How many of these do you remember?

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I had a few of those.

One was the Flintstones. I forget what the other one was.

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LOL-when I was 16,my dad used to call my BFF and I "The Gold Dust Twins." We had no idea what he was talking about. I later found out that they were black,which my BFF and I were definitely not-we were both very,very blonde. We did look an awful lot alike though....

I remember Ivory Flakes.In Kindergarten,we did an art project where we painted snow scenes on black construction paper using Ivory Flakes mixed with water. Might have been something else added-cornstarch?flour?

I also remember Duz,Soilax,Lux,Oxydol,Palmolive and Camay.
 
And don't forget all the little toys in cereal boxes. :)
"Hacking" started with the Cap'n Crunch Whistle.

You may recall the long distance phone services you subscribed to where you called the service, dialed the number you wanted to call, and then keyed in your password. This was in the day when long distance calls cost $$$ per minute. The service was cheaper than direct-dialing through the phone company.

Some enterprising person realized that when it came time to punch in a password, you could blow the Cap'n Crunch Whistle into the phone and spoof the system without paying for the subscription!

There is a hacker's magazine named in honor of this:

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It's called "2600" because those whistles emitted a sound at 2600hz.

And now back to your thread, which is already in progress....
 

Boy, does the balsa wood plane and plastic parachute men ever bring back memories! It's been 45 (plus) years since I experienced the likes of those two things, yet it still sits as fresh in my mind today as if it was only yesterday.

Forget all the battery-operated and electronic gadgetry of today, toys and things from back in the day trumped everything!
 
Boy, does the balsa wood plane and plastic parachute men ever bring back memories! It's been 45 (plus) years since I experienced the likes of those two things, yet it still sits as fresh in my mind today as if it was only yesterday.

Forget all the battery-operated and electronic gadgetry of today, toys and things from back in the day trumped everything!
I was gonna say the same thing. Both of those really resonate.

All that fun we had, with no power required.
 
I was gonna say the same thing. Both of those really resonate.

All that fun we had, with no power required.
Toys dating back to the 60's and 70's, still fascinate me. They were engaging, and many (most in fact) required manual attention, it wasn't about staring at some lit screen leading you to nowhere, the toys of past engaged children to learn, to do, and the toys took children outside to play. Just look at how few kids play outside anymore, sad.

As an older-fogy, I feel blessed to have been raised back in the good old days (as like to refer to them a), because we weren't cooped-up in the house 7 days a week, and our playground was for blocks around, we rode our bikes everywhere, and got rides from our folks, nowhere.

From morning until night, we ran, we played, we roamed, and even then, when the call came in the way of dear mom hollering for us kids to come home for the night, we were upset, because the day was still young. We couldn't get enough play in the day.

We played games, as in lawn darts (for those old enough to remember), we play crochet (can't help but think of how many of today's younger generation wouldn't even know what crochet is), we went to the park, we went to the beach, we played tag, we played cops and robbers - or cowboys and Indians, and when nightfall came, we played hide-and-seek, kick-the-can, and I've forgotten more than I remember.

Always on the go we were, and we by today's standards, we were healthier, happier, and more well-adjusted as far as I'm concerned, and in a lot of ways, more mature.
 
You know, there are reasons we were outside so much:

1) No 7x24x365 television. Limited selection that went off the air late at night.
2) No internet.
3) No video games.
4) MOST IMPORTANT!!! No air conditioning!!! Being outside was way less uncomfortable than hanging in the house.

Regarding being more mature: I lived across the street from a family who home-schooled their two young boys. They each got one hour of "screen time" per day to allocate as they chose: TV. video games, internet, whatever. One hour.

I would watch them when their parents had Date Night. We would play Boggle, with a rule shift: no penalties for bad words, but you had to support your words by finding them in the dictionary. We'd have lots of giggles (and lots of learning) looking for their words and finding other really silly actual words. That was more fun than the actual game.

The youngest (5 at the time) played chess. He had no strategy, but knew how the pieces moved. (I used to play in high school.) So we're playing one evening, I made a move, and then I changed my mind and started to move the piece back. Then my memory kicked in. "I can't do that once I've taken my finger off the piece, can I?" The 5 year old looks me right in the eye and says "That's the second time this game you've done that!"
 
You know, there are reasons we were outside so much:

1) No 7x24x365 television. Limited selection that went off the air late at night.
2) No internet.
3) No video games.
4) MOST IMPORTANT!!! No air conditioning!!! Being outside was way less uncomfortable than hanging in the house.

