what a young boy wants to see.

They say you always wish you had what kids have now when you were little. I say that's partially true. But the older I get, some of the time I say I'm glad I didn't have some of it too!

adrenalin

Ah the good ol' days. Stores were closed on Sundays. Then I remember all the discussions (more like arguments) about opening stores on Sundays. Saturday morning cartoons, I was plastered to the couch and wouldn't move until after lunch. You had to pick up the phone to talk to friends or walk over to their house. Ya, actually had to get up and go find out what your friends were doing. Kids are just too afraid to go out these days, but then again with all the TV channels we get now all that is on tv is news talking about how unsafe it is outside. What a crazy world we live in.

runningwild4.6

It's funny that no one has mentioned remote control.
I WAS the remote for my Dad, Change channel, volume and move rabbit ears for tuning in and the set was black and white, no color till I was a teen.
We only had 5 channels growing up and my parents didn't get cable till I was in High school. Get Smart, Gilligans Island, The Munster and Addams family along with Hogans Heros were our favs. In the evenings The Ed Sullivan and Red Skelton were must sees.
Now everything is remote controlled TV, DVD,VCR, (now a dinosaur it it's own right) Stereo, lighting and tons of other stuff now a days. Pong occurred when I was 13.
We were not allowed to stay in the house on nice days, not that we wanted to due to boredom setting in. In the summer, we were usually gone by 9 and didn't return until dinner. If you came in late, you didn't eat!
Our parents never knew where we were until we came home and we never locked our doors and windows at night. During the summer they remained open cause we didn't have air conditioning, that came in 1969!

In my day 4 years of college cost 10,000 for 4! Now it can be one semester!

Mike

Ranger

Well I'm over 30 or to be accurate 30 times 2. The one thing I tell people I remember and I know they think I'm lying is that I remember as a kid our doctor made housecalls and this was in Chicago.

x_man586

I am 27 and the only thing on your list that we had was a microwave. We had corded phones, atari, no caller id, no internet. They taught us to use the card catalog in elementary school.

runningwild4.6

Oh and having milk delivered directly to your door! Ours came on Mondays and Thursdays

jacostang

Yes, Yes! It was the best in glass gallon jars with paper caps and the milk man always left pints of chocolate milk for us kids! Tuesday and Fridays!!At least in SW Pennsylvania..

karman

In my day, we still had glass bottles at school, no milk cartons anywhere at all.

Louie

More, from another source:

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Born in the early 70's, we now see how our parents' house is 50 times more expensive than when they bought it and we realize that we'll be making payments on ours for the next 50 years.

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When we were kids we didn't text each other to come out and play, we used to whistle from the street. We didn't have Dolby Surround sound, so we'd all just shut up when the movie started. It's amazing that we're still alive: we rode our bikes without helmets or knee and elbow pads, we didn't have special child seats in our parents' cars, we didn't throw away the candy dropped on the floor and we didn't always wash our hands after playing with dogs and cats. We sometimes drank tap water and played outside, our parents never child-proofed the house and they used to send us to buy beer and cigarettes. Yet somehow, we seem to be just fine.