June 10, 2018

Day 10: Nostalgic for the 80s and 90s (in photos)



Having been born in 1982 (or, as my kids like to remind me, "the 1900's"), I had the pleasure of growing up in the 80s and 90s. While we clearly have come a LONG way in terms of technology since then, there are so many things that I miss about the days when I was a kid. 

Side note: You know what I miss the most? Privacy. (Yes, I realize the irony of making this statement on the internet! haha) Remember when you could make stupid mistakes and there weren't people there to take pictures and videos with their phones and have them uploaded to social media before you could even bat an eye? Yeah. I miss that. Social media certainly has its place, but I am so thankful that I did most of my growing before the internet!

Here are a few other odd and surprising things that I miss about "the good old days":
  • Taking pictures with 35 mm film and feeling excited to get them developed
  • Having phone numbers memorized
  • Calling a friend, and when there was no answer, you always assumed she wasn't home instead of wondering if she just didn't want to talk to you
  • Watching my parents try to navigate our road trips to Florida with an atlas and a flashlight
  • Trying to remember the name of that one person on that one TV show you used to watch, and then enlisting the help of your friends' minds instead of their smart phones to figure it out
  • Circling all the things I wanted to buy in the Sears catalogue, and then totally forgetting about them in the 8-10 weeks it takes to order and ship
Since there is an app for pretty much everything now, we don't need film, address books, atlases, or catalogues. Life is certainly much more convenient! But here are some fun nostalgic pictures to remind me of my 80s/90s upbringing...































































































I'd love to hear some things that remind you of being a kid--what are some of your favorite things from your generation? 


37 comments:

  1. Such a fun list!! Thanks for putting this together. Do you remember nerfles?? This list reminded me of those!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I had to google Nerfles, but now that I saw the picture, I DO remember those!

      Delete
  2. My husband and I were just talking about this the other day. We are both techies and love the newest gadget, so I can't say I wish those kind of changes hadn't happened. lol But I think what I do miss is how life didn't seem quite so dangerous, for lack of a better word. You didn't have to teach kids to be wary of people, or what to do if a person approached them to come take a look at a puppy, etc. When I was a kid during the summer, we would leave the house as soon as my mother would let us out, which was as soon as the grass was dry. haha We would stand there looking out the window like we could see the dew evaporating. And then we would be off. Out running around in the woods, climbing trees, and never showing back up in our house until it was time to eat. Now they call that free range playing and there are articles about people who have social services called to report them for bad parenting. That was definitely a simpler time.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes! I think that everybody just trusted people more than they do now. The adults in my neighborhood all looked out for each other's kids. We used to play in the woods, walk on the train tracks, ride our bikes to the store, and stay out all day long (without cell phones! *gasp*) and just make sure we were home by dark. I would be way too nervous to let my kids have that much freedom (even with their cell phones!) but times have certainly changed.

      Delete
  3. Great collection...I was explaining to my son this morning how we used to take pictures and he just shook his head (he's 21). I saw Clearly Canadian recently at Cost Plus World Market and was so intrigued...definitely a nostalgia thing!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I used to ride my bike to the store almost every single day and buy a Clearly Canadian (the peach was my favorite). I'd love to try it again!

      Delete
  4. I love this post. I was born in '79. I LOLd at almost everything (especially Chuck E Cheese). I remember my LA Gear sneakers (the ones with a gagillion different colored shoe laces). Also, My Little Pony, Care Bears, and Strawberry Shortcake dolls.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hahaha, Chuck E Cheese was so creepy! Even when I've taken my kids there, I avoided the mascot like the plague!

      Delete
  5. Oh man, that Kool-Aid man pitcher! I totally forgot about that thing!! I was born in 1989 so I was obviously mostly a child of the 90's. This may sound silly, but I freaking miss those Philadelphia cheesecake snack bars. They were my jam! Every day after school, straight to the fridge for one of those bad boys. Lol. This was such a great list! Some great memories. Sometimes I really miss the simplicity of the good ol' days too :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Kool-Aid pitcher... I remember how awful the plastic was! The inner edge of it was sharp, and the whole thing was very cheap. But everyone had one of those back then. And I remember my mom making Kool-Aid with the one cup of sugar that it called for--thinking about that now is almost nauseating! I'm sure it still tastes delicious, but seeing that amount of sugar going into it is crazy!

      Delete
  6. Did you know Clearly Canadian is back?? I keep seeing ads in my fb feed saying that Meijer is selling it!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I saw that! I haven't tried it yet, but I'm going to keep an eye out for it. The peach flavor was my favorite!

      Delete
    2. I work in a school and saw a first grader with a bottle last week! Apparently most of the teachers had never heard of it (that made me feel old haha!).

      Delete
  7. My mom and I bought push-ups the other day! They still had the yellow, blue, and red spots. But they didn't taste the same. :(

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I discovered the same thing about pudding pops--remember those?! They would have an outer ice "shell" that would come off if you ate it just right. You can buy them again, but they aren't the same. And there is no shell. :(

      Delete
  8. Hey Katie! I was born in 1983 and pretty much all of the pictures you posted brought back fond memories and made me laugh. Thank you for that!

