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

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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.

Having a tv remote and not just a long stick fashioned out of random things to change the tv channel

I remember when tomato juice was a starter, too.

Central heating. We had coal fire in living room and one bedroom until I was 11.

Oooh, lots, I think...

Soda Stream, definitely- my mum had an old fashioned soda syphon and would only allow that with the normal cheap squash we had. Although we were allowed to order fizzy drinks from the milkman if we used our pocket money to pay for it. Saturday mornings were very exciting then!

Shoes that weren't school shoes. When I was very young I had sparkly pumps for parties, but as a teenager I only had school shoes for going out.

The proper version of things- off the top of my head: the Grease album (I got the Pickwick Monkeys version, I think it was); 'jeans' (cotton trousers from Woolies were the best I got) and Weetabix (Shopper's Paradise version for us).

Also, whole biscuits- I'm one of 6 siblings and Mum would occasionally buy a box of broken biscuits from the cash and carry- I yearned for a whole pink or chocolate biscuit.

And ice cream, particularly Vienetta or neapolitan. They were dead fancy.

@ErrolTheDragon hahaha i actually know why I have this connotation. There was a really chubby boy in my class who would get walked to school by his grandad. Everyday without fail they would stop at the corner shop and he could pick any chocolate bar he wanted. I thought he was the richest boy on the planet. I always saw him munching his snickers bar at break. I was so jealous, I only ever tasted the small one from a box of celebrations.

Orangina as a special treat on holiday, in the glass bottle with a straw.

Haagen-daz ice cream.

Chocolate biscuits

New clothes for yourself if you were a younger sister

A shower cubicle, and not a shower over the bath. Very fancy indeed.

Now I have an ensuite, my young self would have been astonished!

Are there still cafés around that have that plastic box half full of orange (coloured?) juice with an actual orange it, sometimes a separate lemon or grapefruit one too? I was so curious about those as a child, but i always went for cola, which we never got at home.

What was the name of the roll of ice cream with a sponge and jam jacket?

Definitely fresh orange juice

The ice cream with sponge was artic roll.

@thir my sister went on a school day trip to France and brought me back an empty orangina bottle. I treasured it for years.

Child of the 70s.

Tin foil - my mother still won't have it in the house, too expensive!

Blue Tak, I always wanted it to put my posters up in my bedroom and was never allowed, I had to reuse the tiniest bit I had had for years.

Tippex.

Tippex pens even moreso.

I was born in 1986 and our house didn't have central heating... i remember going round to friends and thinking that radiators in their bedrooms was amazing 😂

Thank you @wibblewobbleboard now I'll be able to sleep tonight

Mum would buy a cardboard packet of vanilla icecream and slice it and we'd have it between wafers. When the ice-cream van came calling, that's what she gave us instead.

Ice cream from an ice-cream van would have been an incredible luxury.

Debenhams seemed really posh to me, eating out anywhere, vienetta, was convinced they were eating vienetta in stately homes a ross the land.

I went round a friends house and their mother proudly served Battenburg cake with ice cream and afterwards my friend told me they only ever had it on special occasions such as birthdays!

I guess the mum wanted to impress me so that I would tell my mother!

Lucozade - only when ill enough to be off school and then only served in a tiny glass!

Takeaways

Pizza hut 😁

Perhaps my childhood (born early ‘70s) was too middle class, but I don’t recall much of what’s been mentioned here as luxuries. I do remember, as a teenager, staying at a relatives in Cambridge before an interview for a place the following day and being served poached salmon for supper/dinner/tea (depending on where you’re from!) Now I thought that was luxury - we never had fresh salmon at home as kids. Yet my mum cooked most things from scratch, and we’d eat out fairly regularly (for the time, not compared to todays frequency!)

Proper pizza, the nearest we had was Findus French bread pizzas. I used to think having pizza delivered in a box (like in Happy Days) was the height of cool!

A shower. A friends Dad had one installed in their bath after a big promotion and we all went round to look at it.
Chinese food. We went to a Chinese restaurant once for a big celebration, it was heaven.

I would have killed for supermarket own brand neapolitan! We only ever had economy vanilla 😅