Fads when you were growing up...
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Talking of the Coca Cola and Fanta Yo-Yo's - This reminds me of when Hacky Sacks were big as well, there was trend to collect a series which had little character faces - I cant remember who produced them though (late eighties).
Caporegime
Not sure if it was just my school or area but Kickers Shoes were massive. If you didn't have a pair you were basically scum but that was mostly secondary. As everyone had to wear uniform the hierarchy in school was determined by shoes.
Also recreating gladiators and power rangers. We would recreate "gauntlet" from gladiators using school bags to create walls down either side. It all ended up getting banned as kids ended up with big injuries. In the summer we used to play football but basically all the school on the field. I know for fact that kind of thing is banned now as well as bulldog because my daughter told me
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I mostly remember from primary school the big ones being tamagotchi and thunderbirds toys. I think you needed to collect stamps from cornflakes then send off for them. Tracey island was next to impossible to get for Christmas so everyone made one thanks to Anthea Turner and Blue Peter. Peak civilization right there.
Blue Peter would have been taken to court in today's world and most likely sued because of some potential child endangerment by using flour paste.
Football stickers have stood the test of time however as I know that is still going strong.
Also recreating gladiators and power rangers. We would recreate "gauntlet" from gladiators using school bags to create walls down either side. It all ended up getting banned as kids ended up with big injuries. In the summer we used to play football but basically all the school on the field. I know for fact that kind of thing is banned now as well as bulldog because my daughter told me
.I mostly remember from primary school the big ones being tamagotchi and thunderbirds toys. I think you needed to collect stamps from cornflakes then send off for them. Tracey island was next to impossible to get for Christmas so everyone made one thanks to Anthea Turner and Blue Peter. Peak civilization right there.
Blue Peter would have been taken to court in today's world and most likely sued because of some potential child endangerment by using flour paste.
Football stickers have stood the test of time however as I know that is still going strong.
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Soldato
Acid House smiley faces.
Caporegime
Dr Pepper and Vimto but mixed into the same glass.
Come at me bro.
Come at me bro.
Did anyone else make 'cap bangers'?
Take a roll of caps, score down the middle down the length, fold down the length so the powder was on the inside. Fold end on end down to an inch or so. Wrap in strong tape with a rubber band as a fuse.
They were surprisingly effective if you got them right.
Take a roll of caps, score down the middle down the length, fold down the length so the powder was on the inside. Fold end on end down to an inch or so. Wrap in strong tape with a rubber band as a fuse.
They were surprisingly effective if you got them right.
Ocean pacific t shirts
British Knights trainers
Troop trackies
Baggy jeans with hideous prints on the legs like the flintstones
Yeah, the Flintstones being cool was something I kinda remember, around the ice wash jeans and shell suits era of my fashion evolution I think.
Man of Honour
Football stickers and albums...I have the name "Figurini Panini" in my head for them, but I'm not sure about that. They were essentially a pre-internet form of loot box - you paid money for a pack in the hope of getting a rare one.
Jawbreakers. Big hard sweets, basically.
Dinosour (sic) eggs, which were the same sort of thing as jawbreakers but which tasted bad. Deliberately - they were very sour, hence the name.
Mixing various fizzy pop. Which always came out brown and tasted crap, but we did it anyway because reasons.
Slush puppies. Crushed ice with brightly coloured flavoured liquid. Probably with a bazillion additives that might or might not have been harmful.
Ice pops. Tubes of soft drink that were intended to be frozen. Often blue flavoured. Is blue a flavour? It is with enough additives!
Things attached to the spokes of wheels on bicycles to make them sound like an engine. They didn't really, unsurprisingly. They were like fake "turbo whistles" for chavvy cars, only older and worse. I disdained them for being fake.
Knives. No, seriously. When I was a boy, most boys carried knives. Usually folding and locking knives that I'm pretty sure would be illegal nowadays. Bonus points for size and bonus points if it was a multitool (always called "Swiss army knife", regardless of the origin) and had half a dozen things you'd never use on it. Because a city boy in England in the 1970s really needed a tool for removing stones from a horse's hoof. Not that he'd ever even seen a horse, but reasons.
Bicycles. Plus, of course, stupidly dangerous things done on bicycles. How many people can you jump over without landing on any of them? Let's find out! Can you wheelie all the way down the high street, weaving through traffic? One local boy did, which made him a hero. I still remember his name. If you dig up enough dirt, can you build a ramp that will make it possible for you to jump this river on a bike? I tried. I failed. Somehow, I neither badly injured myself nor drowned. I couldn't swim, but hey, how was that of any relevance to jumping a river on a bike? I was as dumb as a bag of rocks. One of the reasons I'm glad I don't have children is that I would go mad worrying they were as dumb as I was at their age.
Jawbreakers. Big hard sweets, basically.
Dinosour (sic) eggs, which were the same sort of thing as jawbreakers but which tasted bad. Deliberately - they were very sour, hence the name.
Mixing various fizzy pop. Which always came out brown and tasted crap, but we did it anyway because reasons.
Slush puppies. Crushed ice with brightly coloured flavoured liquid. Probably with a bazillion additives that might or might not have been harmful.
Ice pops. Tubes of soft drink that were intended to be frozen. Often blue flavoured. Is blue a flavour? It is with enough additives!
Things attached to the spokes of wheels on bicycles to make them sound like an engine. They didn't really, unsurprisingly. They were like fake "turbo whistles" for chavvy cars, only older and worse. I disdained them for being fake.
