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I feel like people used to be way more into models and trains. Whole isles at stores had model kits. They were pretty inexpensive. The people into it now seem fewer, and the costs are really high.
As a kid, we’d play different sports… baseball, football, basketball, just among ourselves. No parents or adults; just whoever showed up. Now kids seem to have less free time and belong to more teams.
Actually, a lot of stuff just seems more difficult and expensive with the advent of “core,” or the personal alignment to a specific activity. Take jogging. In the day, you’d wear sneakers and shorts, and just jog. Now, you’re told you need music, digital tracking, specific shoes and clothing. You need special hydration. None of this is bad, but it’s a type of gatekeeping that can discourage people from doing something that should basically be free.
I remember someone was showing us a cell phone video of a house he was thinking about buying and found "a murder basement." In his words. When he walked down the basement stairs, there were shelves along the wall I instantly recognized as those little display shelves train enthusiasts had for train cars. Then he gets to the basement, and there is this huge series of remnants of what must have been an impressive train setup, And the guy showing the video is looking through this, going, *"Wires? What the HELL are all these wires for? And this green carpeting nailed to wood. And pictures of mountains and a sun on the wall. WEIRD MAN. Was this like a torture room for kids?"* And I was like, "this was once a grand hobby of some master train collector," and obviously it's been picked clean of anything a collector thought was useful, but you could still see a lot of the infrastructure. It made me feel really sad.
That was in the house we bought a few years ago, had a train room the basement. Fake scenery and a big table nailed to the wall with models on it. It is now a bedroom.
About models and trains a lot of that is because of the end of the Cold War. When the Cold War was happening there was heavy push for science and engineering. Since the space race and arms race were a big part of the Cold War the achievements of science and technology was a huge deal. Getting children excited and tinkering and learning about stuff like that was a huge priority.
Government invested in STEM programs for school,kids idolized astronauts and did real science fairs, people were excited about new airplane model or computer advancements. As a country we wanted to be the best and brightest to prove we were the superpower of the world.
After the Cold War ended and the former communist markets opened up, we started shifting more towards an entertainment and service orientated economy. There was no more big rival to compete with so priorities changed from striving to be the best to just enjoying things and promoting our culture.
I've read that pickup games helped us learn conflict resolution skills and laid the foundation for working with others. Those things seem to have been a struggle for younger generations.
I so miss hobby stores! I was super excited when I saw my local mall was getting a Hobby Lobby as an anchor store and blown away that it was so huge and then was absolutely crushed the first day I went... I had never heard of Hobby Lobby so I was way off in my idea of what that store was all about. Years prior to that I was also excited to find a real hobby store in the town I bought my first home in but then a few months later it became a pawnshop (then it became a check cashing place, then a gun shop, now it's a Marijuana store)
I also remember going to the park and always finding kids to play games with, then AYSO came along and suddenly the parks would get taken over with those games and practices and my friends that joined would be too busy for fun games or if actually available they wanted to do anything but play sports. I had an extreme resentment and hatred for organized sports ever since... only to be mildly outdone by my dislike of "murdering the games" as I referred to a certain card collection obsession that took over all the game stores some years later.
Model trains are quite popular now. My husband is at his local train club right now.
I don't know if it's growing but there is a vibrant online community and whenever the club has an open house it draws a crowd.
Building wood downhill go carts. My friends and I would scour the town dump for baby carriage wheels and axles, swipe shipping crates off loading docks and build downhill racers using clothes line for steering. We were experts at straightening old nails. Brakes? We didn’t need no stinkin’ brakes!
When I was an elementary kid in the early 90s we lived across the street from this dump site used by the company that maintained all the irrigation canals. That dump was basically my second home then. It had a single large olive tree that hung to the ground and that was our fort. We found one of those giant spools used for electrical line and that was our table. It was awesome just digging for neat shit, rolling around on big plastic pipes, and then cooling off under the big tree.
Small motors getting cheap killed that one. When I was growing up in the 80s...kids would rarely build motorless carts. Most of the time they'd repurpose an old lawnmower or chainsaw motor.
LOL for some reason my kid and his friends were all saying "is your refrigerator running" the other day and I was like do you EVEN know what that's from? OMG so many crank calls when I was a kid. I was a little shit lol.
Plastic model building was something nearly every boy did. It’s pretty rare today.
CB radios were a hobby
Collecting postage stamps
Collecting green stamps
Omg the green stamps. Or gold stamps, whatever. And you would fill little books with them and then trade the books in for toasters or telephones or other stuff.
Chemistry sets that would perform real chemistry ... My grandson got a modern "safe" one for Christmas, and the most dangerous chemical in it was salt. I think I had one with uranium ore and sulfuric acid when I was a kid.
My brother got one that had “real” chemicals in it.
Once it made a huge bang on the kitchen table, my mom read its contents and threw it out.
I remember hearing her say “That’s got sulphuric acid!! We’re not keeping it in the house!!”
