Whatever Happened To...? 9

balti restaurants
Basenjis (barkless Russian dogs)
boxrooms (for your suitcases and trunks)
bragging about not eating breakfast
breakfast nooks with banquettes
bubble bath
butter pats

cagoules (They weren’t waterproof, warm or glamorous.)
character (what boarding school gave you)
chicken bricks
chocolate yule logs (with a plaster robin on top)
choose-your-fate novels Christian Science reading rooms
coffee stalls – coming back in the States, apparently, as mobile ethnic food outlets (probably run by people who’ve lost their corporate jobs)
convergence (of devices) It happened.
curry paste

daisy wheel printers
Dolcis

executive chairs in which all you could do was lean back and order people about (they were hopeless for typing in and weren’t adjustable)
executive furniture (lots of teak-effect)
extreme puzzlement at the idea that in the future we’d be trading successfully in information

football pools
fried-egg sandwiches
Gauquelin – and astrology.
Gold Spot

ice cream wafers
insisting that children learn to write with dip pen and ink
instructions to soak muesli overnight

Kiwi boot polish
kiwi fruit (originally Chinese gooseberry)

liver and bacon
lobster thermidor
lurid liqueurs in funny-shaped bottles used as decoration

making jewellery out of polished pebbles or enameled copper (with home tumbler/kiln)
maraschino cherries
melons (we used to eat them all the time, and pretend we liked them with powdered ginger instead of sugar)
miniature pen-knives
moaning that biros would ruin handwriting
moaning that there shouldn’t be “a pill for every ill”
mod cons (bathroom, constant hot water, central heating, inside lavatory)
Mont blanc pens – very 80s
motoring holidays
objections to the channel tunnel (rabid foxes will invade Britain)

ocarinas
one-man bands

people who think Bacon wrote Shakespeare
people who were too proud to draw the dole because “I don’t take charity”
pressed-flower art (70s)
Pretending to be UTTERLY ASTOUNDED that people would ever buy water in a bottle when you can get it out of the tap.
putting orange (or mandarin segments) in salads
radishes and tomatoes carved into flowers

roadhouses
roast joints which the man of the house had to carve

sodium street lights
split level rooms with half-walls
squarials
swizzle sticks (they took the bubbles out of champagne – how can we live without them?)

text-based computer games (next step beyond choose-your-fate novels)
those 70s hats based on solar topees – in tweed
toasting forks
typing pools

vacuum flasks (there are more cafes now)
Vapona insect killer strips (probably banned as too toxic)
winceyette
wishing wells (non-functional)

More here, and links to the rest.