Things that disappeared, without you realising?

[jennymanara]

What things have disappeared in society, and you did not notice until much later?
So when I was young in every shopping street you would see old women wearing coloured polyester macs and headscarves. And then one day I suddenly realised that I had not seen a woman wearing this kind of clothing for a long time.
The same with plastic rainhoods. You used to see these for sale in newsagents, and elderly women would wear them when caught unaware by the rain. Again disappeared.

A to Zs
Loot
Bowls full of boxes of matches with bar/restaurant names on them
Sodastreams
Tasty Toastie
Peanut butter sandwiches in school lunch boxes
Neapolitan ice cream
Tea cosies
Phone boxes
Second post (oh happy days)
Ashtrays in cars
That back shelf you used to get in cars
Cocktail umbrellas
Quality Street toffee deluxe
Hostess trolleys
Apple bobbing
Buying the Evening Standard
Babycham
Wooden pencil boxes with those slidey covers
Memorising phone numbers
Brownie dresses
Half pennies
Tooty Frootys
Anti-macassars

I live in dread that someone is going to cancel fruit Club biscuits.

Sticks of hard liquorice and liquorice roots. Used to suck the first and chew the second. Lucky potatoes, the ones that had a little lucky charm in them.

Children playing in the street/outside...I work in the community & you never see it anymore. We used to play rounders & all sorts of games outside.

Undaunted77 you mean Fruit Clubs are still around?

Chocolate cigarettes from the sweet shop

You can still get Happy Shopper things - probably at the corner shop or newsagents. Booker Wholesalers owns the brand now.

I miss Creamola Foam and Macowans Highland Toffee. I think that both have been reissued under different names but....

That back shelf you used to get in cars

Parcel shelves are very much still a thing.

Beer mats in pubs. When did they disappear?
Orange Aero chocolate (with orange bubbles centre) or Orange KitKat.
I loved the milky orange taste...
White musk/ Patchouli scent in Body Shop. And those colourful fruity soaps from Body Shop. Anyone misses them like me?

Not read whole thread but
Traffic light lollies where you bit the chocolate off and the glass looking lolly under the choc had red, amber & green in
Chocolate mice
T bag tops
Games of conkers or marbles or those balls you hit together on a string
Wexmans

Old people reminiscing about the war.

I grew up in the 80s and it used to drive me crazy that old people used to talk all the time about the war. My stepfather died a few years back and he was a child in the war and still used to talk about rationing, swapping eggs for veg, walking miles and air raid shelters and now I wish I had recorded his stories.

They were a hardy generation.

Sugar mice with string tails, you can find them occasionally but they cost a fortune.

White chocolate skulls with the pink blood inside.

@Over600Ecalypts I now have a craving for Highland Toffee, I just googled and the company merged with another in 2005.

I’ve got a beermat I picked up in a pub I was in last week!!

Bath pearls!

FromThe Body Shop.

@Mac47 - I’ve received your PM, but it won’t let me reply to it! But I’d love to take you up on your offer, if I can get my address to you.

Older ladies wearing American Tan tights!

This thread has made me think of so many things that have 'disappeared'. As mentioned by others, Whimsies from Wade, second post and, yay! - green shield stamps!

But also:

• Wombles
• Phone cards. Your mum would load one up with credit and post it to you, in the hope you might ring her one day.
• 'Evette' make-up (available in Woolworths)
• Does anyone else remember the 'golly' badges and figurines you saved up your marmalade labels for?
• Transfers - you found these for free in the bottom of your cereal packet.
• "St Michael" - naff brand name meaning 'I bought this mass-produced polyester item in Marks & Spencer'
• Perfume-wise - (this could be a whole new thread) - definitely "Epris". We were all wearing Epris in the early 1980s. You were either an Epris person (youthful and interesting) or an Anais Anais person (pursey-lipped, dances round handbag). Except for me, I was wearing a perfume called "iT" (by Lentheric) - the advertising slogan for which was, "If you've got IT, flaunt IT".
• A conditioner in a plain, triangular-conical yellow bottle called "Cream Silk".
• Anyone else remember the sudden rise and fall in the 1980s of "Silkience" shampoo & conditioner?
• The metal rack you put across the bath to prop your book on. I suppose we all spent much longer in the bath in the 1970s. I definitely remember being trapped in the bath because the water had got so cold I was afraid of getting out & freezing my tits off altogether. And I would certainly never have the time to sit in a pool of lukewarm water and read most of War and Peace today.
• Inecto peach hair conditioner in a tube. Oh God! If I could only smell that stuff again!
• Transistor radios. Where are they now?
• In the late 1970s right up until 1980, virtually every girl of my acquaintance used to wear a tiny press-stud-flap leather purse hung round her neck on a thong. These were usually ornately tooled and brown, or brown with a green or red leather embellishment on the front. They disappeared en masse in 1981. I have no idea what I/they kept in them. Maybe a 50p piece. But if I had one today it'd be just the right size for a condom.
• Cats Cradles. Remember them? Not seen anyone do one lately.
• On the subject of wool, we used to hammer four nails into a wooden cotton reel and wind old wool round the nails. It then fed through the hole in the cotton reel and eventually formed a long woollen snake. When you finally ran out of wool / died of old age, you could roll your woolly 'snake' up and sew it together to make a round placemat. And to think that all young people have today is their tablets and mobile phones!
• Going out on a limb here... does anyone remember "Humphrey"? Humphrey was without shape or form, but as I recall he drank your milk using an unnaturally long red and white stripey straw. You had to "Watch out - Humphrey's about". I'm not proud to admit this, but I had the Humphrey sneakers - each one topped with a red and white pom-pom.
• Cresta lemonade - with the polar bear in sunglasses. "It's frothy man". Now I'm almost drowning in nostalgia... but one more thing to add. You used to go out on a Sunday and find all the shops closed. The streets were quiet - you almost expected to see tumbleweed rolling down the road. You could have heard a pin drop on the paving stones. Everywhere was silent and empty. If you needed anything you had to get to the one corner shop that was open until midday. No-one was around, because everyone was - um - in church? With family? No idea, but wherever they were, you knew that Sunday was special. I miss that.

Vesta Meal chicken supreme (loved it in the 70s) and dandelion & burdock fizzy drink!

Not read the whole thread so apologies if these have already been mentioned:
*paper straws. You could unroll them into one long curly strip of paper.
*greaseproof paper. It was used to wrap butter, meat, fish etc in the days before thin plastic. There must have been factories that made it that went out of business - and should come back into business.
*landlines
*ink. That stuff you put in fountain pens. (Fountain pens = those things you use to write with. Erm, handwriting...)

Article on "the green lady" which my gran also had a copy of.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.express.co.uk/news/uk/377113/Truth-about-the-green-lady/amp

I used reins for dd who's now 18 and even then it was a job tracking down a traditional design that wasn't wrist or rucksack type, much easier than bending to hold a toddlers hand or risking a bolt for the road! They were also better if child tripped you'd just grab em up and avoid skint knees and crying child, dd tripped a lot (now know probably worse than others due to disability)

"Preparing baby bottles in advance - apparently this is no longer a thing anymore." I've commented on a few baby feeding posts that I did this no problem with dd when I had to switch to bottle feeding when my milk dried due to a medical issue. Bf is great but so is FF and I honestly wonder if the supposed "advice" that you "can't" do this (really? With modern reliable fridges and sterilisers and high quality formula?) is actually at least partly due to trying to put women off ff because it makes it even more of a faff!

You can still get mixed pickles @ellesworth

"A lot of the household things mentioned on here you can still buy from the Junk Shop in town" yes we've a couple shops here that do a roaring trade by selling "older" products that are no longer available in "normal" shops. Bit daft those shopkeepers.

@pepperpot99
"£1.99 bottles of repulsive Leibfraumilsch from Safeway and other shops. That'd do me for a night when I was a student." For me when I was last a skint student it was lambrini, for dd (not a student but 18) it's echo falls.

The local "offies" have the best sweets round here!

"Nuns.
I actually saw one on the High Street yesterday and realised that it's been ages since I saw one." Ugh - come here there's hundreds! Usually at least 3 collecting for charity in town plus always at the supermarket collecting too. Never mind the Catholic Church has billions it could use for the poor, lets guilt other poor people into giving! Op they very much still dress in traditional habits too.

"Old women reading tea leaves" plenty of them here too and palm readers.

"Clear plastic bottles shaped like animals that were filled with brightly coloured bubble bath. Boots used to sell them and I thought they were the height of luxury!" This post made me think of matey bubble bath - remember that? Awful chemical stuff

"In the late 50s when we were about 10 or 11 we used to take the neighbour's baby out for a walk in their pram, one neighbour had twins, they were quite happy for us to take them round the block a couple of times! I think MNers would be calling Social Services these days, sadly." My dd is 18, I let the neighbours kids (who I knew and knew their parents) take her for walks to park etc once she was about 18 months/2 yo they were lovely with her and she adored them. Definitely something I did as a child too, we totally spoiled the babies and toddlers we took out with lots of attention and probably too many sweets too.