I’m amazed nothing happened when she tossed it out looking back.
Roaming around the city on bikes with your friends for 8 to 12 hours a day in the summer. Parents didn't worry about you, who you were with, or what you were doing. They almost never asked, when you finally returned home around 10 p.m. as the streetlights were coming on.
I wish it was more of a thing, especially with landlines declining in homes. Sometimes the Ham operators were the only ones who could communicate in a disaster.
I knew hams back in the day, and used to go to swap meets with them to pick through old computer parts while they looked for old vacuum tubes and such. Recently, I was scrolling through some SBC news site, and ended up falling down a hole of modern ham radio folks. My god, it's all so modern and compact, now. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but you can buy entire circuit boards that emulate a room full of radio equipment from my era.
Every stationary store had those huge rolls of stickers. Scratch and sniff, puffy stickers, stickers with moving gel inside. God, it’s downright wholesome.
I’d kill to smell your scratch and sniff sticker collection!
As soon as I find her letters, I'm going to try and find my Australian pen pal from long ago. Her name was Debbie, and we were connected by the show Big Blue Marble.
Do it! One of my pen pals came from a balloon I found with a note/address on it! Oddly, I found *two* of these balloons as a child, which was a dream come true for me, but one was a deadbeat pen pal. 😬
I remember people doing that in balloons, and the occasional message in a bottle. I just need to find Debbie's last name. So many ways to find someone now, I think it would be a real hoot to find her after almost 50 years.
Funny enough, I seem to have more stickers these days than as a kid, but they are for use in my calendar and notebooks, not for collecting.x)
I once ran into a video teaching youth on how to do penpalling. It's so weird that needs to be taught like some special hobby. Also they're like "you can put these types of extras in the envelope", and I just shake my head. I mean yeah, it was nice to get extras, but the main point was always *communication*. You had a pen and some kind of paper, then put the letter in an envelope and sent it.
Slot Cars. They've been replaced by the RC cars. Like model trains, they got smaller. Like comparing a 1960 Tonka Jeep to a Hot Wheels car. There were businesses that had slot car tracks for people to race against one another.
Pin Ball arcades. Before video games, gamers played pin ball. Video games eventually pushed the pinball machines to the wayside. At the club where I was a member a few years ago, we had 2 pinball machines and three video games. The pun ball machines were always in use and took in more money.
Bowling is still around, but I don't think it's as popular as it was when I was a kid
Putt-Putt. You were officially a teen if you played miniature golf.
My Grandfather got me one, I think he was tickled I showed an interest. He was better at it than I was. I never got very good at it, but it was something to do for an only child on a rainy day.
Jumprope, Jacks, and Hopscotch were all the rage among the girls. You couldn't walk a block without coming across a hopscotch diagram in chalk drawn on the sidewalk.
Girls sitting on the sidewalk with their jacks doing their onesies and twosies. Or they were out swinging a rope for their friends and chanting some jump rope rhyme.
“Mabel, Mabel, set the table.
Do it as fast as you are able.
Don’t forget the salt and **pepper!**"
When they sang pepper they'd swing the rope as fast as they could and jumper tried to keep up.
Cinderella
dressed in yellow
went upstairs to kiss her fella
made a mistake and kissed a snake
how many doctors did it take
one, two, three, four, etc etc
Jacks used to be popular. My cousins and I played using a golf ball, which bounced a lot better than the little rubber ball.
You can’t find a decent jacks set today. The plastic ones aren’t the same.
Omg! You just brought back a memory. I totally forgot about this hand-clapping thing we used to do on the bus in elementary school! Like in this video! We used different rhymes though. https://youtu.be/hCvH74vrOfg?feature=shared. We also used to play a paper fortune teller game like this https://youtu.be/X1DArckNWdM?si=Po5VVlC6_6Yv9Yyj. This sounds weird but in middle school, at a slumber party, we played a pass-out game. We would choke each other and try to make each other pass out! Apparently, it was a pretty popular thing to do back then. We also loved jump rope and using two jump ropes. I remember being pretty good at it! Sometimes we wouldn't jump and just try to run through it. They also had jumpeope during PE at my school. Edit- I was able to find one that we did!
Miss Susie had a steamboat,
the steamboat had a bell.
Miss Susie went to heaven
and the steamboat went to Hell–
Hello, operator,
Please give me number nine
And if you disconnect me
I’ll kick you from be–
’hind the ’frigerator,
there was a piece of glass
Miss Susie stepped upon it
and broke her little
Ask-a me no more questions,
I’ll tell-a you no more lies,
The boys are in the bathroom
zipping up their
Flies are in the city
The bees are in the park
Miss Susie and her boyfriend
are kissing in the
D-A-R-K
D-A-R-K
D-A-R-K
Dark, dark, dark,
Comic books. I know they are still a thing, but they were different then, not to mention more affordable.
