What happened to the big silver plastic key card for 18th birthdays?

[GlitterBicuits]

Does anyone else remember them? It was a cardboard box with a clear plastic front and a big silver plastic key with an 18 or 21 in the middle, usually on some silky fabric. Sometimes there was something like an artificial flower stuck on them as well.

Where have they gone?

I also had an 18th birthday glass champagne flute card from my parents next door neighbours! Same style display box

People used to write on the back of the boxes and give you these things instead of a birthday card

Does anyone remember them?
Have they died out entirely?

Remember the big boxes of chocolates with pictures on the front? Kittens, roses, thatched cottages etc?

@OldTinHat

You can still get them in the Card Factory! And the horseshoe for weddings! You can't beat a bit of cheese.

I was just going to ask about there! Good old Card Factory! 🤣

I remember being given a plastic/silver horseshoe outside the church by a well meaning colleague. I was genuinely baffled and in the melee of guests and confetti blurted out “what am I supposed to do with it?” 🤦‍♀️
I still feel awful about how ungrateful I must have seemed, nearly 25 years on!

I have an 18 one and a 21 one that my mum got me many years ago. She really wanted to get them and I can't bring myself to throw them out so they are on a corner shelf in my bedroom. I was thinking of putting the inside bit in a box frame to try to make them look nicer. They used to be sold in newsagents or in the market.

@User27aw

My mum had some that she kept from when she was 21. She is 70 I don't remember then being a thing when i was 21, I'm 47.

I'm 40, my brother 45 and we had them.

I think they were meant to represent the first steps to you beggaring off and getting your own place, here’s the key to your own door. Most young people aren’t doing that now until well into their 20’s. Maybe there popularity has declined as house prices have risen.

I'm 36 and my mum got me one for my 21st. I'm not sure why as surely she would know they are not my thing. Pretty sure it got binned a few year ago in a house move - which I felt awful about as it was waste and ungrateful! But I'd had enough of just sticking it in the wardrobe.

ginger that is spot on and made me laugh/frown. Now we’d need the key to be given around early 40s maybe OR with a tenancy and copies for the sharers attached.

I had some for my 18th and 21st and many horseshoes for my Wedding (I think they are still in the loft)

I had a horseshoe given to me at my wedding by my mum, she had made it herself from cardboard covered in lace and ribbon with pale blue roses sewn on. She thought the plastic ones looked ugly but a horseshoe was essential I've still got it hanging up on a shelf unit thingy in my front room, but I'm a bit sentimental.

@HeronLanyon

ginger that is spot on and made me laugh/frown. Now we’d need the key to be given around early 40s maybe OR with a tenancy and copies for the sharers attached.

Bit sad really. Even though they are pretty tacky.

Ooh some of them had a little wind up key in the back too for added impact!

I remember them but they're pointless either way - if you don't want to give an actual key then it's just an empty gesture, if you do want to give the key, then give an actual key, not a bit of plastic rubbish. Except by that age they'll have one already.
So completely useless...

I had a teddy and a champagne glass in a box. It was off my dear dad and he wrote a lovely verse on the back of the box.
That's lovely. And you can use the glass too.

@BarbaraofSeville

In a world where we're supposed to be reducing the use of plastic that sort of thing should be outlawed. Simply no point to it whatsoever.

Think about the 18 YOs you know, and how many of them will be disappointed not to receive one. Exactly zero, thus illustrating the need for such a monstrosity.

This was the age of “nothing new or frivolous” though. Don’t underestimate the power of a bit of crap just for the sake of it when everything else is useful, mended to within an inch if it’s life or second hand. And it’s not like now where secondhand means it’s still has labels on or been used for 6 months.

Yes they were tacky as fuck but they were of an age where kids never had a drink from a plastic bottle unless it was a birthday or Christmas.

One Christmas when a teen I got DM a large padded card in a box.
It came out every year while she lived.
The cards I got her the following Christmas’s were hidden away.
Only one card was suitable to be on display.
😀😀😀

I had an agreement at my wedding with a friend to pass over any plastic horseshoes so they could not feature in any photos! I did have a raw silk gown with very puffy sleeves though , gotta love the 80s!

My DM found mine recently (18 & 21) along with all my birthday cards etc.

The majority went in the recycling bin. As a child I really wanted to be given a horseshoe or wooden spoon as a bride. Didn't get either.

PIL recently gave DH a box full of this kind of tat. They said they didn't have room for it and were miffed when he said but you've had room for the last twenty three years.
It's currently residing in the garage

I remember aged about 10 going to the girl next doors house on Valentine's Day to marvel at the three foot card her Mums boyfriend had given her Mum and hoping future me would be lucky enough to snag a bloke who'd love me enough to say it with a gigantic card!

@Thewinterofdiscontent indeed. My great gran (born at the end of the nineteenth century) had lots of plastic flowers all over her house. Tacky as hell to me but she was brought up in abject poverty - back-to-back terrace in a northern mill town, oldest of 11 children, father who drank the bulk of his wages every week, secondhand coats remade into dresses… she loved bright new shiny things as an adult.

I was given a plastic horseshoe and a wooden spoon on my wedding day in 1990.

Think I binned them a few years later!

@Tempusfudgeit

I recently got my nephew a lovely, actual silver key on a red ribbon in a silk lined padded box for his 18th. I remember the tacky plastic ones!

A rubber johnny in a box with ‘break glass in case of emergency’ would have been more appropriate.

I had a little golden key on a necklace from Argos. Which I suppose is a bit more useful- I loved it

JarJarQ
😳🤣

I remember seeing them in gift shops as a kid and thinking it would be a cute thing to have as a memento. Then, I actually was given one about 10 years ago from a flatmate. However, she made a big deal of letting me know it was a pity gift because none of the other flatmates had gotten me anything (I had lived in the flat a month and had gone home to celebrate so wasn't expecting anything from them). It made me feel worse than if I hadn't received anything and as she ended up turning very nasty not long after, I have to wonder if she didn't do it intentionally. Not surprisingly I soon passed it on to a charity shop.

Maybe I'm bitter now but whenever I see them it just strikes me as the type of cheap plastic tat you give to someone when you don't know what else to give and don't want to spend a lot them. A handmade or high end one does sound nice though.