While I agree we shouldn't pay much attention to the adults that disapprove of letting your kids go a bit free-range, they can actually do a good amount of damage if they want to.
My choices mainly have to do with the delayed gratification that kids don't have to go through anymore.
1. Saturday mornings were great because you could finally binge on cartoons... not exactly a problem anymore.
2. Buying an album that you grew to love. We have access to so much music now, I would imagine the act of saving money to buy an album and then having to listen to it over and over again because it's all you have is probably pretty rare. That's how I found some of the best albums of my life. If I had limitless options I likely would have just moved on to the next thing and never looked back.
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Pogs, although I'm pretty sure they arent really a thing anymore, they were definitely awesome as a kid, Metal Slammers, Big plastic ones with finger grooves, Pog carrying cases.
Always remember watching Saved by the Bell in the 90's on TBS starting at like 5 after the hour (never understood that) 3:05pm etc.
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Not sure these things are better, but things I miss from my childhood:
-Gameboy colours. Nothing, and I mean nothing, were more serious than discussions over Pokemon trades with your friends. We used to gamble our Pokemon in battles. Everyone goes to the one kid who had a link cables house and battled and traded. 1999 was a great time.
-Road hockey every single day. Every series was best of 7, goalies called penalties (you can imagine how that went), and if someone challenged you to a fight and you agreed you weren't allowed to NOT fight.
-Minor hockey tournaments. Mini stick games in hotel hallways always pleased the staff.
-Also, mini sticks in general were just better then. Now you can get the expensive composite ones, but I still prefer the old plastic ones that you'd heat up on the stove and curve yourself.
-Doing pretty much anything after dark as a kid was a ton of fun. Don't know why, I loved playing in the dark. Usually a game of hide and seek.
-Collecting cards. I used to save up $5 and go to Dicks Collectables and buy a "jersey card". Usually a Flame, and usually was the highlight of my month.
Can't say I miss Blockbuster like some of you seem to. I used to go there a ton, and all I'd ever rent was Star Wars, but if Blockbuster was still around I wouldn't use it. Nobody would, that's why it's out of business.
I love this post, there's a lot of things here that just resonate.
I loved the hockey tournaments, but I really loved playing football more. There was something about showing up and getting into your pads. For some reason I really loved the pregame warmup, and its carried through to today and coaching. There was something that was really effective at getting your head in the game in the half an hour before a game.
Because I was a C-64 kid, there was something about every Saturday going over to your friends house with a box of tapes or 5 1/4 disks and trading pirated games. Or a friend showing up with his brand new game in a box and reading through the manual then starting up the cracking software so we could all get a copy.
Road Hockey definately, we put the Broad Street Bullies to shame. We would have a best of 7 series that would take hours because of the brawls. I still remember that I loved to play defense, and in one game me and my best friend who were on the same team, looked at each other and then dropped the gloves.
Watching Stampeded Wrestling with your friends and then going into the back yard and pretending to be a wrestler. I still remember destroying my arm when I came up with a move that emulated the best of Mike Shaw and Dynamite kid when I came off the top of the fence on my buddy and he dropped me arm first on the concrete. My mom freaked out, but I was proud as a kid that I suddenly had a 24 inch hulk hogan python that was rapidly turning purple and black.
Did I tell you that chicks dig casts?
the relationship that I had with my dad. Man I loved my time with him before things went to shyte. I remember he would take me to work every Saturday because he was a workaholic. And I'd spend the time playing hide and seek in the warehouse with him. And his work mates would come in and join.
I remember one summer my dad had to do a three week road trip in his territory, and I went with him. There was something amazing about spending all day in the car with your speed demon dad, eating at a truck stop every day and hanging out in hotels and motels with pools all summer.
Now I'm getting really nostelgic about this. I remember my first dog, a Ridge Back that we named Sandy because we were uncreative kids and he was tan. We got him as a puppy, there was never a smarter more loyal dog then that.
We had him until he turned 13. and I think I was about 17 when he died. At night he would pad around the house on guard duty and come into my room and jam his cold nose into my face as if saying "All clear boss".
Then at about 3 in the morning the whole bed would shake as he jumped up. Pushed my over to a corner of the bed, hogged the pillows, farted and snored.
I remember like Cow taking my allowance and going to 7-11 and getting a purple slurpee, because there were only three flavors, purple, coke and tasteless. Buying the latest comic and spending the afternoon in the backyard alternating between page turning and soul crushing headaches.
Going to my uncles garage when my dad needed the car worked on. In this age of political correctness it wasn't that long ago that you would walk into the garage and the wall was covered with scantily clad woman holding tools (minds out of the gutter please) and even more graphic stuff in the office.
Renting movies and returning them without rewinding.
Returning library books late (a habit that I could never overcome) and feeling the wrath of the angry librarian.
Putting hockey cards in the spokes of my bike and pretending that I was in Chips.
Being the family remote control when we were allowed to watch TV.
Going to buy cigarettes for my oldest sister and needing just a note and money and being allowed to keep the change.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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Being the family remote control when we were allowed to watch TV.
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Ha this triggered a memory of having to get up early to get the fire going every morning while growing up.
My room was below my folks and every morning my dad would stamp on the floor to wake me and let me know to get up and get the fire pumping to warm the house. Then about 15-20 mins later the rest of my family would get up and moving. This was routine from mid Oct-May, everyday I had to get up and get the fire going, coupled with making sure we had enough wood inside the house from the pile out back.