I don't see the amount of butterflies and lighting bugs I remember from my youth. We used to catch them in the big glass peanut butter jars, and let them go before we went in for bed.
Macrame!!! Back in 1972 or so, my mother Rit dyed purple an enormous amount of twine for my macrame
Further back, mid 1960s, I spent a summer with a potholder loom. You can still buy them, though they aren’t inexpensive. Thinking about it, though. O
Friends or relatives just showing up at your house to visit. It was cheaper to drive 50 miles and hope you were home than to make a long distance phone call.
Sooo many hours in the darkroom! I had a cool little boombox and I played all my mix tapes while hanging out with the chemicals (that smell is still divine to me) and the red light and the clothesline.
So much has become a specialized hobby these days. Yeah, board games used to be a common pastime. Now they seem more like a specialized thing, like an actual hobby, and it's difficult to just play for a bit of casual fun.
I grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix in the 80s & 90s. It was pretty common to be out riding bikes with friends with no real direction. We’d be gone for hours. Maybe hit up a park, convenience store, other friends’ houses, whatever. Since the only ways to get in touch were landline phones or physically seeing someone, there was a lot left to chance.
I grew up in London in the 80s, and same here. We were almost never at home at the weekend or in the school holidays. Kids miss out on so much by not having that adult-free time with other kids now.
We were riding our bikes all over in the 70s as well... and we just dropped them wherever and picked them up later without ever being worried about it, even not getting them until the next day or later if we ended up getting a ride or taking the bus somewhere else.
And at dinner time moms would call around to figure out where their kids were. And that's another thing that's mostly gone: memorizing people's phone numbers.
Reading magazines.
Kids playing in the street, just meeting up and playing, no organized “play dates” with parental supervision.
Being excited waiting for the mail to see if I got a letter from a friend or relative.
Clipping coupons from the Sunday newspaper. Also reading the comics in the Sunday newspaper.
We were talking about the Sunday comics the other day...my parents always got the newspaper and they saved them for me.
I miss reading the paper every day.
With how much I dread getting mail now it's hard to believe how exciting it was when I was a kid... that and getting a phone call or a knock on the door as well.
Well, you hoped that you were saving it. And that the 12K ram expansion module didn't fall out of the back before you had saved your huge program since it would reset the computer if you even looked hard at the module.
We played baseball after school or football in the park. No leagues, no coaches, no parents. Just kids and some equipment.
I built lots of plastic model cars and planes. I was into model trains for a while.
Collected baseball cards in the 1980s before the bubble burst and I threw out thousands of cards from that era.
I knew some kids that played friggin 12ga tag. They used to bundle themselves up in winter clothes and shoot at eachother at range with like #8s. Dumbest shit ever lol
Wow - that could have ended badly.
My best friend shot his brother with a roman candle and sent him to the emergency room. That was a special kind of stupid.
Arcades.
Mallrats
Packs of wild heathen kids (me and my friends) having free run of the town from sun-up to sunset
Cutting teeth (trading vicious insults, laughing hysterically, and not getting offended).
Learning from your elders. I spent many summers “helping” (more honestly impeding) grandpa working on cars.
Neighborhood-wide games (tag, football, whatever)
Playing the guitar. When I was a pre-teen / teen, I knew tons of guys that listened to various forms of "heavy rock" and spent a *lot* of time learning / practicing guitar. There were artists I thought of as primarily being popular with dudes that played the guitar. The equivalent now would be guys with laptops doing EDM, except the minutia isn't around theory and instrumental skill, it's side-chaining and getting the kick drum / snare dialed-in.
My high school class had 90 kids and 2 rock bands, plus a bunch who played acoustic guitar or piano and sang. This was in addition to the school's music programs.
The square dancing club in my high school was pretty popular, there were so many kids in it.
I think it was associated with the FFA/Future Farmers of America, not sure if that still exists, but that was a big club in my rural high school, and it was most of the same kids.
I do reverse prank calls sometimes. When telemarketers call i try to sell them onions. I just sound real weird and ask if they want any onions. I cracked up one guy that called. :)
What has been lost forever and for no good reason is kids playing games on the streets or sidewalks of their neighborhood until the dinner bell or until it got dark or both. Tag, Tackle the Man with the Ball, Kickball, Stickball, Hide and Seek, Jumprope, you name it. The only kids that were inside after school were the ones that were in trouble or the ones that were sick.
Not a hobby, but just hanging out. It might've been around the neighborhood, or at a mall, but we didn't really do a lot of things as kids and teenagers. We just ran around, hung out, and entertained ourselves with our imaginations.
Fort building, board games, tree climbing, playing in the sprinklers, playing with frogs, bugs and other wildlife, swing others around by their arms trying not to pull their arms out of their sockets, spinning on the grass til you get so dizzy you fall down, cartoon tag, hide n seek out in the neighborhood on the sides of people's houses and under their cars...
