Whatever Happened To...? 12

“while you were out” notepads
antimacassars
art made from distorted polaroids of celebs (you can probably do it in Photoshop but nobody does any more)

bank messengers
bath pearls
Beech Nut chewing gum
Bermuda Triangle
blue-rinsed hair (and pink and purple)

candidiasis and the fad diet that went with it
circle dancing
citizen journalists – they were going to render paid journalists obsolete by pouring words and pictures straight into newspaper pages. (Press sometimes uses the public’s video and photos, journalists carry on as before.)
cubbyholes
cults

Dabitoff
decoupage (80s)
drinking champagne out of coupes

electronic business cards
ergonomic keyboards
everlasting lightbulbs
eye-level grills

face powder
fingerplates on doors
flans (A flan is a pie with a cake base. They were slightly vulgar, especially when made with tinned peaches.)
football rattles
freesias (very 80s)
frog jugs, fish jugs that glugged when tipped
fully-fashioned (stockings, cardigans etc It meant “moulded to your shape”.)
fuss over information being held in a "computer database"
fussing over the meaning of the word charisma (60s)

genteel, feminine teashops run by ladies (20s) – back now!
gentlemen putting a hand under a woman’s elbow
geographically correct attempts to refer to “the North” instead of “the West”
ghost of high streets past (Sian Williams) – Rumbelows, Dolcis, Radio Rentals, Oddbins, Etam, Richard Shops, Wallis, C&A, Chelsea Girl, Macfisheries, Jane Norman
ginger thins

hamburger relish
hippo foot ashtrays, elephant’s foot umbrella stands
hole in the ozone layer
insisting that “prestigious” meant “connected with sleight of hand”

Kabaka of Buganda

line dancing
loony lefties (rising from the grave)

metal toothpaste tubes
mini ironing boards for shirt sleeves
mini swiss rolls
more equitable maps that made Europe and America look smaller (still around, used by National Geographic)
mulled wine parties

now-defunct pathologies – Ah, frigidity and nymphomania, where have you gone? Guardian Dec 2011 (into the bin with hysteria, neurasthenia etc etc)

paperweights
putting up the “legs” on PC keyboard (newbies all did and now nobody does any more)
PMT
pressure groups (have changed name to think tanks or lobbying organizations)
prohibition on washing your face with soap and water (so drying!) so that you can buy products to “cleanse” it with instead
protest singers (OMG they’ll be back now)
putting sugar on fruit salad

raw onion (as an ingredient in cheese and onion sandwiches, or coleslaw - formerly a bitter punishment food)
Sanatogen tonic wine
scampi
scare stories about microwaves (they cook your innards if you leave the door open, they destroy the nutrients, there was this woman who cooked her dog, it’s not real heat, the food isn’t really cooked, they get as hot as a nuclear reactor, they cook from the inside out - thanks to Giles Coren)

Schloer apple juice
sick building syndrome
smashed potatoes (brief late noughties fad)
smelling salts
sound of modems
street photographers
styptic pencils
superstitions like throwing salt over your shoulder if you spilled it, not dining 13 at table, saying an angel was passing if everybody fell silent, not wearing green or bringing May into the house

sweet cigarettes
swiss rolls talcum powder
that forest of skyscrapers Ken Livingstone was going to build (or allow) (Here in 2016 - far too many of them.)
Theatre Museum
timers on ovens
toy guns (They really did become unacceptable. Now can’t we do the same with binge drinking and gender inequality?)
trout as posh food (aux amandes, paper-wrapped etc)
turtle soup
twinsets (and wearing the cardigan part round your shoulders like a cape)
Vapex
veal
veal roulade
wall pockets
web sites listing your favourite web sites
Wednesday half-day closing (via Linda Grant)
wild rice
winking
Women’s Lib
zigzag partings
More here, and links to the rest.