Damp.
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Yes, condensed milk is a much thicker, concentrated mixture of sugar (normally) and dehydrated milk. It’s lovely stuff, if you have a sweet tooth, and still used in many desserts. Not very good for you though! Very calorie-dense.
I remember evaporated milk though (Carnation). Supposedly a “treat”, but it tasted too much like long-life milk for me. Probably all they had during rationing though.
Damp.
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Artex. My mum went mad with the stuff when I was a kid. Nearly every room in the house was artexed.
Meat mincer attached to the kitchen table!
The blue peter home fire starter kit.
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Good thread this. A real trip down memory lane.
A few ones from me:
Stone cladding on the outside of houses was a very 70's thing - looked ridiculous, especially when an a semi-detached and one did it and not the other.
Sodastream - not really very nice, and as a student I learned that fizzy milk is surprisingly disgusting.
Vacuum cleaners with lights on the front (and the light was really weak), and paper bags inside.
Tarmac driveways with those little flecks of white stone in them.
Floor standing ashtrays, with the spring loaded covers on them.
TV sets in cabinets.
B&W television in the bedroom.
Indoor aerials that didn't work.
Frying pretty much all food.
Jelly. Lots of jelly.
Rotary phones, then trimphones for the absolute cutting edge.
Any toy that made an electronic noise was state of the art.
Mousetrap - never played it properly, never really got it to work.
Endless board (bored) games in cupboards.
Lego required your imagination, not a huge manual, and you could make all kinds of stuff with it.
Bannisters you could get your head stuck through.
Formica. Everywhere.
A mincing machine - with hand crank.
A bread/meat slicer, with optional severed finger.
Curly straws that you reused and were a breeding ground for bacteria.
Kitchen cloths (as opposed to disposable wipes).
A microwave had a bell that went "ping".
Vinyl. Lots of it. On furniture.
Wall mounted bar heaters in bathrooms. Probably lethal.
Electric blankets.
Sheets and blankets (before those trendy quilts came over from Scandinavia).
Padded bed headboards.
Every home had a spacehopper.
Uplighter shades (I think they were a truly stupid idea from the 1980's).
Having ceiling lights over to one side of the room - near the window. A strange notion possibly intended to simulate where natural daylight came from, or something inane like that.
Carpets everywhere - all beautiful old floorboards had to be covered.
Digital, or electro-mechanical alarm clock radios.
Big, square batteries (usually for some kind of barely portable lantern).
Record players you could stack records on for automatic play.
Tape cassette recorders. And double tape cassette recorded for the home priacy enthusiast.
Garish wallpaper, on every wall.
Mug hooks under kitchen cupboards. Or mug trees.
Spice racks, so you could show visitors how "international" you were in your tastes, before boiling a joint of pork and eating it with mashed potato.
Screwed down metal strips on stairs to hold the carper in place.
Draught excluders round every door.
Those strange stuffed "snakes" that old people put at the base of the front door to keep even more draughts out.
And really annoying brush guards on letterboxes in case those sneaky draughts got in that way.
"Pin art" - a truly ridiculous 70's fad where you bashed some nails into a piece of wood, then wound thread around them to create geometric patterns. Then hung it on your wall for friends to admire - this kind of rubbish: https://picclick.co.uk/VINTAGE-RETRO...124108797.html
I'm sure there are many more!
Last edited by TheFlyingBanana; 24th April 2018 at 11:24.
So clever my foot fell off.
Brush guards on letterboxes - we lived in a house with a couple of steps up to the front door and a slightly high letterbox. No-one bothered to walk up the stairs to post things, they just leant forward and shoved it through the mostly eye-level letterbox. My ex-wife in her early twenties used to wander around after a shower with her dressing gown open at the front. The edges were kept apart about 9 inches by, shall we say a couple of coat hooks? As she walked into the room one day towards the front door the Postie happened to be pushing a letter though the door, and was treated to the full view.
I got home that night and the wife told me of the horribly embarrassing situation and insisted that I came up with a solution. I bought and fitted a letterbox brush guard. I wonder if the postie wondered what on earth he was looking at the next time he lifted the letterbox flap.
TFB, several of the things you mention can be attributed to something else that has mostly disappeared - single glazing. As a bonus, I'll throw in clear plastic film secondary double glazing (the kind you shrink to fit with a hair dryer).
If there were a parallel "Shops we used to have" thread, then I imagine virtually anything you could have bought in 'Spoils The Kitchen Reject Shop' would fit right into this thread.
Net curtains, Lace doyleys and lace covers over the arms of the furniture
On the subject of lager (home made), and Sodastreams, if your lager turns out disappointingly flat, don't try to liven it up a bit with a Sodastream.
Because some sort of violent spontaneous chemical reaction occurs, which results in the need to re-decorate the kitchen. Ceiling as well.
Although no trees were harmed during the creation of this post, a large number of electrons were greatly inconvenienced.
I remember a stone effect fireplace that wrapped around 2 walls in our lounge, with the area above covered in cork tiles - not something you see these days!
LOL! I once heard that if you want good cheap sparkling wine, don't buy Prosecco, but instead get a half decent supermarket wine at around £7 a bottle and stick it through the Sodastream. I'm pretty sure I saw this on Food & Drink on TV. I've never tried it as I haven't had a Soda Stream since the late 80's. Feel free to let me know how you get on, I hope this doesn't cause a similar explosion as rejuvenated Lager!
Wall mounted bar heaters in bathrooms. Probably lethal
We moved into a house that hadn't changed much since the 70s and there is one of those in the bathroom, its the only thing I haven't changed yet, it fair belts out a gazillion watts of heat and it nearly turns bath time into a sauna experience ( without chucking water at it, naturally )
Really should take it down.
Cheers..
Jase
I had one of those. They even had one on play school in the 70s!
As I've got a few spare moments, I bring you... hands-free hair dryer (HMV Appliances), an ironing board for sleeves, a couple of bathroom heaters in beautifully coloured bathrooms, a standard lamp and a special 3 in 1 deal of serving hatch, wood panelling and ship-effect clock
Wood panelling is still a big thing here in Shetland. Even block-built houses can be pine-clad right up to the ceiling, sometimes even the ceiling is clad in pine. Gives me the horrors.
Looks like a converted sauna!
Condensed milk is on sale at Aldi.
Yes, that works very well. I bought a Sodastream as a way to perfect the art of making a decent ‘Vodka & Red Bull’. Red Bull isn’t very fizzy to start with and by the time you’ve added a decent ‘double’ of vodka and a handful of ice, you essentially end up with a flat drink. The Sodastream sorts that problem out a treat!
Gary
Yes, got one of those too...