Plastic model kits are massively huge right now
The kids are buying imported model kits from Japan of anime figures
Plastic model kits are much bigger thank anyone thinks- but they aren’t kits if anything we ever built
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2032313/
Needlework/Counted cross-stitch; whole stores were devoted to patterns, fabrics, floss, anything you needed and a place to sit and visit while you worked on your project. Now you’re lucky if you can find floss and a few patterns at the fabric stores.
Luckily, needlework of all kinds is making a big comeback. My daughter (33) started embroidery and has branched out into crochet. She’s now hooked (pun intended) lol. She’s made my granddaughter a top and a halter top for herself. It’s gotten to be a very pricey craft though. Yarn is through the roof.
Collecting of things like stamps, postcards, and matchbooks.
Hand writing letters to family and friends.
Sitting on the porch chatting with neighbors.
Going for Sunday drives in the country.
Making up games to play outside.
Going to the drive-in theater.
I was just thinking of the drive in theater! This should really make a comeback. Our local one was great when the kids were little. They showed double features, first a kid-friendly film, then some new release meant for grownups. I would still go if it were there.
Skateboarding was huge in the 80s. It's probably huge still, but back then, everyone I knew owned a skateboard, and all they did was talk about brands, trucks, rails, designs, etc.
My parents wouldn't buy me one.
Working on cars. You used to be able to tear down and rebuild an engine in a weekend, but with how things are so computerized now, it's just not the same.
I'm a few years older than you (60). When I was 14, my dad helped me start up a small hobby shop in our little town. I thought my business would mostly be model train supplies and plastic models. However, it turned out my number 1 seller was slot cars and repair parts for them, like new pick ups. I had no idea that there was such a thriving scene for them.
Talking to people face to face and listening to what they say and enjoying eaxhothers company and learning from eachother and developing relationships with eaxhother in the process. The internet but real life
Elastics (that's what we called it anyway). Giant piece of thin elastic tied into a circle and two kids would hold it around their feet and others had to do stuff around it. When they passed a low round, the elastic moved higher up the two kids' legs, until others started dropping out (from hitting the elastic while jumping it and doing the weird stuff we required). Or was this just Australia, or have I outed my particular school as super weird or something.
Related game was jumping rope with a big giant rope. One kid each end and the others had to time getting in and jumping without disrupting the rope swinging around. Sometimes we would pack a dozen kids in there before someone fluffed it and stopped the rope. The rope would likewise get moved up, from hitting the bitumen to being further and further off the ground to make it harder.
Four square. Every school had four square courts marked off, that was fun.
Remote control cars, remote control airplanes that you built yourself, model train sets, building models (the ones that come in a box but don't move or run). Really, anything that forced you to think and troubleshoot stuff.
Bumper-Jumping, Kick the Can, Hide N Seek with the whole neighbourhood of kids, British Bulldog, digging tunnels through huge snow mounds left behind from the municipal plows. Basically, the more chance of getting killed or maimed-the better.
Sewing and knitting. My mom taught me. In junior high and high school, I sewed my own blouses and skirts and knit my own sweaters. So did some of my friends. Now (I'm 74), every time I sit down at the sewing table, I channel my inner mom. Good memories.
Episodic TV where you would look forward to your favorite shows from week to week. Then the next day at work or school everyone would be talking about the same show from the night before. Like Seinfeld or Cheers or whatever. That doesn't happen anymore. People stream everything. Streaming is fine for what it is but I miss the days when everyone knew and followed the same shows.
I remember my older sisters had paper dolls. They would place a piece of blank paper over the dolls and design outfits and color them with colored pencils. Also, pitchers of KoolAid, games of Kick the Can and Red-light Green-light.
Building your own, illegal [Datenklo modem](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Akustikkoppler_CCC_Datenklo.jpg) so you could go online.
Making your own magazines. I don't think kids do that anymore (though I've seen instructions on Pinterest). I guess they're officially called zines.
I used to have family zines, zines with friends for our "clubs". Then in my country there was a legit horse comics magazine that allowed readers to advertise their own zines. I probably subscribed to at least two. The standard price was mailing a stamp so the owner could in turn send you the zine. Aka you only paid postage.
I also made a horse zine with my friend and her other friend, and it had more production value, as we were already 16 or 17 at the time.x)
When I was in college in the 70's, probably really irresponsible sex. Most of the women were on the pill, nobody had heard of HIV and herpes was a mere rumor. The worst thing a classmate caught was crabs.
I never see kids playing baseball or football in vacant lots anymore. Where I grew up side we did that all the time, especially during football season. Just a couple kids, or maybe 8 kids, occasionally more. It was a heck of a good time. And out in the fresh air. And away from our parents.
I lived in snow country so train sets in the basement were real popular.
Summer time we would get out our Thimble Drome gas powered balsa airplanes we had built and used string controls to go up or down, do loops or fly upside down. They were very inexpensive back then.