Sad this no longer happens but I can understand why

I remember spending hours doing "tricks" with tennis balls against the wall at the side of the house - not allowed when dad was home though as the noise drove him nuts. Also skipping "tricks", playing things like British bulldog well into teens... Happy memories.

"There are still tonnes of pubs where I live, but it's a bit more rural?" Same here

"Nobody I know wears a slip under a dress or a skirt. When did that happen?" My mum still does, I get her them as "real" shops no longer sell them so I buy them for her online as a sort of "novelty" birthday/Xmas gift (I get her proper gifts too)

"White roller boots with red or pink wheels and stopper." Thinking you're actually a mere youngster, I remember skates that you strapped onto your shoes (see pic)

"Wooden pencil boxes with those slidey covers" I loved these and managed to find one for dd when she started school which she also loved and was much admired by her classmates.

"Memorising phone numbers" I can still remember both grans, our home numbers for last 4 houses before where parents are now, best friends from last 3 schools I went phone numbers (2 of them thats still their parents numbers). I can also remember the number plates of parents previous 2 cars which they had for years! Can also remember certain client account numbers from 2 jobs.

"Undaunted77 you mean Fruit Clubs are still around?" They're on offer at sainsbury just now, I've just polished off a pack that arrived yesterday

"I miss Creamola Foam and Macowans Highland Toffee. I think that both have been reissued under different names but...." They're poor imitations not the same

I still have fountain pens but I am a bit of a stationery freak.

Paper straws are back and people are not liking.

Cats cradles - currently a craze in primary playgrounds here.

Sorry nrtft but Corona fizzy drinks especially cream soda and cherryade - no horrible sweetners in my day.

Cats cradle and french skipping and outdoor games where all the kids in the road would join in.
Neighbours calling round to use the phone cos yours was the only one in the street and they couldn’t be bothered to go to the telephone box round the corner
Telephone boxes!

Clickbeetles. They were everywhere 20 years ago. You knew they were in the room as you could hear them bouncing off things. I'm not sure if they have a different name but that's what I know them as.

Free car parks with no time limits. Everywhere either charges now or if you over stay by a millisecond you're hit with a fine. Oh and are pay and displays still going? I know they are in France but not sure here.
Just Seventeen magazine. It became J17 by the end of the 90s then vanished. For a lot of 90s teens it was the magazine that had everything. Same with Sugar magazine.

Irn Bru chewy bars. Never without on in my college years!
Mary Quant make up. The chemist in my Gran's village sold it. The packaging looked so classy.
Teletext. Loved playing Bamboozle!
Body Shop Vitamin E soap. That smell I loved!
Tinkerbell make up. The peel off nail varnish had a lovely smell to it and as an 80s child it made you feel so classy with your orange scented lip balm lipstick and peel off nail varnish.

@sashh what's the contraceptive pill got to do with thalidomide? I don't know of a connection?

If you are taking thalidomide and become pregnant you will, in all probability, give birth to a child who is disabled.

Therefore if you are taking thalidomide you should also be on the pill and ideally using another form of contraception.

But the RC church tells its followers not to use contraception, and in South America the RC church is powerful, so women take thalidomide and become pregnant, hence a new generation of 'thalidomide children'.

This is a phenomena that should have disappeared, instead it is on the rise.

A couple of years or so ago I saw a toddler on reins, proper old fashioned ones, I even chatted to the mum about them.

Feet icelollies. Toffos. Shells.

Oh yes, @angelfacecuti75 - funny feet ice creams

Does anyone remember the Lord Toffingham ice lollies with the toffee filling in the middle?

I still sew dd's gloves onto elastic! We loose them otherwise.

Sand pictures - that you'd flip over to get a "new" picture
Magic eye posters
Posters in general - Athene
Sachets of single use hair dye/toner
Skippets with the counter on - God they hurt if they crashed into your ankle at speed!
Sticker collections - used to be huge to get 'sets' of furries
Yoghurts (or mouses?) in Transylvanian cartoons with legs
Ying/yang earrings
Perms and shell-suits - this is a good thing
Photobooths where you got 4 individual pictures, not just 4 of the same. They had one in Flinders St in Australia back in the early 2000's but I've not seen one since. SO much more fun and better value for money.