Knives. No, seriously. When I was a boy, most boys carried knives. Usually folding and locking knives that I'm pretty sure would be illegal nowadays. Bonus points for size and bonus points if it was a multitool (always called "Swiss army knife", regardless of the origin) and had half a dozen things you'd never use on it. Because a city boy in England in the 1970s really needed a tool for removing stones from a horse's hoof. Not that he'd ever even seen a horse, but reasons.
Bicycles. Plus, of course, stupidly dangerous things done on bicycles. How many people can you jump over without landing on any of them? Let's find out! Can you wheelie all the way down the high street, weaving through traffic? One local boy did, which made him a hero. I still remember his name. If you dig up enough dirt, can you build a ramp that will make it possible for you to jump this river on a bike? I tried. I failed. Somehow, I neither badly injured myself nor drowned. I couldn't swim, but hey, how was that of any relevance to jumping a river on a bike? I was as dumb as a bag of rocks. One of the reasons I'm glad I don't have children is that I would go mad worrying they were as dumb as I was at their age.
-Shell Suits, when helping my dad clear out some stuff in his house I actually found an old photo of me stood in a power pose wearing a Gola one, jesus christ!
-Top Trumps, which to be fair I think is actually quite good and even educational at times (I learned a fair bit about aircraft from them)
-Casio (etc) watches with as many functions as possible like calculator, memory bank, countdown timer, stop watch etc. I remember we used to spend ages playing a game where you had to stop the stop watch as close to 10.00s as possible, or some variant thereof
-Silly little phrases that we invented like "Bearded" that meant you thought someone was making something up (sometimes accompanied by stroking your chin), "Alright MacPherson?" as a greeting / "MacPersons!" as a general word for a group of people (no idea where MacPherson came from, nobody was called that iirc) etc
-Collecting various forms of stationary (these little animal rubbers, empty ink cartridges)
-Top Trumps, which to be fair I think is actually quite good and even educational at times (I learned a fair bit about aircraft from them)
-Casio (etc) watches with as many functions as possible like calculator, memory bank, countdown timer, stop watch etc. I remember we used to spend ages playing a game where you had to stop the stop watch as close to 10.00s as possible, or some variant thereof
-Silly little phrases that we invented like "Bearded" that meant you thought someone was making something up (sometimes accompanied by stroking your chin), "Alright MacPherson?" as a greeting / "MacPersons!" as a general word for a group of people (no idea where MacPherson came from, nobody was called that iirc) etc
-Collecting various forms of stationary (these little animal rubbers, empty ink cartridges)
Only ever at my Nan’s but orange squash and Sainsbury’s own brand cola. I can still taste it in my memory now but I probably haven’t had it for 20 years.
@Angilion crikey, Knives, I had a locking knife, must have been 4" - No idea where it is now, I think it will turn up one day at my parents.
We would go to the local woods cut down stuff, make spears etc. No one batted an eyelid, all boy scout stuff. Its true what you say, my mate had the Rambo style with a compass in the handle, if you got caught with it now...
We would go to the local woods cut down stuff, make spears etc. No one batted an eyelid, all boy scout stuff. Its true what you say, my mate had the Rambo style with a compass in the handle, if you got caught with it now...
Soldato
Soldato
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Marbles, conkers, later Doc Martens. For some reason there was a ridiculous craze for them you were a nobody unless you had a pair of DM's. 6 eyelet boots were ok but the real heroes had the 10. No idea why but they were the epitome of cool. Some things came and went there was a craze for 60's style MOD outfits, coats with RAF roundal type targets on the back that came and went but DM's never went out of fashion.
Football cards yeah. Everyone had the same ones and everyone wanted a few that were impossible to get hold of. I mean they didn't exist or were ridiculously rare I don't think I ever saw one never mind got my hands on one.
I can just about remember the rag and bone man it was at my grandma's house when I was very young he had a hand bell he rung at intervals while his horse clopped along the street nan said "oh its the rag and bone help me with this will you" we manhandled something or other onto the back of his cart which he stopped for and he went off on his doleful way again, never saw him or any rag 'n' bone man ever again. Even then he seemed to have stepped out of another era.
Football cards yeah. Everyone had the same ones and everyone wanted a few that were impossible to get hold of. I mean they didn't exist or were ridiculously rare I don't think I ever saw one never mind got my hands on one.
I can just about remember the rag and bone man it was at my grandma's house when I was very young he had a hand bell he rung at intervals while his horse clopped along the street nan said "oh its the rag and bone help me with this will you" we manhandled something or other onto the back of his cart which he stopped for and he went off on his doleful way again, never saw him or any rag 'n' bone man ever again. Even then he seemed to have stepped out of another era.
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I racked my brains, and I don’t know if this is acceptable as a fad, but when I was 11 or 12 we used to scrape brick dust from a wall with an old large penny, and scour the dust into the coin with our thumbs, it removed all the accumulated dirt etc., and the coin shone as if it had just been minted.
Another way of achieving the same result, was to put a small amount of brown sauce on the coin, and rub that in.
If we felt like living dangerously, we’d put a halfpenny on a railway line, and a train would flatten it into the shape of a penny.
Soldato
Subbuteo
Draw string bags
Nike Total 90 (that silver scorpion ball)
Freestyle football (there's a trend here)
Jabulani
Draw string bags
Nike Total 90 (that silver scorpion ball)
Freestyle football (there's a trend here)
Jabulani
Soldato
We must be close to the same age.
I'd add the popper tracksuit bottoms to that list but yeah they are the main ones for me also.