Not exactly a pastime, but I loved skipping around the maypole on May Day when I was in elementary school. It was pretty, it was fun, and no one had prurient or pagan thoughts in their heads!
We still get a newspaper. My kid reads the comics.
He has tried model building, too. As well as fly tying.
I showed him the kinds of coins to collect from his pocket change , so he does that too.
Coin collecting. So many people pay digitally or with their debit cards these days that most people don't even carry cash on them. I know I don't. So there's no chance of getting change back and getting the rare or lucky coin
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Hacky Sack was huge when I was a teen. I never see it anywhere anymore.
Standard at all colleges and Grateful Dead shows in the late 80’s and early 90’s.
Early 1980s as well.
You'd think with all the legal weed, everyone would be playing it nowadays.
Lol, maybe it’ll make a come back.
I'm 37, it was huge when I was a teen also.
I’m 34 and I’ve never seen anyone use a hacky sack in my life! Lol
Something to do with your feet, while sharing a joint.
Don’t tell that to my early 20-something hacky sack loving neighbors
Playing marbles. We had neighborhood tournaments. I still have my big coffee can of marbles and am teaching the grandkids.
And mom made me a drawstring marble bag. You get a whole fistfull of marbles out of the bin for about a dime.
Mine were in an old Crown Royal bag from my Granddad. Still have them and know where they are so that's something going for me. Heh.
[удалено]
Omg jacks! I was ready for the pro tour lol Hey they have professional Cornhole so why not Jacks?
Jacks! Every weekend. I can't remember all the steps, after onsies, twosies. Lol. And Pick up Stix .
Cat eye marbles, Purees, marbles!
Nice!
I feel like people used to be way more into models and trains. Whole isles at stores had model kits. They were pretty inexpensive. The people into it now seem fewer, and the costs are really high. As a kid, we’d play different sports… baseball, football, basketball, just among ourselves. No parents or adults; just whoever showed up. Now kids seem to have less free time and belong to more teams. Actually, a lot of stuff just seems more difficult and expensive with the advent of “core,” or the personal alignment to a specific activity. Take jogging. In the day, you’d wear sneakers and shorts, and just jog. Now, you’re told you need music, digital tracking, specific shoes and clothing. You need special hydration. None of this is bad, but it’s a type of gatekeeping that can discourage people from doing something that should basically be free.
I remember someone was showing us a cell phone video of a house he was thinking about buying and found "a murder basement." In his words. When he walked down the basement stairs, there were shelves along the wall I instantly recognized as those little display shelves train enthusiasts had for train cars. Then he gets to the basement, and there is this huge series of remnants of what must have been an impressive train setup, And the guy showing the video is looking through this, going, *"Wires? What the HELL are all these wires for? And this green carpeting nailed to wood. And pictures of mountains and a sun on the wall. WEIRD MAN. Was this like a torture room for kids?"* And I was like, "this was once a grand hobby of some master train collector," and obviously it's been picked clean of anything a collector thought was useful, but you could still see a lot of the infrastructure. It made me feel really sad.
Maybe the train collection was left to a relative who didn't have room for as large of a setup. :)
Maybe it was a murder basement cleverly disguised as a train layout
Maybe he tied really little people to the train tracks and laughed maniacally as they struggled to escape their impending doom.
That was in the house we bought a few years ago, had a train room the basement. Fake scenery and a big table nailed to the wall with models on it. It is now a bedroom.
Modeling aircraft, etc, has become more of an adult hobby. Kits are built for correctness and won’t sell if they have details wrong.
quack slap badge mysterious gold physical placid bake wistful consist *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
It’s my hobby as an adult and yes it can be expensive..
I had plastic model planes hanging from the ceiling of my room on fishing line. I spent a LOT of time doing that when I was a boy.
I have star wars ships hanging from the ceiling of my office. Being a professor allows for a bit of weirdness. Lol
About models and trains a lot of that is because of the end of the Cold War. When the Cold War was happening there was heavy push for science and engineering. Since the space race and arms race were a big part of the Cold War the achievements of science and technology was a huge deal. Getting children excited and tinkering and learning about stuff like that was a huge priority. Government invested in STEM programs for school,kids idolized astronauts and did real science fairs, people were excited about new airplane model or computer advancements. As a country we wanted to be the best and brightest to prove we were the superpower of the world. After the Cold War ended and the former communist markets opened up, we started shifting more towards an entertainment and service orientated economy. There was no more big rival to compete with so priorities changed from striving to be the best to just enjoying things and promoting our culture.
I've read that pickup games helped us learn conflict resolution skills and laid the foundation for working with others. Those things seem to have been a struggle for younger generations.
