Friends and I had this discussion the other night and had fun. So thought I'd post it here. What cultural items do you recall from your youth that no longer exist? Some for me:

- Sambo's Restaurant (a racism legacy, they actually had one of these in Vegas up until 1978...the trademark was a little black boy holding a spear)
- Slinky's...they're such a wonderful toy
- Bob's Big Boy Restaurant, featured a little boy in checkerboard overalls holding a giant burger in the air
- Weebles, they wobble but they don't fall down
- Tang (the drink of astronauts) and "more Ovaltine please" as well as one that makes me laugh is Postem, which was coffee (without the actual coffee) for kids
- Saturday Morning Cartoons...Pink Panther, Jabberjaw, Hong Kong Phooey
- TV: Kolchak's The Night Stalker
- Standing in line two hours to see Star Wars on the one movie screen it was showing at in the entire city of Las Vegas
- Weathermen and sports casters who wore multi-colored sports coats on air

To name a few.

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JMS gets another English lesson:

Quote:

there is no "mostly unique;" thats like saying "sometimes always," its an oxymoron - its either one or the other.

The result:

Quote:

By the mid-19th century unique had developed a wider meaning, “not typical, unusual,” and it is in this wider sense that it is compared. The comparison of so-called absolutes in senses that are not absolute is standard in all varieties of speech and writing.

I think Tang still exists... but it's a shadow of it's old greatness.
Are slinkies gone now? That's a shame.
And Big Boy still exists here in Michigan... though the Bob was dropped, as was the Elias Brothers... now it's just Big Boy and they have the same fat kid in checkered pants!

What I remember from childhood (not quite so long ago as Rebellion's ) that is dead now...
Showbiz Pizza... kind of like Chuck E. Cheese but with a stand-up comic wolf and a redneck bear.
Thunder Road- a board game with cars shooting each other in a Mad Max sort of setting.
Mad Scientist toys and Mad Balls... In the '80's gross was in for young boys and the word "Mad" was in fashion
Slime Time- the wris(*)(*)(*)(*)ch equivalent of MadBalls... but do not have "Mad" in their name
"You Can't Do That on Television"... the show that went too far for a kid's show back then... tame by comparison to today's sickness!
The Nintendo Entertainment System- It's still the best!
"The Young Ones"- sick '80s British comedy
Funny Comedians... Used to watch Evening at the Improv and at least a couple comics on each show would be funny. Nowadays standup shows rarely even have one good laugh.
"The Kids in the Hall"... sick '80s Canadian comedy.
Headbanger's Ball- Believe it or not at one time MTV made a place for metal... on really late one night a week.
Chia Pets that were only available as sheep
The last wave of stupid Cold War era action movies
"Hammer" pants... If you don't know... you don't want to.
back when everyone was a "skater" or a "poser" (I was never sure where I fit in, not being a skater or ever pretending to be one).
Punk was not Top 40
Goth was intentionally hokey
Country was country

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

"Night Tracks" on TBS -- the first music video show; I think it predated MTV.
Apple II, TRS-80 and Commodore 64.
The Mullet haircut.
Styx, Men at Work, Steve Miller, Doobie Brothers, BeeGees and worse.
Green Slime -- a toy trash can filled with gooey plastic.
Hill Street Blues, Doctor Who, Knight Rider, Hogan's Heroes and Star Trek.
Red Dawn, Mad Max, Star Wars
Fancy dining meant going out to Red Lobster.
No cable, no Internet, no VCRs, no CDs, no DVDs. Just LPs and tapes.

Speedo swimsuits for boys. Yuck. I still have nightmare visions of my older brother in one that was too small.

"Car Wars", a predecessor to Java's Thunder Road, where you built armed and armored cars and battled it out in an area. Best design *ever* was the remote-controlled subcompact with a ramplate on the front and two heavy rockets rigged to a bumper trigger. Second best was the school bus with three turrets on top and armor on three sides. It spent the whole game driving around the wall of the arena, unarmored side to the wall, blasting anything that got within range.

"Champions", a super-hero role-playing game.

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

This is what I recall from my second decade of life:

Television turning into a giant Howard Stern show because of Bill Clinton's twisted personal life.

Bush seeming like a centrist and winning the electoral vote in 2000 by a small number of votes in Florida. Given what I now know, I wish Gore had won despite being no fan of the "creator of the Internet".

