Redartz: Many of the toys, snacks, music, and comics we loved in the Bronze age have remained highly regarded, in some cases even increased in regard (consider the effect of the films on the comics upon which they are based). On the other hand, some things haven't fared so well.
There are many examples, and many reasons for a given thing to 'fall out of favor'. Anyone remember candy
cigarettes? Once common at drug store candy counters and in Halloween
trick-or-treat bags, those sweet sticks fell victim to the plummeting
public perception of real cigarettes, and concern that they might make
them more appealing to children. Same story with bubble gum cigars;
another former childhood staple that isn't seen so much anymore.
Toys- how about 'klackers', those heavy hard plastic balls connected by a string? I heard they went out due to parental concerns about hand injuries. Then there was Mattel's "Thingmaker", you recall, Creepy Crawlers and such? You wouldn't find an open electric hot plate toy today for kids.
As for music, recently Colin Jones enlightened me about the fate of Gary Glitter. Apparently his music isn't heard much anymore. Kind of the same story as with Bill Cosby and the Cosby show on television (but what about "I Spy"- never hear anything much about his appearance on that show).
Comics? Perhaps fewer examples come to mind, but certain genres definitely suffered a loss of attention (westerns, romance, even horror by the late 70's).
So, can you think of other examples of once-popular phenomena that got swept off the shelf of public approval? Were there books or songs that garnered negative connotations that you liked? And if so, would you still read/listen to them anyway? Did you have any of those 'potentially hazardous' toys (and there were surely many others)? Chew the fat today and discuss the 'fallen' Bronze age...
8 comments:
Red, I'm rather surprised you'd even heard of Gary Glitter - did he have any U.S. chart success?
The first thing that came to mind was sweet cigarettes but I seriously doubt they encouraged anybody to smoke!
For decades Robertson's jam had a "golliwog" on the label but it was deemed to be a racist caricature and was eventually dropped. There were also golliwog soft toys which were as popular as teddy bears but they have disappeared too.
The label for Camp coffee showed a kilt-wearing Scottish soldier being served by an Indian Sikh (an imaginary scene from British Empire times) but it implied the Indian was subservient to the white man so nowadays the two figures drink their coffee together.
PG Tips tea had TV ads featuring a "family" of chimpanzees wearing clothes and acting out amusing scenes and drinking cups of PG Tips but the ads were eventually dropped due to animal rights concerns.
I think they still make Chemistry Sets but I sure don’t see them as mainstream anymore. As young kids we played with Bunsen burners, sulfur, phosphorous and all the rest. Not sure that activity unsupervised is smiled upon today.
Also I am sure cap guns have seen a marked decline in sales. On a related note, I’m sure anything that shoots projectiles has been greatly reduced in both sales and the projectile force. I seem to remember having many welts and red marks from our youthful shenanigans. It was kind of like the old SNL skit with Dan Akroyd pushing the Bag o Glass as a toy!
There also used to be a gun - Big League Chew - that imitated the pouch and shredded nature of chewing tobacco in the form of a gum. I wonder if that still exists.
There's are a couple of decent candy shops in the next town over and when I visit I make sure to pick up a box of candy cigarettes (20 packs). I used to put it on my desk on offer instead of the usual bowl of candy, and the reaction was generally 'I remember this, they still make these?' and then a sheepish 'Can I really have one?' Heck yeah, we're adults. We can have as many as we want!
I remember the Thingmaker, too. Or rather, I remember its products. I thought that was way cool, but my parents didn't agree, so I had to rely on a friend's to see if it matched the ads.
And for hazardous toys, my grandmother bought a set of lawn darts for us for when my cousins would visit. We must have been 8 or 9? That was great fun to see a heavy, pointy steel dart falling from as high as you could throw it to wherever it landed. But seriously, even then as a kid, how crazy did you have to be not to know those things could hurt you and to be careful? Maybe our folks just felt we could own up to that responsibility back then.
And the most egregious example of something falling to public disapproval had to be the restaurant chain, Sambo's. Growing up in Wisconsin, I knew it wasn't a nice thing to say, but had absolutely no knowledge of its history or that there was a book, which some people (like my ex-girlfriend) actually remembered fondly. I never went there, and the name soon changed, but it is kinda WTF, in retrospect.
Ohhh -Lawn Darts!!! Stupid us - we used to throw them high in the air and try to stay below them as long as possible and jump out of the way at the last minute. Luckily none of us were hurt or killed. Just adolescent dumbness on full display!! We also had bottle rocket wars ...so there you go!
I’m smiling when I write this so I am still adolescentally challenged. Go figure!
Toy guns that looked like real guns. You won't find those much anymore. Now they are usually bright orange colored and as fake looking as possible.
Ahhh ... memories of the many things I shouldn't have lived to have memories of! I owned most of things being discussed and more and am still alive and whole to reminisce on now.
I had many of the ThingMaker Machines and remember them fondly. The first was probably Creepy Crawlies. Even though my sister's Easy-Bake Oven used a 15 watt bulb to bake things, my electrically charged maker baked those Goop-filled metal molds at a much higher temperature. So much fun to fill the molds with various colored Goop and even glow-in-the-dark Goop.
I also had the Mini-Dragon Maker version, which was tons of imaginative fun. The craziest was the Incredible-Edibles Maker, which used Goop that you could even eat! I'm sure that was REAL healthy!
My favorite version would've been the Peanuts Cartoon Maker. I made 3D comic strips, Mother's Day cards and lots more with perfectly on-model versions of Charles Schulz's characters. And I don't think I ever burned myself once!
I bought a set of the Click-Clack Clackers while visiting cousins in California. They were banned from California soon after, but I don't think they were ever banned back here in Missouri. But we also had BB Guns, Wrist Rocket Launchers (basically a wrist-loaded slingshot firing ballbearings!) and, yes, Jarts (the metal tipped lawn darts), which I'm sure we would fling from the front yard over the house to the friends eagerly waiting in the backyard!
At this time of year, we bought lots of different fireworks for both daytime and nighttime explosions. I knew kids that got hurt, but I never had any problems. We even had roman candle & bottle rocket fights, armed Captain America style with trash can lids to fend off the approaching fireballs! It seems crazy to me that 'sparklers' are the surviving fireworks, since those reach extremely high temperatures and got many kids burned through the years.
It seems that every day there are books being deemed offensive to those unwilling to put them into historical context. Just this morning a library organization renamed the Laura Ingalls Wilder award, because some might find it offensive for older gender roles of its day.
I'm glad I grew up in the '60s & '70s!
Colin J- Gary Glitter was sort of a one-hit wonder here in the states; he charted with "Rock and Roll", but as far as I recall, had no other standout US hits.
Marti- yes, chemistry sets! I had one too; heaven knows what dubious concoctions my brother and I cooked up with it. And funny you should mention "Big League Chew"; just yesterday I was out shopping with my wife and saw a display of that gum on a counter. Almost bought a pack just for kicks.
Selenarch- oh yeah, lawn darts. And not just lawn darts, regular darts! They're still commonly available, but my friends and I played many dart games with pretty lousy aim, and more than a few holes in the walls and furnishings.
Disneymarvel- you could have lived in our neighborhood! We too played bottle rocket wars, and various other questionable diversions. It's a wonder we lived to blog about it...
Yeah, lawn darts and candy cigarettes (we had Popeye cigarettes here in Canada ... did you have those in the States too?)
Martinex: Didn't the original chemistry sets back in the 50s actually include a chunk of uranium (or radium) with them? Probably a good idea they got rid of that :)
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