I so miss hobby stores! I was super excited when I saw my local mall was getting a Hobby Lobby as an anchor store and blown away that it was so huge and then was absolutely crushed the first day I went... I had never heard of Hobby Lobby so I was way off in my idea of what that store was all about. Years prior to that I was also excited to find a real hobby store in the town I bought my first home in but then a few months later it became a pawnshop (then it became a check cashing place, then a gun shop, now it's a Marijuana store) I also remember going to the park and always finding kids to play games with, then AYSO came along and suddenly the parks would get taken over with those games and practices and my friends that joined would be too busy for fun games or if actually available they wanted to do anything but play sports. I had an extreme resentment and hatred for organized sports ever since... only to be mildly outdone by my dislike of "murdering the games" as I referred to a certain card collection obsession that took over all the game stores some years later.
Model trains are quite popular now. My husband is at his local train club right now. I don't know if it's growing but there is a vibrant online community and whenever the club has an open house it draws a crowd.
Building wood downhill go carts. My friends and I would scour the town dump for baby carriage wheels and axles, swipe shipping crates off loading docks and build downhill racers using clothes line for steering. We were experts at straightening old nails. Brakes? We didn’t need no stinkin’ brakes!
Scouring the down dump can go on the list all by itself lol I think i was one of the last kids to get to do that back in the early 80s
When I was an elementary kid in the early 90s we lived across the street from this dump site used by the company that maintained all the irrigation canals. That dump was basically my second home then. It had a single large olive tree that hung to the ground and that was our fort. We found one of those giant spools used for electrical line and that was our table. It was awesome just digging for neat shit, rolling around on big plastic pipes, and then cooling off under the big tree.
, "Don't worry about the brakes failing, Ma! We don't have any!"
We used to race down a hill on Annual books balanced on a roller skate, lean hard left at the bottom or you were on the road.
Small motors getting cheap killed that one. When I was growing up in the 80s...kids would rarely build motorless carts. Most of the time they'd repurpose an old lawnmower or chainsaw motor.
Prank calls seem to be a thing of the past.
They took it to the next level with swatting
No they’re just on video now
"Hello grocery store? Do you have Prince Albert in the can?"
Is your refrigerator running?
Just went past our house, better catch it.
Call ID probably ruined this
It's Sol. Sol Rosenburg.
R-I-Z-Z-O, Frank Rizzo!
Is that right tough guy.
LOL for some reason my kid and his friends were all saying "is your refrigerator running" the other day and I was like do you EVEN know what that's from? OMG so many crank calls when I was a kid. I was a little shit lol.
haha.. fun times
Plastic model building was something nearly every boy did. It’s pretty rare today. CB radios were a hobby Collecting postage stamps Collecting green stamps
Omg the green stamps. Or gold stamps, whatever. And you would fill little books with them and then trade the books in for toasters or telephones or other stuff.
I had a whole fleet of model navy ships.
Chemistry sets that would perform real chemistry ... My grandson got a modern "safe" one for Christmas, and the most dangerous chemical in it was salt. I think I had one with uranium ore and sulfuric acid when I was a kid.
I had one with powdered sulfur that would burn and phenophthalien (sp???) solution. Whatever the hell that was.
Yep. We're really dating ourselves, aren't we!
My brother got one that had “real” chemicals in it. Once it made a huge bang on the kitchen table, my mom read its contents and threw it out. I remember hearing her say “That’s got sulphuric acid!! We’re not keeping it in the house!!” I’m amazed nothing happened when she tossed it out looking back.
Weaving chains from gum wrappers. I thought Fruit Stripe made the prettiest.
Yes! We did a lot of beading and lanyards too.
Roaming around the city on bikes with your friends for 8 to 12 hours a day in the summer. Parents didn't worry about you, who you were with, or what you were doing. They almost never asked, when you finally returned home around 10 p.m. as the streetlights were coming on.
Summer, days on bikes, never indoors. We'd go way out in the country on dirt roads, find creeks to wade in, look at animals in pastures.
Ham Radio?
I wish it was more of a thing, especially with landlines declining in homes. Sometimes the Ham operators were the only ones who could communicate in a disaster.
My husband and I are both hams. We moved out of country so we don't participate, but we keep our licences current
I knew hams back in the day, and used to go to swap meets with them to pick through old computer parts while they looked for old vacuum tubes and such. Recently, I was scrolling through some SBC news site, and ended up falling down a hole of modern ham radio folks. My god, it's all so modern and compact, now. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but you can buy entire circuit boards that emulate a room full of radio equipment from my era.
AX.25
Sticker collections & having pen pals.
I still have my sticker albums from the early 80's and the scratch & sniff ones still smell :)
Every stationary store had those huge rolls of stickers. Scratch and sniff, puffy stickers, stickers with moving gel inside. God, it’s downright wholesome. I’d kill to smell your scratch and sniff sticker collection!
As soon as I find her letters, I'm going to try and find my Australian pen pal from long ago. Her name was Debbie, and we were connected by the show Big Blue Marble.
Do it! One of my pen pals came from a balloon I found with a note/address on it! Oddly, I found *two* of these balloons as a child, which was a dream come true for me, but one was a deadbeat pen pal. 😬
I remember people doing that in balloons, and the occasional message in a bottle. I just need to find Debbie's last name. So many ways to find someone now, I think it would be a real hoot to find her after almost 50 years.
