A chain of associations today dredged up a memory of Easter Seals. There were charity stamps you could buy and seal your envelopes with as a show of support. Usually the stamps featured an Easter Lily, here’s an old example.
I got to wondering if they were still a thing, and lo!, they are, though with a different approach. Given the decrease in physical letter mailings it makes sense they’ve changed their business model.
This memory in turned brought me around to S&H Greenstamps, which I also recall collecting and redeeming as a child. Those are indeed gone now.
So, what thing from your childhood are you surprised to find still exists today?
I’ve been collecting those from various bands on Bandcamp, even though I have nothing to play them on. Sometimes it’s just nice to have a physical artifact. And when cassette tape makes a comeback like vinyl (planned date: never), I’ll be sitting pretty.
I hate knowing that my LPs are worth real money now. It’s like the old Eubie Blake quip: “If I’d known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken better care of myself.”
Surprised to learn that you can still buy candy cigarettes. Though they are banned in places.
As a lad in the '60s I liked the bubble gum cigs that you blew into and a puff of powdered sugar would come out the end. Or the chalky white sticks with red tips, yum. Not really yum, but I ate 'em.
I wasn’t an impressionable kid, I knew reality from fantasy (what was cool in a movie -for example- might not be cool in real life), so pretend smoking didn’t lead to actual smoking. Still, discernment doesn’t seem to be a strength for other youngins, so I’d have expected them to have been banned or at least, shamed out of business.
The old promotional material however is a hoot and so, so wrong.
Thankfully, despite the prevalence of smartphones, mp3 players are still a thing. I say thankfully because my daughter was being mercilessly bullied on her school bus, so we got her an mp3 player to listen to in order to drown out the bullies. It worked too. She’s only 11 so taking a phone with her would be a bad plan, but if she messes up or loses an mp3 player, it’s not very expensive to replace anymore.
Those are the same types we bought as well. Never turned into an actual smoking habit for me either, but honestly smoking was so omnipresent that I don’t know how you’d disentangle all the contributing factors in those days anyway. It’s amazing any of us from that generation resisted.
I still have my VCR. I’m a sentimental nostalgist, after all. I have a lot of great movies on VHS still, not to mention more than a few MST3K episodes.
So, I got pleasantly surprised when I saw some really good movies making the rounds at garage sales, yard sales, library sales, what have you. I picked up And Justice For All and the complete run of The Phantom Creeps this way!
Hand-cranked car windows. I went out of my way to get a car with them, so I don’t have to deal with the inevitable electrical/motor failures again. My daughter sighs and looks at me like I’m a caveman whenever she has to use them.
Give me hand-cranked any day. The electricals always go out, and I’m left with a window I can never open, or one that will never roll up unless I pay for the privilege. Waste of money.
The last I heard of those they still had the red tip but the name was changed. They were called candy sticks or some such that ensured that they wouldn’t be sued for corrupting minors type deal.
My first car was an ancient '84 Ford LTD (this was around 1995). The power window worked going down but if I wanted it to go back up again, I had to hope I didn’t roll it all the way down (that required pliers) and push it up by hand.
