Hula hoops and pogo sticks .
The “privacy panel” on women’s bathing suits… and my college team supplied us with bathing suits! All of them pale blue, and all of them requiring a shoelace to hold the straps together in the back so they wouldn’t fall off. (I love racer back suits!)
@JazzyTXMom , I remember buying some of that when I was 13 years old. I just couldn’t stand my fair skin and freckles . I was desperate to have a tan and it looked foolish ( and so did the palms of my hands )
We used baby oil and iodine.
Going home for lunch in grade school - I guess it was assumed that all families had SAHMs. Wearing dresses every school day and when real cold, wearing pants under our dresses that we would remove after arriving at school. The rules changed in middle school. First couple years, no jeans allowed, but we could wear slacks or “pant suits”. By the end of high school, no attempt to prevent jean wearers.
Do they even sell iodine any more?
Betadine has iodine in it I think.
OMG!!! Lloyd Thaxton! Mr. Ellebud was a singer. I saw him on the show…
Skorts. Roller skate keys. Pulling the tag off the back of a guy’s shirt.
TV dinners…Romper Room…Howdy Duddy show…Jon Provost (Lassie_ lived one block away…because I lived here Jimmy Stewart, Groucho Marx…and tour bus that drove past my friends’ homes. (We didn’t live in a house)
Coin collections. Tug of wars. Silent prayers and homeroom teacher reading from his bible before school.
I tried to use Highlight’s magazine Goofus and Gallant as an example at work and somehow, it showed how very old I am compared to the majority of my colleagues! And how I loved the sears wishbook - toysrus came up with that flimsy “book” later - so very sad.
tv focused:
Kukla, Fran, and Ollie
Lamb Chop
Mr. Rogers
OMG!!! Lloyd Thaxton! Mr. Ellebud was a singer. I saw him on the show… >>>>>>>
You are kidding me!!! LOL. That is too funny.
I want to print this thread to keep for my old age, so I can read and smile and remember all the little things that made childhood fun. What a great and quite thorough list!
We can all just stay here and start it up again in 20+ years. We will be a little foggy then and won’t remember that we already did it… 
Mercurochrome, which you would put on a cut and it would turn your skin red.
Remember when college tuition was much less expensive?
http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2012/07/18/csu-and-uc-tuition-hikes-over-time
http://ucop.edu/operating-budget/_files/fees/documents/history_fees.pdf
http://www.kqed.org/assets/pdf/news/CSUhistoricalfees.pdf
http://web.stanford.edu/~rhamerly/cgi-bin/Interesting/EducationInflation.php
How about things kids used to play with back then:
- Chemistry sets, with poisonous chemicals, and experiments involving flames that could burn down the house.
- Cap guns and other toy guns that looked like real guns.
- Jungle gyms in playgrounds that were all metal and had many more ways to fall off of them.
- Mercury, before people realized that it was a health hazard.
Other things that used to exist, but now do not – good riddance:
- Smoking everywhere, including enclosed spaces like elevators and airplanes.
- The extremely high crime rate in the 1980s and early 1990s.
- Cars that required maintenance or repair every thousand miles and were lucky to make it to 100,000 miles (oh, and they were thirsty, slow, much more polluting, and less safe).
- Hydrogenated oils before people realize that the trans-fats that they contained were more unhealthy than other fats and oils.
Sitting on the curb and using matches to light sparklers and snakes, unsupervised.
Spending what seemed like hours and hours decorating our bikes with red, white and blue rolls of crepe paper and then riding in the 4th of July parade.
Family summer driving vacations in the unairconditioned Vista Cruiser (two toned brown and wood grain - just like That 70s Show).