The Nostalgia Racket

[primsong]

A friend who likes to forward things to my email sent me one of those "remember when the world was better?" collections of nostalgic pictures, products and events with the indication that those were the Good Old Days and wasn't it lovely to remember when the World was Nicer.

Sorry. I don't remember Roy Rogers, Trigger or girls having to wear gym outfits like that... I don't remember old radio shows, neighborhoods packed with kids so there was always someone to play with or Davy Crockett hats. I know of these things - but because I had them second-hand, or re-run.

I do wonder if anyone has ever made up one of these for those of us who grew up in the 70s-80s and whose childhood had Monty Python, macrame, Stretch Armstrong, latchkey kids, Get Smart, Bonanza, 8-track tapes, scratch-and-sniff stickers, disco balls, bell-bottoms, super hairy men wearing lots of bling, feathered hair and the Bicentennial?

We've always had to live in the shadow of the Boomers. All my life the theme has been "oh, we used to have (fill in cool thing) but it was canceled last year." "Oh, you should have seen (cool thing) a couple years ago, it was great."

I can't decide if I'm weary of being left out of the Nostalgia Racket that companies are forever pushing on the Boomers, or if I'm grateful. It might be rather awful to have your childhood experiences on permanent replay for your entire life instead of being left to nurse your own little nostalgic bubbles on your own.

Anyone else for the 70s or 80s? Skip the wax coke-bottles and pass the pop-rocks!

Comments

[mrs_tribble]

Space Dust! Corona Orange! Smash Aliens!

I love my childhood memories :)

Also, consider this an invite to join theoldbluebox, which a friend and I have imported from LJ :)

[primsong]

There were truly some scintillating moments for children raised in the 'space age' instead of with the cowboys. I loved rocket-pops too, a multicolored pointy 'rocket shaped' lollipop that could be sucked to a lethal hard-sugar tip so unwary kids could practically pierce their own tongues with them.

[primsong]

Which led to my wondering what in the world they'd been called - I finally got it, Astro-Pops! I think Rocket Pops are ice cream.

[lurkingcat]

I'd join you for some 70s or 80s nostalgia although I suspect that some of the details will be a bit different since I grew up in the UK and the internet as we know it did not exist to give us all quite so much common ground.

[primsong]

Did you also have a population wave just after WWII? All the soldiers came home and begat at once, so I expect it was a similar demographic bubble over there?

[lurkingcat]

Yup - my parents are part of that generation and nostalgia is still very much geared towards them although there seems to have been a resurgence of fondness for eighties computer and console games recently.

[primsong]

Heh - yeah, my kids gaped in astonishment when I told them how I used to walk into town to the pizza place because it they had a newfangled 'PONG' that you could play if you put in a quarter. My brother and I loved how you didn't need to chase the pingpong ball around the room every time you missed. X-D

[lurkingcat]

One of the groups of people that we train at work are 16-19 year olds on the government IT Apprenticeship scheme. As far as they are concerned I'm some kind of living history monument because I remember life before mobile phones, before widely available internet access, and back when you needed to use a tape machine to load games onto computers. (I think they were under the impression that their tutor was joking about that last one until I backed him up!)

We only ever got to see Pong or Space Invaders machines when we went on holiday but we did own the only Atari console on our street for a while :)

[tree_and_leaf]

I've seen that kind of thing floating about on Facebook occasionally.

[primsong]

Ah, good old fb - the wide-open public cafeteria of modern living. I guess given enough time it's likely every 'era'/decade/phase will accumulate some kind of nostalgic conglomeration for others to dip into from time to time.

[nentari]

Here in Portugal there's a huge nostalgia wave geared towards the generation that grew up in the 70s-80s, all thanks to one of my favourite comedians, Nuno Markl, who has a daily radio show called "Caderneta de Cromos" (literally, "sticker album"), where all those items you have mentioned are discussed. The nostalgic wave generated by this show is such that it has already produced two books, a board game, a CD (with bonus tracks like bloopers and such on a cassette) and a few thematic parties. Of course, it helps that we didn't get Boomers over here, as we lived in a fascist dictatorship until 1974, so the idea of the majority of the country is that things only got better after the revolution.

[primsong]

I love that title - I had a sticker album too, I wonder what happened to it...? Even had some of those that would change color with temperature like a mood ring, which was quite fancy and impressive at the time.

Sounds like fun to me!