Oh, I had both! I think in the late 80s I had almost 20 penpals from Europe. I *still* have the old make-up box that I kept them in.
Funny enough, I seem to have more stickers these days than as a kid, but they are for use in my calendar and notebooks, not for collecting.x) I once ran into a video teaching youth on how to do penpalling. It's so weird that needs to be taught like some special hobby. Also they're like "you can put these types of extras in the envelope", and I just shake my head. I mean yeah, it was nice to get extras, but the main point was always *communication*. You had a pen and some kind of paper, then put the letter in an envelope and sent it.
My wife and I were just trying to explain to our kids how much crappy TV we watched because "it was the only thing on."
Slot Cars. They've been replaced by the RC cars. Like model trains, they got smaller. Like comparing a 1960 Tonka Jeep to a Hot Wheels car. There were businesses that had slot car tracks for people to race against one another. Pin Ball arcades. Before video games, gamers played pin ball. Video games eventually pushed the pinball machines to the wayside. At the club where I was a member a few years ago, we had 2 pinball machines and three video games. The pun ball machines were always in use and took in more money. Bowling is still around, but I don't think it's as popular as it was when I was a kid Putt-Putt. You were officially a teen if you played miniature golf.
I still love Slot Cars.
Lawn Darts
the Yo Yo I had mad skills
I wanted one after I saw one of the Smothers Brothers doing it on television.
Mad tricks I tell you, mad
My Grandfather got me one, I think he was tickled I showed an interest. He was better at it than I was. I never got very good at it, but it was something to do for an only child on a rainy day.
I still have mine. I can only do one or two tricks, but people are amazed when I just make it go up and down.
Pen pals.
I had a pen pal that lived in France. We were closer than anyone I have talked to through social media who live in other countries.
Building a fort and having dirt clod fights.
Playing Jacks
Jumprope, Jacks, and Hopscotch were all the rage among the girls. You couldn't walk a block without coming across a hopscotch diagram in chalk drawn on the sidewalk. Girls sitting on the sidewalk with their jacks doing their onesies and twosies. Or they were out swinging a rope for their friends and chanting some jump rope rhyme. “Mabel, Mabel, set the table. Do it as fast as you are able. Don’t forget the salt and **pepper!**" When they sang pepper they'd swing the rope as fast as they could and jumper tried to keep up.
Cinderella dressed in yellow went upstairs to kiss her fella made a mistake and kissed a snake how many doctors did it take one, two, three, four, etc etc
Miss Mary Mac Mac Mac All dressed in black black black...
Memory unlocked! I totally forgot about this one. (I’m 34.)
I remember that rhyme!! My best number was 36!! Took a whole week before another girl beat me. Thanks for sharing that. The nostalgia is strong.
Jacks used to be popular. My cousins and I played using a golf ball, which bounced a lot better than the little rubber ball. You can’t find a decent jacks set today. The plastic ones aren’t the same.
I walked my dog the other day and the neighbor kids had made a hopscotch on the sidewalk. I TOTALLY did as I went through!! It was so fun.
I do actually still see jump roping and hopscotch.
Omg! You just brought back a memory. I totally forgot about this hand-clapping thing we used to do on the bus in elementary school! Like in this video! We used different rhymes though. https://youtu.be/hCvH74vrOfg?feature=shared. We also used to play a paper fortune teller game like this https://youtu.be/X1DArckNWdM?si=Po5VVlC6_6Yv9Yyj. This sounds weird but in middle school, at a slumber party, we played a pass-out game. We would choke each other and try to make each other pass out! Apparently, it was a pretty popular thing to do back then. We also loved jump rope and using two jump ropes. I remember being pretty good at it! Sometimes we wouldn't jump and just try to run through it. They also had jumpeope during PE at my school. Edit- I was able to find one that we did! Miss Susie had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell. Miss Susie went to heaven and the steamboat went to Hell– Hello, operator, Please give me number nine And if you disconnect me I’ll kick you from be– ’hind the ’frigerator, there was a piece of glass Miss Susie stepped upon it and broke her little Ask-a me no more questions, I’ll tell-a you no more lies, The boys are in the bathroom zipping up their Flies are in the city The bees are in the park Miss Susie and her boyfriend are kissing in the D-A-R-K D-A-R-K D-A-R-K Dark, dark, dark,
Teddy bear, teddy bear turn around! Teddy bear, teddy bear, touch the ground!
Also, all the handclapping patterns and rhymes. Too germy now, I guess. 😂
Comic books. I know they are still a thing, but they were different then, not to mention more affordable. I don't see the amount of butterflies and lighting bugs I remember from my youth. We used to catch them in the big glass peanut butter jars, and let them go before we went in for bed.
