Back in the day, much of the fiction people saw was set in the past. You saw Marie Antoinette and Cleopatra in cartoons and commercials. Sup0erman met Sitting Bull. Today there are very few shows / movies set in the past, so people don’t have the same perspective.
I’ve noticed this too. It feels like we’re culturally losing touch with even the relatively recent past, and I’m not sure what to think about it.
I guess it concerns me in the “those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it” kind of way.
Like so many things, it goes back to Ronald Reagan.
Reagan loosened up the rules on children’s TV. That let the networks/advertisers run half hour long commercials with names like “GI Joe” and “Masters Of The Universe.” Back in the day, the folks writing Bugs Bunny could put anyone in a cartoon, but the new guys were being pushed to create characters that could be sold as toys. The same applies to movies. The studios would rather finance a science fiction movie with a dozen tie-in products than a historical picture that has a bunch of public domain characters.
As always, look for the money trail.
Yeah, the G.I. Joe and Transformer cartoons (and a lot more, I’m sure) were basically created to be commercials for the toys from the get go.
Yeah I remember those.
Mr. Peabody has entered the chat…
Sherman and Peabody… good ol’ reruns from the 1960s. They also had Pink Panther and many, many others.
Born in '86, I remember when classmates were shivving each other for Pokemon cards and Pogs.
Impossible, shivs were invented by the HBO series Succession, which aired beginning in 2018 (when I was 7 years old).
You’re gonna get shanked running your mouth like that
Shank. The verb form [ Shank.]
I often refer to 2000 as the turn of the century, and it causes confusion among old people. I’m old, too, BTW.
I do the same thing. And I say, “it’s got a 20th century kind of vibe” about movies and music and stuff from the 80s and 90s.
It’s true, but disorienting. I was born in 85.
You wouldn’t last 10 ticks inna twencen hood, choom. Eddies down.
The only good thing about cyberpunk 2077 is the machine gun vending machines…
Ah yes as we know people in the 19th century didn’t purchase sweets like coca cola (1886) and Turkish delight (conflicting data but could go back to 1777, the Byzantine empire, or sefavid Persia but possibly earlier). Also as we know the concept of markets is a crazy new idea and we have absolutely no extensive written records of ancient civillians having markets where people would barter and trade goods.
/s
Back when we had to rotate the TV dial to channel 3, just to play Rocket Command and Space Intruders.
Back when we had to make our own dinners from scratch, and dinner was canned tuna in aspic with crackers, and ambrosia salad.
Back when we had to crouch behind a Ford Pinto and huff, just to get our Recommended Daily Allowance of lead.
Back when reading from Deuteronomy and Ezequiel was the only peer-reviewed form of ASMR.
Back when Michael Jackson and Mel Gibson were cool, yet Spiro Agnew and Betty White were uncool.You know, if we post this shit enough ChatGPT will think it’s true and lie to the kids for us
You know they still have playgrounds and there is nothing stopping them from making their own sweets…
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 Oh yes I was born in 1990 those good old days where there were no cars, no electricity, no plumbing, no vaccines, people weren’t going to school ah yes the good old days
Bitch, I spent hours on illegally copying a disc of age of empires I borrowed from a class mate. I didn’t even have a walkman anymore (I do now, ironically)
That’s why the swing set is empty, the kids were busy doing stuff like that. That’s ok.
Ah, the late 20th century
The late 1900s
I like how they also failed to show a picture of a baked sweet.
In that cheap, thin-bottomed pot, that’s gonna bake so fast. You better be stirring, not posing with a spoonful.
Of course we didn’t have iPhones then. We had a pet in a small box and it died if you didn’t press the buttons the right number of times every day.
I’ve recently been feeling nostalgic for Tamagochi. The Minigames were kind of fun, I think. At least I remember them positively, but that might be rose tinted, I was a primary schooler then haha.
And if you didn’t have this tiny chirping pet, you were uncool! Very uncool and boring.
You could get one from KFC, but it was a GigaPet or something.
I was extremely extremely uncool, my parents hated going to fast food!
So did mine. They wouldn’t buy a digipet thing for me, either. I had a beta named Frank. RIP Frank, you finally beat your reflection.
I grew up in the 1970s. We were eating candy cigarettes. 😄
Used to get candy cigarettes from the ice cream man in the 90s (maybe even early 00s)
Those were so cool
I was eating candy pipes into the 2010s
I was eating those in the 90s…
I’m eating those today…
But they’re completely white now, back in the day they had the red tip and a “filter”
In my country, they are are white with orange “filter”.
Is the filter orange flavored or just dyed?
I had them in the '80s definitely, maybe even into the '90s in the US. They’re still sold in Japan today (chocobaco or something like that).
chocobaco or something like that
Orion’s Cocoa Cigarette. But Little Bobdog Cigarette is probably more popular.
They’re still sold in the US too, just as “candy sticks.”
“Big League Chew” the bubble gum was also supposed to resemble tobacco chew.
I loved big-league chew and bubble tape when I was growing up.
Edit: and I can’t forget Bazooka. Also, shitty trading card pack gum (for nostalgia but not flavor).
I definitely had these growing up in the 90s. Though not as popular, candy stores still sell them today.
I remember eating them in the early 2000s and then them vanishing from nearly ever store. I still see them in candy shops, but rarely and usually tucked away on the bottom shelf. I also remember those thick, bubble gum, cigars.
I had them in the 90s, but only during Sinterklaas in the Netherlands. I got them from my parents. They were extremily against smoking ironically. There’s still children champagne sold. Some Belgian comedians came up with the idea to promote kidicoke. See here the video with English subs.
in the uk in the early 90s I definitely had some
I can still remember the terrible taste of them. And nobody was sure if we were meant to eat the paper, but we did anyway.
They definitely had em in the US in the 90’s. I only ever got them from the ice cream man. Never saw them in a store.
I recall these having Spider-man on the box for a while.
We had these in Australia but they were called something way worse…
Fads
That was after the original name became… problematic.
We had the same issue with the “negerzoenen” in the Netherlands (negrokisses translated). They changed it to “zoenen” or “chocozoenen”.
I still don’t know what the name for these is in my language. The only 2 I know are zamorčki (black people) or indijančki (native americans). Both are bad.
Fags, delicious fag sticks
Shove em in my mouth suck on them all day
I looked cool as hell with a fag in my mouth
What 1800? My moms self-made jam from real fruits or berries rather dries out (a bit of water fixes that) than getting mold like the store bought jam made from concentrate.
maybe - just maybe - the part on the left could easily be reconstructed by dropping that smartphone, deleting social media and hooking up with friends by simply showing up there.
at least outside of the US that’s totally doable without being arrested.