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The new Nintendo "Viva La Revolution" thread got me thinking back to my younger years. I want to make a small list of things that did not exist or at least you hardly ever see anymore. Let us be proud of our older ages in this thread and remind the younger that time flies and only takes us for the ride.
I remember the day when video games existed on casette tapes.
I remember the day when Star Wars first came to the theater.
I remember the day when you could only see movies on screen.
I rememer the day when Carter and Reagan had presidential debates.
I remember the long lines at the gas station.
I remember polyester and striped shirts.
I remember, and was glad when it ended, the disco era.
I remember learning how to tie my shoe and the first real books I ever read(without half pictures) was Chronicles of Narnia. Ok, this last one was not age specific.
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I remember Care Bears, Cabbage Patch Kids, Garbage Pail Kids, the Snorks, Gummy Bears, toys that didn't have blinking lights, buzzers and moving parts. I remember the last full solar eclipse and summers in the south that didn't break 110 degrees. I remember cigarette ads on billboards and on TV. I remember and love Joe Camel (damn, I guess those ads were aimed at kids). I remember analog dials on car stereos and tvs.
I'm not old, I'm just a child of the 80's. God it was a good time to be a kid.
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I remember Erector Sets that wouldn't pass a safety inspection by today's standards. (I swear you could cut a steak with those stamped-out metal pieces)
I remember seeing The Sound of Music and Fantasia in the theater. (Actually, I guess that should be "I remember when movies actually got re-released in theaters, sometimes years after their first run.)
I remember piling-in as many kids as the car would hold without any car seats.
I remember lap-only seat-belts in the front seat.
MPH - I remember when the possibility that Liberace might be gay was scandalous. Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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I remember the only way to download music was to record it off the radio on a cassette tape. I remember spending Saturdays calling the radio station to request a particular song to be played so I could add it to my collection.
It's strange to remember all the Cold War era entertainment that helped shape our collective conscience.Posts: 2445 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:I remember watching the Challenger explode live on TV with my entire elementary school class.
Me too. I remember going home stunned and re-watching the explosion all evening long. Wow. Flashback. I was also in elementary school.
Remember all of the horrible Challenger jokes that everyone seemed to know at the same time? Back then I was horrified and embarrassed I laughed at the jokes. Now I realize it was a way to deal with the trauma.
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I didn't watch it on TV, but I remember somebody joking to me in gym class that it had blown up. We joked that it was a splendid thing that there was now one less teacher in the world.
It wasn't until later that day that I learned that it really had happened.
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quote: quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I remember watching the Challenger explode live on TV with my entire elementary school class. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Me too. I remember going home stunned and re-watching the explosion all evening long. Wow. Flashback. I was also in elementary school.
I remember watching this over and over again on AFN when we were stationed in Germany.
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I even remember who I was standing next to when the shuttle exploded. Jeff Miller. I haven't seen or thought about that kid since 6th grade. weird.
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Not believing Darth Vader was Luke's father, It wasn't until RoJ came out that I believe it.
Regan getting shot. I was home sick and was mad because that was all they were showing on TV instead of game shows.
I was in 8th grade for the Challenger explosion, I did see it live because it was raining and we had lunch inside and the TV was on.
I remember not having parachute pants and a Michael Jackson zipper jacket because we didn't have the money. There are some benefits to not being upper middle class.
The first time Izod shirts were cool
Member's Only Jackets
Owning & wearing shorts that didn't come down to my knees as a kid. In middle school "Jams" became popular and thankfully short were never that short again.
Top Gun, the movie & sound track, Which lead to Ray Ban aviator glasses. (The love scene was the first time I noticed girls in that way)
Transformers
Even though I was a little too old to admit it. I liked Thundercats & G.I. Joe
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I remember drive-in movies when you would hide people in the trunk to save the loose change it would have cost to have them in the car.
I remember the shuttle Enterprise, flying around the country on the back of a 747, doing publicity and testing to prepare for the shuttles to come.
I remember the Bi-Centennial, especially the tall ships sailing into New York Harbor.
I remember President Ford, and too many of the clumsy president jokes.
I remember President Nixon resigning. I knew it was big, but I didn't know why.
I remember the Flintstone's in prime time.
I remember when Micheal Jackson was safer for children than Madonna.
I remember our first microwave oven and our first VCR both of which were approximately the same size, larger then our TV.
I remember Pong, 16 color graphics, 5 Meg hard drives, 8" floppy discs and each was a great advance in computer technology.
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The assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Watching the first moon landing
Watching the Beatles the first time they were on the Ed Sullivan Show
I remember watching the first episode of the Flintstones the first time it was broadcast (yes, in prime time)
I remember when Nikita Khrushchev visited the US - they wouldn't let him into Disneyland and my dad took me down to the train tracks to watch the train carrying him pass by on his way from L.A. to San Francisco (I was only about 2 at the time, but I remember it quite clearly)
I remember when a live satellite feed from the other side of the world was an event, not an everyday occurrence.
I remember going outside to watch the first US artificial satellite go over.
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I broke my arm the night that RFK was assassinated in LA. I remember watching the news coverage with ice packs on my arm waiting for my mother to come home to take me to the ER.
I was very put out when my mother called me in from playing to watch the moon landing in July 1969. I thought it was BORING!
I remember when "Gilligan's Island" and "Bewitched" switched from black and white to color.
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g'lord there are some fogies in here! I remember watching an out of date documentary on the history channel about your life. tee hee.
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I remember playing in the pit for a HS production of King and I, and hearing that President Kennedy had been shot. It was a student body preformance during the day. The audience didn't know, but the cast did. It was a tough final scene. I remember listening on the radio to the Republican convention when Ike was nominated. I remember listening to the world series over the intercom in elementary school. It was always the Yankees and Mantel always hit a home run.