Regarding being more mature: I lived across the street from a family who home-schooled their two young boys. They each got one hour of "screen time" per day to allocate as they chose: TV. video games, internet, whatever. One hour.

I would watch them when their parents had Date Night. We would play Boggle, with a rule shift: no penalties for bad words, but you had to support your words by finding them in the dictionary. We'd have lots of giggles (and lots of learning) looking for their words and finding other really silly actual words. That was more fun than the actual game.

The youngest (5 at the time) played chess. He had no strategy, but knew how the pieces moved. (I used to play in high school.) So we're playing one evening, I made a move, and then I changed my mind and started to move the piece back. Then my memory kicked in. "I can't do that once I've taken my finger off the piece, can I?" The 5 year old looks me right in the eye and says "That's the second time this game you've done that!"
A have one vote and one vote only, and that vote has always, and will always remain my vote in support of many things in the past. Notice I didn't say all, just a lot.

People were more polite, more well-adjusted, more mature, and society was more apt to help a neighbour or someone in need, unlike today where a sense of me, myself, and I, seems to dominate all aspects of what makes the world go-round.

I tell people all the time, we've lost a lot of ground, so much in fact, even if the engine was reversed and society took on interest in renewing some of the things we've lost over the past decade or two, it would take 3 generations for things to be repaired. Sad.
 
A have one vote and one vote only, and that vote has always, and will always remain my vote in support of many things in the past. Notice I didn't say all, just a lot.

People were more polite, more well-adjusted, more mature, and society was more apt to help a neighbour or someone in need, unlike today where a sense of me, myself, and I, seems to dominate all aspects of what makes the world go-round.

I tell people all the time, we've lost a lot of ground, so much in fact, even if the engine was reversed and society took on interest in renewing some of the things we've lost over the past decade or two, it would take 3 generations for things to be repaired. Sad.
**RAMBLING OLD MAN ALERT**

In some ways I agree. But then there are other things.

If you look at FBI stats, modern "Stranger Danger" is way overblown. In fact, those days that we all "stayed out after dark and no one knew where we were" were WAY more dangerous than they are these days. Kids were way more likely to be kidnapped and assaulted than they are these days. I went to elementary school with a couple of little girls who were assaulted on their walk in. Today's risk is primarily "non-custodial parent" stuff.

Homicides are the same way. A few years ago the number fell to its lowest since they started keeping stats (1960.) That's the number of homicides. The rate has really bottomed out, since the population has increased by 85% since 1960.

Kids are not at greater risk.
Things are not more violent.
Just the opposite is true.

But you'd never know it. We are told otherwise. There's our individual reality, and there's universal perception (as created by others.)

Regarding the social stuff you describe, I really struggle with that reality versus perception. If I watch the news and read the internet, we're already in Hell in a hand basket. But none of that comports with my first-hand experience. My neighbors and I help each other out all the time. It's always been this way for me, even in the frantic busy DC suburbs. I do think that the outlayers these days are given way more attention (and shout way louder) than before. I gotta be careful to not let the media drumbeat determine my reality for me, or for me to compare my current adult reality with my hazy memory of how nice things "used to be."

Where I think the most damage has been done to our sense of community is the family structure. "Stay At Home Moms" rarely seem to exist, and they are really what used to be the community glue. Single parents and highly-stretched two wage earner couples barely have time for their kids...it's rush off to Day Care and rush back home from After Care to eat a hasty dinner and get off to bed. Poor kids don't have any "hang around the house time" as we did. Many state & local governments are standing up government Pre-K. This is not because it's best for the kid, it's (a) to provide taxpayer-funded Day Care, and (b) to give the government more influence at this stage of each kid's life. Many kids have already had their ability to process stuff in a logical manner destroyed.

Then there's the divorce rate.
And the Out-of-Wedlock birth rate.

I was watching the local news and they were showing high school kids who had each received a $1,000 scholarship. One student looks at the camera and says "As a single mom, this is going to come in handy," while giving the camera an approval-seeking look. She now has a universally-recognized elevated adult identity at 17 years of age: Single Mom. And she gets air time to declare it (and to normalize it for other girls.) THAT'S the stuff that's gonna destroy us.

