Little things you miss about 70's/80s culture

[LonnieFisher]

I think you meant King Vitamin, not King Diamond. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Quisp, Quake, King Diamond, Kaboom

Rich colored crafted glassware
Black wrought iron & Spanish decor
Telephones
Mid-century styled lamps & furniture

Local radio & TV stations (and UHF channels)
Family dinners & neighborhood Bar-B-Qs
Mom & Pop downtown shops & services

Local toy stores and 5 & 10's
J. J. Newberry, Gemco, Zody's, Whitefront, Licorice Pizza
Sambo's, Jolly Roger, Straw Hat Pizza, Tastee Freeze, Naugles
Stop 'N Go, Alpha-Beta

Genuine swap meets

[Klosterheim]

Children's Palace sale isle of 90 cent action figures.

Farm auctions, good ones.

Gauntlet video arcade machine.

Good air hockey table.

Having a bunch of WWII veterans around.

Haunted boat ride.

Hills At-At display.

Large and good flea-markets.

Large vehicles and equipment.

Leftover toys from the 1960's.

Montgomery Wards.

Paying a dime to use the toilet inside Murphy's.

Proper station wagons.

Scooby-Doo. (stuffed animal)

Starlog.

Strobe light.

Things expected to be around forever, 70's/80's clothing etc.

Video arcade machine auctions.

Weird toy assortments.

[Werewolf]

Children's Palace

Yeah, I miss Children's Palace and Wards too.

[cjefferys]

I think you meant King Vitamin, not King Diamond. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Heh, yeah, King Diamond might be a part of 80's culture, but he's still going strong! (and he's not a breakfast cereal )

[Marvelmania]

Wow hadn't thought about Hills in a long long time. They went hand in hand here with Woolworths as the place for toys. Someone mentioned Kresges which we only had K-Mart here. Same thing I guess but one thing I don't miss was being so scared to go to the bathroom there because of a humor of someone using a ax to cut off little boy parts LOL. Anyone else hear of or remember that rumor? No matter how bad I had to go I always held it lol.

[Dark Shadow]

I think you meant King Vitamin, not King Diamond. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Heh, yeah, King Diamond might be a part of 80's culture, but he's still going strong! (and he's not a breakfast cereal )

What the "H" was going on with my fingers?

That's a bizarre typo on my part. Definitely Vitamin. Never got into Diamond. Glad to hear he's still bringin' it for those who are though.

[Figuremod73]

I mostly miss the simplicity of being a kid in the '80s. I'm glad that I grew up in a very small town. Riding bicycles, going to the videostore, hoping one of the stores carried certain magazines and comics. School wasn't even as bad as I made it out to be. My close relatives were still alive too.

Biggest drawback for me during that time was little spending money.

My grandpa ALWAYS got King Vitamin. It was a very good cereal.

[jwyblejr]

Toy displays are another one. Yeah Target still does one with Legos but I miss the ones they use to have with the old Star Wars figures. Nichols use to have theirs set up on the way to the toy aisle and have them surrounded with bins full of figures. Fays Drugs use to take stuff like the TIE Fighter and X-Wing and have them hanging from the ceiling.

[Werewolf]

Toy displays are another one.

Yes!

Also toy box art.

Remember all the awesome hand painted art toys packages used to have? Mad Monsters, GI JOE Adventure Team and RAH, MOTU etc. Things of beauty. You just don't see that anymore. And not just the painted art too. Packages just used to really POP on the store shelves. Hasbro has never topped or created anything as iconic or memorable as Kenner's original SW card backs and boxes.

[Klosterheim]

Yeah, Kenner was absolute genius and creativity.

And, they knew all about imagination, in that they could make a subtle playset, and
the children would imagine everything else around it.

---------------

Another thing about Hills, when you kept going closer and closer to a big city, the Hills stores would have better toys, and a greater assortment of toys.

[HardyGirl]

Yes!

Also toy box art.

Remember all the awesome hand painted art toys packages used to have? Mad Monsters, GI JOE Adventure Team and RAH, MOTU etc. Things of beauty. You just don't see that anymore. And not just the painted art too. Packages just used to really POP on the store shelves. Hasbro has never topped or created anything as iconic or memorable as Kenner's original SW card backs and boxes.

And the Action Jackson art. I used to wish I could get trading cards of those. And while we're on the subject, I miss bubblegum cards!

[tmthor]

Also we had a lot of playsets for our action figures

[apes3978]

tv stations signing off at night...

That's one thing I'll never miss... I've always been a night-owl, and hated when TV would go off the air (no cable where I lived)... Luckily an independent UHF station came along and they broadcast all night, and there was a local affiliate that would play all night movies on weekends after the network programs were over...

[ZMOQ]

• Gold Key comics
• Actually, any 70's era comic that had classic illustration styles and self-contained stories
• Candy that came in little functional plastic coffins and plastic garbage cans
• Independent toy stores
• Spooky Kooky jigglers
• Creepy Crawlers that had the heavy metal molds
• Action figures that had real cloth clothing (e.g. Action Jackson)
• Disneyland of the 70's and the awesome souvenirs they used to sell there
• The heyday of 1/16 scale wooden stagecoach, covered wagon kits, with carved wooden mule and oxen teams
• The original Kiss Army (lots of stuff for your $5!)
• Bands like Kiss, the Eagles, Kansas, Fleetwood Mac, Boston, Peter Frampton, Journey, Heart, Styx, Cheap Trick in their prime (not old dudes with a bunch of substitute players)
• Gumball machines that used to dispense prizes (sometimes) for 5 cents, or always for 10 cents or dispensing the truly cool prizes for 25 cents
• Actually being able to buy penny candy for a penny
• Cracker Jack prizes when they were great... like plastic pinball machines, or assemble-it-yourself telescopes
• The model kits! Aurora Monster Scenes, MPC Pirates of the Caribbean, Haunted Mansion... all for $2 or $3 each!!!!
  

[Werewolf]

I miss TV shows having self contained episodes.

With Star Trek, Six Million Dollar Man, Battlestar Galactica, etc. every week you would get a brand new adventure. Yeah, there was the occasional two parter but other than that you could expect a brand new story the next week.

Now everything is like soap opera that drags single storylines over multiple seasons and if you miss one episode, you are totally out of the loop. I just don't have the time or patience for that.