We got lots of things from Gold Bond Stamps. Our market started having a pharmacy and it gave stamps too. I was taking an Rx that was like $300/month for 6 months or so, so got lots of stamps for that, in addition to groceries (fortunately, at the time I had double medical insurance so my copay was $0). I believe we traded it in for nice ice chests and other things. This was all in the past few decades.
I remember the S&H green stamps as well and going into the redemption center with my mom where she picked something out that she needed.
Scouring the neighborhood for empty glass pop (soda) bottles for their refund. 5 cents for the quart bottles was the best find. 2 cents for the smaller bottles. Would put them in our red metal wagon and head off to the corner store to buy candy. The candy was behind the counter and we took forever picking out what we wanted. The poor grocery guy (Harry) stood there one by one filled a little brown bag as we chose. What a stash!
Once I opened the bag and discovered a nickel tootsie roll which I knew I didn’t buy. Boy, I really wanted to keep it ( i was so conflicted) but I trudged back to the store to give it back. Harry let me keep it!
My mom told me she once got a call from Harry that I was in the store. I was three and had left the front porch and walked to the store on my own which involved crossing a busy street with a stop light. I got yelled at for that little escapade.
I was fortunate to have had a great childhood. We didn’t have much money but I didn’t know that. Just running the neighborhood with my friends. Standing outside their door and in a sing song voice yelling " Susie. Can you come out and play?" We would walk to school, walk home for lunch, back to school and home again. Even in kindergarten you walked to school without your mom. Funny how so very often we would run into my grand dad on the way gassing up his car at the station. he would always make it a point to shake our hands and press a quarter into our palms. Weekend movie matinees were 50 cents for cartoons and Three Stooges movies or a feature length cartoon… Walked there with friends too and then on to the ice cream soda shop.( thanks to grand dads quarters). I was 8 or 9 yrs old by then. Life was grande.
Nostalgia is that this thread topic has come around again… ;))
ONe thing I remember fondly was something called a “sun camera”. You put a template of something in this camera thing on the “film” and put it out int he sun. The “film” would darken so the area covered by the template would leave the image in the lighter color. Anyone remember this thing? I loved it.
-Arcades
-Disposable cameras
-Video stores… call me crazy but there is something way more satisfying about physically browsing through videos in a store than scrolling through Netflix
-Smartphone free childhood… http://www.wfpblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/jumpingbigwheels.jpg
B-)
I had no idea 5th Avenue bars were no longer made.
None of those others were ever my favorites. I always chose Reece’s Peanut Butter cups over Mallo Cups.
I’ll have to take a look at the candy bars in CVS next time I’m in there, it seems like they have a lot under the front registers. Do they still make 3 Musketeers and Milky Way? I’m sure they must. Of that family, Snickers was always my favorite.
Sometimes, I get so homesick for the house I grew up in. In my mind, I visit it. I knew it so well that it’s easy to do. Sweet memories.
They still make a lot of those candies including 5th Avenue. And yes to 3 Musketeers and Milky Way, both being pretty popular.
I think I can remember every inch of my childhood home.
Well, I can’t remember too much of the home I lived in from birth to age 7, but remember the one we moved to and my folks still live in. It’s WAY too big for just the two of them but it was snug for the nine of us growing up.
Nine? 
I had a Cap’n Crunch rash in my mouth almost every day growing up.
These are great! Right now I am most nostalgic for my childhood Halloween. I would make a zillion candy bags with my mom (we would actually staple them closed) and my dad would answer the door with a super scary mask for kicks. The kids would just go around the neighborhood without a care --so much more of a sense of freedom and security than exists today. Waxy fake fangs!
Both of my grandmothers had those chrome dinette sets from the 50’s, I think. One grandmother had jewel-colored aluminum cups in which my sister and I would make drinks using Fizzies. My favorite was root beer.
Candy cigarettes, yes! Jawbreakers, too.
Play-date-less childhoods. (We just went to our friend’s house to see if they wanted to come out to play.) Neighborhood kickball games in the street. (I lived on a dead end road.) Catching fireflies.
I read recently that fireflies/lightning bugs are becoming more scarce. So sad.
I could never eat those fireballs. They were too hot for me. I had to keep taking them out of my mouth.
1-2-3 jello and those cakes where you poked holes in and poured jello over the whole thing and frosted it with pudding. Those were the epitome of elegant desserts in 1970! (At my house at least.)
I will still eat a fireball and once or twice a year (especially in the summer) I will make a “poke” jello cake frosted with REAL whipped cream! (or Dream Whip - THAT’s another piece of nostalgia!)
Helm’s Bakery truck…I grew up here (west Los angeles and BH) so there are a lot of things here…Movie stars DID live here then, …the amusement park and the Pony rides…restaurants like Cafe Swiss, will wright’s, MFK, 31 flavors, Thrifty ice cream, I. Magnin…and the feeling that it was safe to be out alone.
Please note: I didn’t have a childhood. I walked myself to and from school. I took the bus alone to activities and returned home alone and in the dark.
Ah, the good old days, before child labor laws, OSHA, women’s right to vote, minimum wage, weekends, and anti-trust laws. /sarcasm
I’m not nostalgic for anything. When I look at the nice upbringing I had, I also remember how that was available to me and my family because of gross inequality, the conquest of most of an unspoiled continent by Europeans, and 300 years of unpaid labor, not to mention that the US wasn’t even a democracy until the 19th amendment. I’m grateful for what I have and have been given, but I have no illusions that things were “better” back then–better for me, maybe, but on the backs of whom?
Marvin, you must have had a very depressing childhood. 
I love you Bunsen
Let’s get back to Pixie Stix and the colored candy dots you eat off the wax paper, @marvin100 .