So much to say about all this. Much of what I see that is us "socially falling apart" is attributable to people having choices that they did not in the past: women being able to support themselves; ability for either party to exit bad marriages; shame-free marriageless parenthood; shame-free open casual sex. Some of this is good. Some might not be. But much of this is what we are doing with freedom from traditional social pressures. The one frightening aspect to this is the influence the media has to define what is and is not acceptable. WAY WAY too much influence over us. All it takes is one popular sitcom to turn societal norms on their head. It scares me.

It will be interesting to see if this pendulum swings back the other way, or if it moves in an entirely different direction.
 
**RAMBLING OLD MAN ALERT**

In some ways I agree. But then there are other things.

If you look at FBI stats, modern "Stranger Danger" is way overblown. In fact, those days that we all "stayed out after dark and no one knew where we were" were WAY more dangerous than they are these days. Kids were way more likely to be kidnapped and assaulted than they are these days. I went to elementary school with a couple of little girls who were assaulted on their walk in. Today's risk is primarily "non-custodial parent" stuff.

Homicides are the same way. A few years ago the number fell to its lowest since they started keeping stats (1960.) That's the number of homicides. The rate has really bottomed out, since the population has increased by 85% since 1960.

Kids are not at greater risk.
Things are not more violent.
Just the opposite is true.

But you'd never know it. We are told otherwise. There's our individual reality, and there's universal perception (as created by others.)

Regarding the social stuff you describe, I really struggle with that reality versus perception. If I watch the news and read the internet, we're already in Hell in a hand basket. But none of that comports with my first-hand experience. My neighbors and I help each other out all the time. It's always been this way for me, even in the frantic busy DC suburbs. I do think that the outlayers these days are given way more attention (and shout way louder) than before. I gotta be careful to not let the media drumbeat determine my reality for me, or for me to compare my current adult reality with my hazy memory of how nice things "used to be."

Where I think the most damage has been done to our sense of community is the family structure. "Stay At Home Moms" rarely seem to exist, and they are really what used to be the community glue. Single parents and highly-stretched two wage earner couples barely have time for their kids...it's rush off to Day Care and rush back home from After Care to eat a hasty dinner and get off to bed. Poor kids don't have any "hang around the house time" as we did. Many state & local governments are standing up government Pre-K. This is not because it's best for the kid, it's (a) to provide taxpayer-funded Day Care, and (b) to give the government more influence at this stage of each kid's life. Many kids have already had their ability to process stuff in a logical manner destroyed.

Then there's the divorce rate.
And the Out-of-Wedlock birth rate.

I was watching the local news and they were showing high school kids who had each received a $1,000 scholarship. One student looks at the camera and says "As a single mom, this is going to come in handy," while giving the camera an approval-seeking look. She now has a universally-recognized elevated adult identity at 17 years of age: Single Mom. And she gets air time to declare it (and to normalize it for other girls.) THAT'S the stuff that's gonna destroy us.

So much to say about all this. Much of what I see that is us "socially falling apart" is attributable to people having choices that they did not in the past: women being able to support themselves; ability for either party to exit bad marriages; shame-free marriageless parenthood; shame-free open casual sex. Some of this is good. Some might not be. But much of this is what we are doing with freedom from traditional social pressures. The one frightening aspect to this is the influence the media has to define what is and is not acceptable. WAY WAY too much influence over us. All it takes is one popular sitcom to turn societal norms on their head. It scares me.

It will be interesting to see if this pendulum swings back the other way, or if it moves in an entirely different direction.
I agree with much of what you said.
 
LOL-when I was 16,my dad used to call my BFF and I "The Gold Dust Twins." We had no idea what he was talking about. I later found out that they were black,which my BFF and I were definitely not-we were both very,very blonde. We did look an awful lot alike though....

I remember Ivory Flakes.In Kindergarten,we did an art project where we painted snow scenes on black construction paper using Ivory Flakes mixed with water. Might have been something else added-cornstarch?flour?

I also remember Duz,Soilax,Lux,Oxydol,Palmolive and Camay.
And let's not forgot, Tame.
 
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I don’t remember how many magic tricks I had, but it was a lot. Loved putting on shows when I was a kid. I had most of these and more.

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I recall baby brother getting some sort of a magic set when he was little, it came with a deck of cards with a hole running through them, a handkerchief, a magic wand, and a few other things. Can't remember if dear brother ever mastered any of the tricks, but he sure swung the magic wand around a lot. :)
 


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