The September 11th attacks, of course. They temporarily turned me into a hawk until the situation in Iraq deteriorated.

The boy band craze at its peak (IOW, at its worst).

Sagging pants being fashionable (though I never wore them).

Britney Spears before she went insane. Yes, she had no talent then either, but she wasn't the freak show she is today.

Nelly Furtado before she sold out.

Gwen Stefani when she was part of No Doubt (an excellent band) rather than a solo abomination.

Jennifer Lopez and Ricky Martin destroying Latin music.

Girls going crazy over Leonardo DiCaprio because of Titanic, a movie I've never seen and don't care to see.

Pamela Anderson rather than Paris Hilton being the (if I can't say anything nice I won't say anything at all) of the day.

Mike Tyson's experiment in cannibalism.

The Reform Party falling apart (no loss).

Overall, I can't say I'm nostalgic. I never followed trends in toys or video games, so I can't comment on them. Wow! My above list has a rather mean tone, doesn't it? Sorry.

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"Some people complain about the system. The system is not good, so they can't do anything. It's an excuse. Freedom is in your heart." (Jin Xing)

Go-bots

Choose Your Own Adventure books

G.I. Joe Action Figures

Those little Muscle Men guys

Intellivision

AD&D (yeah, I used to play that, so did you) when you only had the books and your imagine instead of a graphics card to "see" the action. My two most memorable characters were Barry Bonecrusher (Fighter) and Gorgo the Amazing (Thief).

Waiting in line for over an hour to see "Big" with Tom Hanks.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out was all the rage on NES.

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LET ME SEE YOUR WAR FACE!!!

I used to have hundreds of those little buggers (as well as the cheap knock-off versions)!
We were easily amused back then. I had the wrestling ring for them... The big building-looking dude was practically invincible because his leg fit in snugly... The rest of them fell out instantly or were too oddly shaped to fit.

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

Raytri, did you have a Commodore VIC 20, with the tapes? I had that as well as the old Atari. And Pong, the first video game system.

Java, not sure if Hammer pants are anything like parachute pants, but if they are I know what you mean. I bought a pair once and my friends correctly ripped me a new one! They got worn once before they hit the trash! I also used to shop at a very 80's place called Chess King and owned a pair of Angel Flights, bell bottoms and all. And yeah you're right about my nostalgia items being a little older, not sure how I got to be 40! I don't feel it until I talk with someone about Saturday morning cartoons like Fat Albert or Honk Kong Phooey, which was Scatman Crothers...or who Scatman Crothers even is. When I get the quizical look THEN I feel old!

__________________
JMS gets another English lesson:

Quote:

there is no "mostly unique;" thats like saying "sometimes always," its an oxymoron - its either one or the other.

The result:

Quote:

By the mid-19th century unique had developed a wider meaning, “not typical, unusual,” and it is in this wider sense that it is compared. The comparison of so-called absolutes in senses that are not absolute is standard in all varieties of speech and writing.

Yep. We called them "Hammer" pants because of M.C. Hammer.

Fat Albert was still around, at least on reruns when I was really little. I remember Hong Kong Phooey from another vestige of my childhood: "The USA Cartoon Express", a daily dosage of decade or more-old Hannah Barbara cartoons. So I remember Hong Kong Phooey and even Jabber Jaws (which was like a rip-off of Scooby Doo, only with a shark that talked like Curly).

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"It's never over... BOY!"
The Tall Man, Phantasm III

We had Pong, and I had a friend who had a VIC 20. But as far as computer games, I had to rely on whatever I could scrounge up for my dad's Apple II.

Going back even earlier, I used to sit in my middle-school library and play various text adventure games on the mainframe. No monitor -- just a big dot-matrix printer. When you were done you could tear off the pages and take them home with you to re-read.

I also had a couple of those old, handheld sports games, where your player was an LED light. We had football and basketball. I was jealous of the folks who had the second edition football game, where you could pass the ball as well as run it.

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Scarred survivor of the April 2008 Mod War.

Slinkies are still around, but they're plastic, different colors, and they don't work as well as the original.

"Homemade" pizza that came in a box similar to macaroni and cheese.

Night Gallery.

Going a little further back:
Underdog.
Casper.
Mission Impossible.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Sunday night was Disney movie night.

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Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive. - Theodore Roosevelt