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Kids these days. Am I right? With their Snapchats and their selfies. Take a walk down memory lane and see all the things that kids these days will never fully appreciate.
Which ones do you remember? Which ones are your most (or least!) favorite?
Floppy Disks
Once a staple in every tech-savvy home and office, floppy disks have given way to tiny flash drives.
Phone Books
To most kids — and a hefty portion of adults — it’s a mystery as to why phone books are still in circulation. While you may no longer use them to look up a plumber or friend’s phone number, there are plenty of way you can put your old yellow pages to good use.
Cassette Tapes
If it weren’t for “Guardians of the Galaxy,” kids these days may not even know a cassette tape from Adam. Apparently the Marvel films — with their Walkman-loving protagonist — helped give cassette tapes a retail boost in 2018 for the first time in a long time.
VHS Tapes
The very last VCR was made in 2016, further cementing VHS tapes’ descent into obscurity.
Speak & Spell
This once ubiquitous Texas Instruments toy is actually still available on sites like Amazon and eBay as a collector’s item.
Listening To The Radio All Day Long Just To Record Your Favorite Song On A Tape
Kids today will never truly understand the joy experienced when you managed to hit record at the exact moment your favorite song came on the radio.
Teddy Ruxpin
Before Tickle Me Elmo, there was Teddy Ruxpin.
Nintendo R.O.B.
Nintendo fans from the ’80s may remember the short-lived R.O.B. — which was compatible with only a couple games on the NES. But the chances of non-’80s kids remembering the R.O.B.? Slim to none.
Making Sure You Don’t Pick Up The Phone So You Don’t Cut Off The Internet
So many wonderful AIM chat sessions were cut short because of this issue. Kids will just never understand.
Building A Radio Shack Transistor Radio
The concept of in-home radios is hard enough for kids these days to understand — let alone building one’s own!
Crystal Pepsi
While Pepsi’s clear cola had fleeting, promotion-driven returns to store shelves in recent years, many adults will remember Crystal Pepsi’s original early ’90s debut and demise.
Popples
These stuffed animals that could roll up into themselves — and the corresponding TV show about them — debuted in the mid-’80s. There’s a chance kids today may know from Popples, however, as they’ve been brought back to market a couple times in the past two decades — but, as it so often goes, there’s nothing like the originals!
Video Games On Cartridges
Nintendo, Sega, Atari. All the major video game systems had cartridges. Chances are you blew into the bottom of one at least once in your childhood to try and clear up any on-screen wonkiness.
Blockbuster Video
While the Blockbuster brand is now part of the DISH network, kids these days will never know what it was like to browse the aisles of a Blockbuster store.
TV That’s Actually Furniture
While TVs today are designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, TVs used to be styled to fit right in with your living room set. And what a glorious look that was.
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Getting Up To Change The Channel
Along with the massive TV sets of yore, kids these days will never understand what TV-watching was like before remotes.
Discman
Portable CD players like the Discman ended Walkman’s longstanding reign, only to be replaced years later by the MP3 player craze.
AOL and the classic phrase, “You’ve Got Mail!”
Chances are you still have an AOL promotional disc lying somewhere around your house.
Disposable Camera
Can you remember the time when you didn’t have instant access to photos you’d taken? It seems wild now.
Payphones
How many fewer germs are passed between us all now that payphones are no longer a thing?
Pagers
And you never saw a pager without a belt clip to go with it.
Encyclopedia
It’s too bad encyclopedia makers didn’t beat Google to the punch, or we might instead be saying “let me brittanica that for you” today.
Trapper Keepers
Trapper Keepers, preferably covered with stickers, were everything.
VHS Rewinders
Because you had to “be kind and rewind,” the joy of using a super-fast VHS rewinder was unparalleled.
Metal Slides
While there are still some in existence, metal slides — and the way they’d sear your skin after becoming piping hot in the sun — used to be a given.