[nentari]

We were obsessed with sticker albums during the 70s and 80s over here, so it makes sense. This resulted in a very cute thing with the two books that came from the show - each time one of them came out, if you pre-ordered it (as I did) you'd receive for free a collection of 100 stickers, one for each item discussed in that book (the texts being transcripts of the radio show), which you'd stick on the blank spot next to each article. :D Also, because of the show's success, our generation is now known as "Geração Croma" (AKA "The Sticker Generation").

[itcomesinpints]

I'm a child of the 90's/early 2000's and already I feel like my generation is all about, "Remember when?" nostalgia. A quote from Pride & Prejudice comes to mind; something Lizzy said about how things are always more golden when you're remembering. Don't get me wrong, I definitely miss the music, old Nokia phones, and a time when you could buy a TV or phone and it wouldn't be a piece of crap and be "out" the minute you bought it. But I say keep on livin', because pretty soon what you're doing now will be a "Remember when", and you won't remember because you were remembering.

[primsong]

Well said - the grass is always remembered as greener than it really was, likely. Something within us has a hard time dealing with the constant change that is Living, I think - we seem to need at least a little corner of our life somewhere that stays the same as it always was, for stability, whether it's Grandma's house or the same brand of toothpaste you've had since you were a kid.

[kerravonsen]

or the same brand of toothpaste you've had since you were a kid.

I draw comfort from the fact that an ice cream (popsicle?) that I loved as a kid is still around: the "Golden Gaytime".

[primsong]

I had to go look it up - and it looks delicious! My son looked over my shoulder and asked if I thought he might find something like that at an import store here, he concurred it sounded tasty. ^_^

[kerravonsen]

Yes, they are delicious. I don't think much of your chances of getting an import, though, considering that it would have to remain frozen all the way over.

[kayjayuu]

I'm at the tail end of the Boomer generation, and my mom was older, so I've always gravitated toward some of the boomer stuff. But then honed my own experiences into something that isn't Generation X either. And I relate to that whole "Greatest Generation" thang because of my mom.

Wacky Packs, anyone?

[primsong]

Oh my goodness - Wacky Packs! I adored them - now I'm wanting to go find some somewhere!

[shameless2shoes]

If you mind a stranger stepping off her network page to comment with a link to a country music song, just ignore me. :)

Otherwise, Mark Willis has a fun song 19 something that's basically the song version of a nostalgia pic spam. (Link goes to crappy video but with decent enough audio quality.)

Unfortunately I myself am far too young to reminisce with you; half the stuff in that song was new to me when I first listened to it.

[primsong]

Now *that* was a wonderfully fun song - thank you!
And yes, the song posits the question but I actually do know what was inside a Stretch Armstrong... my brother and I er...operated...on one and found it was a pale blue goo. X-D

[shameless2shoes]

Ha! No way. Like... play doh?

[primsong]

More like the stuff you see in ice-packs - kind of (as my brother so succinctly put it) like blue snot.

[shameless2shoes]

*Snerk* That is probably the most amusing comment-icon pairing I've ever seen.

[kerravonsen]

I can't decide if I'm weary of being left out of the Nostalgia Racket that companies are forever pushing on the Boomers, or if I'm grateful.

I was pondering something similar when I was doing some Christmas shopping in the city in the week before Christmas, and I saw people selling that ridiculous reindeer headgear (for charity, I think). Part of me was irritated that it's that stupid Santafest non-Christian stuff that's so pervasive... until it occurred to me that I'd probably be more irritated if people were selling Jesus kitch.

I shall try to be grateful; it's better for the blood pressure.

[primsong]

I've gone through times when I wished I could just pitch all the Santa stuff for the same reason, and other times when I don't mind him so much... My Santa-tolerance seems to be a fickle thing. But yes, I would far rather see the 'jolly old elf' (ouch) being caricatured and made frivolous than Jesus.

I've met folks who have a plethora of what some affectionately call "Jesus Junk" (bobbleheads, bracelets, keyrings, tacky posters, etc.) and who just love it because it reminds them of Someone they love rather than appearing disrespectful of Him, so I try to take it with a grain of salt. Hey, if it helps someone to keep close to their shepherd, it's a good thing.

[blackmare]

I had a mullet and a room full of Duran Duran posters, and I'm pretty glad to be left out of the Nostalgia Brigade.

Got over the mullet ... but not the band, so much, because their live performances are awesome. :-D

[primsong]

Oh yeaaah - ah, the days of early MTV and all the hair a person could possibly grow!

My teen son loves his mullet, so they are not an extinct species yet, but it also suits his personality well.