    I miss a lot of the fashion from the mid to late 90's (bell bottoms, shoes with high, chunky heels, etc.) as well as the music. I miss waiting for the newest music video from a band I liked to finally play on TV so that I could tape it with my VCR.

    I liked how 35mm cameras made people more selective when it came to taking pictures. Most often you only had 24 poses on that film, so you didn't go around taking pictures of anyone and anything. It had to be "worth it"! lol And yeah, I did unplug the phone when I wanted to be left alone. So easy!

    Oh! And I really miss record stores and CDs! I remember when I got my first Discman. It was so very cool! Cassettes were a hassle... You know when you wanted to hear a specific song and you had to fast forward and rewind back and forth until you got to the beginning of it? And then with CDs you could just select a track? How awesome was that? And booklets were so much nicer than the shi**y foldouts from cassettes. Yeah... I loved that. Now all the record stores I used to go to all the time have closed. MP3s are just not the same... I do like being able to have all of my music collection on a tiny device, instead of carrying a case that would hold at best 12 albums when I went on a trip, but still, I am nostalgic.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My current playlists are full of 90's music--it was the BEST!

      Delete
  9. Thank you for sharing this, even though I was born in 1994 I remember some of those things. Especially the computer related ones. :D

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We had that big old IBM computer, and I played the Donald Duck game on it. It was the coolest thing ever!

      Delete
  10. I'm about 10 years older than you, but most of those still take me back to childhood, too. I definitely remember the excitement of taking pictures on film and getting them developed. My parents always impressed on me that film wasn't cheap, so I should decide carefully about which pictures I took. I took that to heart so much that even if I got a bad picture (thumb in the way, out of focus, etc.), I would still put it in the picture album with my best guess about what was supposed to be in it! Ha. Can't waste those photos!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes! And because of that, my photos were so much more organized. Right now, I have nearly 30,000 pictures on my computer. That's insane! If I had been using film, I would probably only have less than a tenth of that, haha.

      Delete
  11. AnonymousJune 11, 2018

    LOL I was just having the discussion the other day. I would not have survived college if there was social media!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Right?! I'm nervous for my kids, haha

      Delete
  12. Ah, the good old days!

    I was actually craving Fun Fruits last week, but sadly nothing on the shelf at the store looked as good.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I've never come across fruit snacks as good as those were! I like the Motts ones now, but the texture is nothing like those Fun Fruits.

      Delete
  13. Oh wow. Thanks so much for this post. That parachute thing we did in gym brought such memories as well as that collect call thing LOL. I do wonder what that picture is that says AGE TEST. What is that?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I wondered if there were people who wouldn't know what it was, and then JERRY told me that he didn't know! It holds chalk, and you hold it sideways to draw evenly spaced horizontal lines on the chalkboard--to practice handwriting :) (I actually bought one of these with my allowance from the teacher's store because I loved playing school! hahahaha *nerd alert*)

      Delete
    2. It was also used in band to write music on the chalk board! :)

      Delete
  14. I LOVE nostalgia lists. Pinterest is awesome for fun "things you always had if you were an 80's girl" or similar topics. One of my most favorite gifts I received in the 80's was my Michael Jackson microphone! It was able to read a radio frequency on our home stereo, and I could legit sing into it an my voice would come out the speakers. Best. Christmas. Ever. Hahah! It also came with a cheap looking white shimmery glove. I was so cool. Lol!

    ReplyDelete
  15. We talk about the simplicity of life in our childhood...and that ‘era’. Sometimes it makes me want to give up my cellphone, computer, tablets and gizmos!

    ReplyDelete
  16. OMG KATIE!! I still have that kool aid pitcher!! It is amazing! Thanks for the wonderful trip down memory lane!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Great list! Some of these bring back great memories, and some I'd never seen before.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Donald Duck's Playground!! I played that on our Commodore 64!

    ReplyDelete
  19. I loved this list! I loved peach Clearly Canadian, too. My favorite day at school was computer lab day when we got to play Oregon Trail, LOL. We did not have gaming systems at my house, but I remember going to a friends and playing Duck Hunt on Nintendo. I remember early 90's fashion... layering your slouch socks and rolling your pants :)

    ReplyDelete
  20. the 70's were even better...

    ReplyDelete
  21. Ohmygosh I miss Planters Cheez Balls!!

    ReplyDelete
  22. I love this post! I was born in 1981 and this nostalgia list was great! I totally forgot about fun fruits but after seeing that picture I swear I can remember what they taste like! I remember getting dropped off at the mall or the movie theater for hours and it was no big deal. Now you would probably get arrested. And I probably made the "collect" phone call several times a week!

    ReplyDelete

I used to publish ALL comments (even the mean ones) but I recently chose not to publish those. I always welcome constructive comments/criticism, but there is no need for unnecessary rudeness/hate. But please--I love reading what you have to say! (This comment form is super finicky, so I apologize if you're unable to comment)

Featured Posts

Blog Archive