I use to have to stake 3 cords of wood every year in the back of the house and was in-charge of ensure the house has a proper supply of dry ready to burn wood in the basement.
Yeah, heating the house wasn't better as a kid.
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Corporal Jean-Marc H. BECHARD, 6 Aug 1993
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I don't know if they were better but I really liked the old Hostess foil chip bags as they were part snack and part surprise (like Tim's RUTRTW) as you would open the bag to see if you had a "free bag" winner printed on the inside of the bag.
I don't know if they were better but I really liked the old Hostess foil chip bags as they were part snack and part surprise (like Tim's RUTRTW) as you would open the bag to see if you had a "free bag" winner printed on the inside of the bag.
or if you looked hard enough you could read through the bag , buy a winner and then go on an endless spree of free chips
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We totally did that back home. One store would hide the chips behind a counter.
I remember the bag trick until Hostess finally got wise and added some marks to obscure them.
I think it was Macs who had a match 3 scratch-off boxes out of 9 to get I don't remember what not. My friend and I figured out if you put a pinprick in a specific spot near each corner you could determine which boxes to scratch off. The pinprick in the silver layer was small enough it went undetected.
I also have nostalgia over getting to roam wherever. They were building a new community centre in Optimist Park in Regina and we'd ride over there and play war in the half-constructed building.
I'll also add cap guns as being something better as a kid. They looked real and didn't have a red cap on the end. No 12 year old was accidentally shot by police thinking it was real.
Also anyone else remember these?
Image size
Spoiler!
What we figured out was you could fill the end with mud/dirt and pump the gun a few times to get it to fire.
Oh, and mud fights. We used to have wars over the fence with a neighbour kid we didn't get along with. Dig down in the sandbox to find the ever-present clay and then make cube shaped projectiles out of them. We all somehow walked away with eyes and teeth intact.
As I said at the beginning, lawn darts with metal tips that I got my dad to grind into a sharp point. Our game was to toss one into the air straight above and then play chicken. Last one to move got to toss it in the air.
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Cafeterias / lunch counters. You don't see them outside schools and Ikea anymore, but they used to be at Co-op, Woolworth's, etc. They were kept real cheap, presumably loss-leaders to get customers in the door (and because employees ate there too). You could get fries for less than a buck, and real milkshakes in the tin.
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
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Cafeterias / lunch counters. You don't see them outside schools and Ikea anymore, but they used to be at Co-op, Woolworth's, etc. They were kept real cheap, presumably loss-leaders to get customers in the door (and because employees ate there too). You could get fries for less than a buck, and real milkshakes in the tin.
Waaayyyyyy back in the day I had many an order of fries and gravy at Super S drug store/general store (12 Ave. & 14 St. S.W).
Now that I think of it, I miss Super S! I think it became a Super Drug Mart and possibly even a Rexall pharmacy before it's ultimate demise but Super S ruled back in the day.
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Because I was a C-64 kid, there was something about every Saturday going over to your friends house with a box of tapes or 5 1/4 disks and trading pirated games. Or a friend showing up with his brand new game in a box and reading through the manual then starting up the cracking software so we could all get a copy.
I removed the copy protection from many a game. EA's were very easy. There was a BBS in town that would give me a non-functioning copy and I would go through the machine language and remove the copy protection.
Rapidlok however was almost impossible. I realize now though it my was disk drives that were the problem in extracting all the data.
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If you don't pass this sig to ten of your friends, you will become an Oilers fan.
We used to go downtown to Maple Leaf Gardens to watch the Junior Toronto Marlboroughs play in the afternoon. I seem to recall George Armstrong being the captain at the time. He later became a long time captain of the Leafs. After the game we would hide in the rafters immediately above the highest seats, and wait for the Maple Leafs to play in the evening. We had to lie very quiet to avoid the caretakers from discovering us. Then when the game started we would wait to see who didn' t show up and then went down and sat in their seat. We kept moving closer to the ice as the game went on.
I recall about the only way you could get season tickets to the Gardens was to inherit them.
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I removed the copy protection from many a game. EA's were very easy. There was a BBS in town that would give me a non-functioning copy and I would go through the machine language and remove the copy protection.
Rapidlok however was almost impossible. I realize now though it my was disk drives that were the problem in extracting all the data.
I remember one of the copycrackers made you pop in the original disk, then spent an hour copying and then you had to put in a blank disk and it would copy for an hour.
But it would always put a graphic on the title page of the game that it was cracked by so and so.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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There are some pretty cool kids shows on TV now. What has almost disappeared, however is shows kids and parents can watch together. The assumption seems to be that everyone in the house watches their own content on their own screen, so no need for shows with a broad audience. Kid 1 watches Teen Titans Go, Kid 2 watches Arrow, mom watches Big Little Lies, dad watches Game of Thrones.
One of the reasons there was a loud campaign to renew Timeless for a second season after it was cancelled was because it's one of the few shows that fit the bill for quality family entertainment.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
or if you looked hard enough you could read through the bag , buy a winner and then go on an endless spree of free chips
Maybe my memory is failing me but I thought Hostess followed up the foil bags with plastic and the free bag was behind this grey ellipse on the plastic bag that you could put up to light and just make out the text?
