Whatever Happened To...? 10

AIDS deniers, BSE deniers (who claimed it wasn’t caused by a virus/prion)
Anti-Vivisection Movement
ashtrays

Banda duplicating machines
beauty contests (replaced by even more humiliating X Factor, Pop Idol etc)
Berol pens (Jane Austen would have written better with a Berol!)
blowing smoke rings
breadsticks (not seen since Anna Friel’s embarrassing advert about mobile phones on different networks talking to each other – back in the Stone Age)

changing for dinner (still around in 70s in hotels and posh people’s homes)
closed shops
collar studs
combover hairstyles (They really did get laughed out of court.)
computers that weren’t compatible so you couldn’t transfer files from one to another – and having to explain this to people
Courtelle
Crimplene (it was truly horrible)
cups and saucers
Cutex cuticle cream (which tinted your nails pink and smelt of Turkish Delight)

dimmer switches (very 70s)
dinner parties
Dormobiles
dried herbs (you can get fresh herbs everywhere)

escapism (people used to talk about it a lot)

foreign-exchange controls (meant that few Brits could holiday abroad, so it was exclusive)
French mustard

giant rucksacks that were bigger than the small girls who carried them. (They were REALLY EASY to carry, you just had to BALANCE them right. Yeah.)
Gustav Junghitchhikers
hobbyhorses (especially the ones made out of old socks)
humorous plaster skulls labelled “poor old Fred, he smoked in bed”

International Times and its blurred stencil of Theda Bara

jet age (Jet travel was presumed to be evil in a uniquely modern way. People could always “jet off” somewhere else.)
jet set

leapfrog
leaving your baby to sleep outside in a pram
lucky Cornish piskies/Joan the Wad
Ludo (it was an entertaining pastime)

madras cotton (late 60s/early 70s)

nostalgia boom (70s)

opera gloves
oxtail soup

parapsychology labs (no findings, lost funding)

pencil cases in the shape of a giant plastic pencil
photographic memory
picnic sets (in baskets)
Pietro Annigoni
piggy in the middle
pin money
pinball
piping bags
Powers Boothe

Rainer Werner Fassbinder
requests for job applications to be hand-written (because the HR department employed a graphologist - the superstitious 80s)

seccotine
slimline tonic (very 70s)
sodastreams (are back)
sugar lumps
swimming for fun (diving, duck-diving, somersaults, widths under water, ring a roses…)

tasteless, tacky wrapping paper (it used to be the only kind you could get)
teasmades (they’re back, apparently)
The Midnight Movie (bring it baaaaack!)
theme restaurants, theme weddings time and motion experts
tinned cherries
Toile de Jouy

velour
virtual reality
waterbeds
whining about having to spell “computer program” the American way
Willem de Kooning (he’s having a retrospective at MoMA)
zed beds
More here, and links to the rest.