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I remember Battlefield: Earth. God help me, I remember.
I remember getting a NES, as opposed to the atari my parents had.
I remember Alf. Remember Alf? Well he's back, and in Pog form!
Speaking of which, I remember pogs.
I remember y2k.
I remember my dad getting his first PC that ran windows. I remember wiping the hard drive 2 days after. He also got a scanner/printer (which, took me 5 minutes to realize the name of it- a xerox machine) for his home office. I remember xeroxing my face. Great fun. I now wear glasses.
I remember the first DVD I watched was The Matrix.
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Jem Thundercats Regan doing all these addresses. Didn't like him We are the World Golden Girls Berlin Wall crashing down "Let the Walls Come Down" Cold War Like a Prayer Garbage Pail Kids Cosby Show before it was Reruns Big 80s Hair
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The Day they used film projectors in classrooms. We watched the French movie about the red and blue balloons that fell in love.
The Day my mother told me you couldn't save things in cans because the lead would get into the food (until 1993, when it was banned)
The Day when you forgot all about a movie before it came out on VHS over a year later. Also the day movies came out for rent before you could buy them.
The day when going online meant going on AOL in my house. (my god we were probably talking to 3 other kids and 38 child molesters in the Nickelodean Chatroom ).
The Day when a Cd cost 30 dollars, and tapes were only 15.
The Day when headphones meant those awful black things that they now only use on airlines.
The Day you could first put a Cd in a computer, but you had to restart it first.
The Day my first teacher announced he had a class website (9th grade, 2000)
The Day my father's breath always smelled like fruit juice, because there was no way to test blood sugar at home, and he was always too high.
The Day a DVD player cost 1000 dollars (now 40)
The Day my mom brought home a color computer screen. (Rapture) Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Artemisia Tridentata: I remember listening on the radio to the Republican convention when Ike was nominated.
I remember listening to the world series over the intercom in elementary school. It was always the Yankees and Mantel always hit a home run.
Well, you're older than me, then, because Ike was nominated for the second time the day before I was born.
And I remember that in second grade, the Dodgers were in the series because we were allowed to have a tv in the classroom to watch one of the games.
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I remember back when TV stations used to have different half an hour shows instead of two back to back of the same shows.
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I remember having a satellite dish to get cable tv, before the channels got scrambled, and the dish was big enough that we made a fort out of the conical cover that it came in.
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I also remember when they had double features at theatres. Plus a cartoon. And nobody was standing there at intermission to run you out of the theatre if you wanted to sit and watch a movie again. I even remember when a movie theatre had one screen, not twelve or twenty or more.
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MTV used to play music. VH1 too. Now it's all reality shows. Used to be a time when there was just one or two of those. I am so old.
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I didn't know MTV didn't play videos any more. Just goes to show how out of it I am. On the other hand, I don't really care.
I remember when getting 2 1/2 stations with an antenna was the norm. I don't know if cable even existed back then, and satellite certainly did not.
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I remember the day that John Glenn went into space.
Granted, I was only alive the second time that he got shot up there, but, hey, it doesn't sound half bad.
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"The first home video I watched was Alien."
The first DVD I ever watched was also Alien. Only, the DVD was called something else, it was the size of a vinyl record, and it played in what looked like a jumbo sized early Nintendo flip top game player. I also remember when vinyl records were as numerous as casette tapes.
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Oh, you mean a laser disc? Yeah, my English teacher in high school had one and played a movie for us on one once.
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I hated them. They skipped constantly (or maybe it was just the two I ever saw). I think my experience with them, aside from the early high prices, jaded me against believing DVD's would ever amount to anything. Now I kick myself for ever buying movie videos.
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Nope, they skipped constantly. I suspect that's one of the reasons they didn't become popular. Too many problems with them.
That same teacher also had a smell-o-player. Which he brought to class. And played for us. Our favorite was Used Fermented Sweatsocks (TM). Posts: 8355 | Registered: Apr 2003
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: I remember when getting 2 1/2 stations with an antenna was the norm. I don't know if cable even existed back then, and satellite certainly did not.
Nah. I grew up in southern California. We always had seven stations (the three networks plus four local independent stations), even before PBS and even before cable.
But I do remember reading an article in TV guide, oh, must have been in the late sixties, early seventies, that predicted a couple of things. One was that it wouldn't be long before every one had "pay TV" (aka cable). At that time, the only places I knew that had cable TV were some motels and I thought they were crazy - who would want to pay for tv? The other thing was that music would regularly come along with pictures (videos?). I thought that one was interesting, but didn't hold out much hope.
Oh, and I also remember when VCRs first came out and there were no video rental stores yet (at least where I lived by then). But I worked at Fotomat (remember those?) and you could rent through them, but you had to pick the video out and order it and wait for a day or two for it to be delivered to the Fotomat booth to pick it up, and then you'd have to return it there. I think they might have had a choice of about thirty or forty movies, if that.
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I remember the DAY when a TV actually came with 13 channels all lined up with their own little indicator on the bottom of the set. Problem was they changed the standard broadcast frequencies and all the chanells became meaningless, so you had to buy a box to deal with it.
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quote:Originally posted by quidscribis: Nope, they skipped constantly. I suspect that's one of the reasons they didn't become popular. Too many problems with them.
Laser-Disks were also HUGE, and breakable. Plus a full length movie required you to flip the disk halfway through, and long movies had two such disks I think, so you can just forget it.
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Which he brought to class. And played for us. Our favorite was Used Fermented Sweatsocks (TM). 
