Things you thought were posh/exciting/unattainable as a child that are actually everyday items

[AlternativelyWired]

I'm just searching for scotch tape on Amazon ready for Christmas. It got me thinking how double sided sticky tape was but a dream back when I was little. Blue Peter used it all the time but it was something I'd never have. The same with play dough. I only ever had plasticine. Scotch tape was fancy too, we only ever had yellow sellotape. Ribera. I'm sure I'll think of others.

Individual Fruit Pies. DM used to get sometimes them if we were going on school trips as part of our packed lunch, not quite sure why as they weren't the easiest thing to eat neatly without a plate and cutlery.

When i was young i thought it was ever so posh people had little sinks for washing their feet, as I got older, I eventually found out they were called a bidet and they were not for washing your feet!

The arrival of the Christmas hamper. It was the highlight of the year when me and DSiS would unpack to see what delights we had - usually lots of tinned ham but always some nice biscuits and sweets. It was only as an adult that I reliased we got those because DM saved all year for it as it was the only way she could afford to treat us.

Meals out
Takeaways
Any food that wasn't wartime British in its origins. So no curries or pizzas or pasta.
Foreign holidays.
Avocado
Fish that wasn't in batter
Huge long list! My poor grown up children have had a childhood of me and DH uttering ooooo we didn't have pasta/avocado/sourdough/kiwis etc when we were children.

Salmon in a can here! We only ever had it at Xmas with cucumber!

Also deli Ham and any other type of fresh meat or fish on sandwiches to be fair , we had shipman’s paste, cheese, egg or corned beef sandwiches! Going to my grandmas on a Saturday lunchtime was luxury as she had ham from the butchers and I can still remember how amazing her sandwiches taste now

We had never heard of avocados in the early 80s and we definitely never went to restaurants, cafes or fast food places, mum cooked from scratch every day!

When I was around 9 or 10 we once went shopping for my birthday party dress in our local city and it was the first time I went into a McDonalds and was a huge treat and it was better and more exciting than my actual birthday party! I had a hamburger, small fries and strawberry milkshake which I have now if I ever go 😆

I cant think of anything I thought of as posh except abroard holidays and rocking horses.

The epitome of 'not posh' was a choc ice from the freeze when the ice cream man came round though lol.

Yes! I had Fruity marker pens and “puffy” stickers! My cousin and I had sticker albums - Barbie and My Little Pony- used to get them in packs from the newsagents and hope we didn’t already have the same ones.

Oh gosh, later on in the early 70s, I remember my mother going to a brand new supermarket for the first time ever, I think it was Sainsbury's, and coming back with a version of these in their individual boxes. They had them in apple and blackcurrant with those pebbly sort of sugar crystals on top. They were the best thing ever! 😀

And I have fond memories of my father ordering very small individual bottles of bitter lemon, ginger beer and tonic water specially for Christmas. We never had them at any other time of the year!

Going to the cafe in Littlewoods department store for a cake when out shopping with my mum. It always felt like a real treat, and wasn’t something we did often.

Ooh yes the Ice cream van, I was only allowed choc ice’s or those little ice pop’s covered in plastic that you push up ( if everyone knows what I mean) all my friends went to the van 😭

Any kind of prepacked food was exciting to me. My parents were smallholders and keen cooks and made EVERYTHING themselves. We got crisps, but that was about it.

We ate like kings, but I craved the thrill of an oven chip or Angel Delight

Tinned soup.
Growing up we always had those cheap, non-branded Cup-a-Soups for lunches and things. Never ever tinned soup, for some reason. Probably because it worked out cheaper to get the powdered stuff.

But I was blown away when I was 11 years old at a friend's house and her mum offered to make us tomato soup, and it came out of a tin, tasted completely different and much better. Imagine my horror when I later found out that soup could be homemade, with BITS in.

Vienetta - we used to get it as my birthday cake every year as a child

I believe you, mcdonalds has a wierd mandela effect for some people though.

My DH (and many friends) SWEAR down they went to Mcdonalds regularly all their life but DH was 9 when the first one opened in our part of the country so he litrally couldn't have unless they where travelling 5-6 hours (I swear hes mixing mcdonalds up with burger king which was always here).

We travelled 3 hours in the early 90s to go to a mcdonalds as a birthday treat, we litrally built a whole holiday around going to a mcdonalds lol.

It really was a rare and special thing back in the day and massively hyped up, now theres one a minutes drive away and sometime we can have mcdonalds 2-3 times a week if were feeling lazy.

At my friend's house, they had a jug of water and glasses on the dinner table, I used to think this was very posh, we just had plastic beakers of water.

Have just remembered that, when I was a young girl (early 80s) I was desperate to dress like a sort of fake Victorian child- hair ribbons and velvet and lace. I basically wanted to be the rich girl from Tom and the Water Babies. Meanwhile my mum wanted me to wear dungarees and have a pixie cut, so she told me that I couldn't have long hair because it cost more to cut at the hairdresser

@Johnnyripples
And me

those ice pops where deadly... papercuts on the edge of your mouth left you feeling like the joker lol.

Whereas the truth was that she thought the stuff I liked was tacky (which it probably was but I still like it).

Yes I remember vividly the lime green one!

God knows what was in those thick plastic covers. I hope the chemicals didn't leach in to the ice.

Lucozade … only available at the chemist and when bed bound.

Eating in restaurants. We never did when I was a child. Going on holiday abroad. I didn't know anyone who did that.

Lunchbox Aristocracy
-Capri Sun pouches (instead of Spar own brand weak orange squash in a leaky flask)
-Dairy Lee triangles
-Pepperami sticks
Basically anything that was advertised on telly, was a "proper brand" and came individually wrapped.

Stationery Superiority
-poster paint, card that wasn't the back of a cereal packet or any of the quality craft stuff they used on Hartbeat.

Dessert Decadence
-just calling it dessert instead of pudding
-served in special glasses, not cereal bowls
-mint garnish (were you supposed to eat it?)

As a rare treat on my 21st birthday (late 90s) I bought myself a sandwich (cheese & coleslaw, £1) on campus. I still find buying a sandwich makes me feel like I've had plovers eggs delivered, like in Brideshead Revisited.

I never saw nokias as posh.

I got my first cellnet in 95 long before the nokias and found the nokia crap in comparison (I had 3 and all of the broke, to this day one of the shittest phones I have owned).

Mobile phones werent exciting though as non of my friend had them and they had to be contantly topped up and couldnt be used for very long because they ate credit, it was just an 'emergancy' device for contacting parents really.

I did always want one of those mickey mouse rotary phones in my bedroom though so I could call my friends and chat in my bed... I feel like that was such a TV trope but I never knew anyone other than parents who actually had a house phone in their bedroom.

I remember thinking our cordless phone was cool too, I could go about 50 meters from the house with it and it still worked lol.

@ErrolTheDragon So was olive oil! Warmed on a teaspoon and massaged into ears to cure earache.

It had to be bought from a chemist.

45 years later I still associate it with agony 😅

Cooking with it just plain wrong.