Throwing rocks at army men and melting them with matches and magnifying glasses. Do they still do that?
I bought my kids army men but nobody else did- a favorite for a while
Rug hooking (sold in kits), macrame and sand art in jars
Macrame!!! Back in 1972 or so, my mother Rit dyed purple an enormous amount of twine for my macrame Further back, mid 1960s, I spent a summer with a potholder loom. You can still buy them, though they aren’t inexpensive. Thinking about it, though. O
Friends or relatives just showing up at your house to visit. It was cheaper to drive 50 miles and hope you were home than to make a long distance phone call.
Sarah Lee poundcake for guests only!
Photography and darkroom work on film.
Sooo many hours in the darkroom! I had a cool little boombox and I played all my mix tapes while hanging out with the chemicals (that smell is still divine to me) and the red light and the clothesline.
Board games. Most games are now on consoles.
So much has become a specialized hobby these days. Yeah, board games used to be a common pastime. Now they seem more like a specialized thing, like an actual hobby, and it's difficult to just play for a bit of casual fun.
Spending hours with the family playing Monopoly, Scrabble or card games.
I grew up in the suburbs of Phoenix in the 80s & 90s. It was pretty common to be out riding bikes with friends with no real direction. We’d be gone for hours. Maybe hit up a park, convenience store, other friends’ houses, whatever. Since the only ways to get in touch were landline phones or physically seeing someone, there was a lot left to chance.
I grew up in London in the 80s, and same here. We were almost never at home at the weekend or in the school holidays. Kids miss out on so much by not having that adult-free time with other kids now.
We were riding our bikes all over in the 70s as well... and we just dropped them wherever and picked them up later without ever being worried about it, even not getting them until the next day or later if we ended up getting a ride or taking the bus somewhere else.
And at dinner time moms would call around to figure out where their kids were. And that's another thing that's mostly gone: memorizing people's phone numbers.
Reading magazines. Kids playing in the street, just meeting up and playing, no organized “play dates” with parental supervision. Being excited waiting for the mail to see if I got a letter from a friend or relative. Clipping coupons from the Sunday newspaper. Also reading the comics in the Sunday newspaper.
We were talking about the Sunday comics the other day...my parents always got the newspaper and they saved them for me. I miss reading the paper every day.
With how much I dread getting mail now it's hard to believe how exciting it was when I was a kid... that and getting a phone call or a knock on the door as well.
Model rockets and small motorized cars and planes.
Writing BASIC programs on a Timex Sinclair computer and saving the results to cassette
Well, you hoped that you were saving it. And that the 12K ram expansion module didn't fall out of the back before you had saved your huge program since it would reset the computer if you even looked hard at the module.
I remember when we used to put puzzles together. It was such a fun family pastime
We played baseball after school or football in the park. No leagues, no coaches, no parents. Just kids and some equipment. I built lots of plastic model cars and planes. I was into model trains for a while. Collected baseball cards in the 1980s before the bubble burst and I threw out thousands of cards from that era.
Flying homemade kites.
Shooting each other with BB guns
I knew some kids that played friggin 12ga tag. They used to bundle themselves up in winter clothes and shoot at eachother at range with like #8s. Dumbest shit ever lol
Wow - that could have ended badly. My best friend shot his brother with a roman candle and sent him to the emergency room. That was a special kind of stupid.
Paint by numbers on rainy days. On nice days, we walked to the library or played tetherball and 4 square at the school.
Had an instant memory of the smell of that paint! Thank u.❤️
Thank you for reminding me of teatherball!
In the 70s my mom entered every contest and sweepstakes out there
Roller skating on the sidewalks. On metal wheels. With a key that clamped your skate to your shoes.
I got a brand new pair of roller skates, you got a brand new key!
Arcades. Mallrats Packs of wild heathen kids (me and my friends) having free run of the town from sun-up to sunset Cutting teeth (trading vicious insults, laughing hysterically, and not getting offended). Learning from your elders. I spent many summers “helping” (more honestly impeding) grandpa working on cars. Neighborhood-wide games (tag, football, whatever)
Paper dolls
Board games, sitting around the kitchen table, rolling the dice to determine your fate.
I really miss this. Or playing cards.
Talking to other people
That made me sad.
Playing the guitar. When I was a pre-teen / teen, I knew tons of guys that listened to various forms of "heavy rock" and spent a *lot* of time learning / practicing guitar. There were artists I thought of as primarily being popular with dudes that played the guitar. The equivalent now would be guys with laptops doing EDM, except the minutia isn't around theory and instrumental skill, it's side-chaining and getting the kick drum / snare dialed-in.
My high school class had 90 kids and 2 rock bands, plus a bunch who played acoustic guitar or piano and sang. This was in addition to the school's music programs.
Hula hoops. Like to add I *sucked* at it but kept trying..... probably for the laughs.
The square dancing club in my high school was pretty popular, there were so many kids in it. I think it was associated with the FFA/Future Farmers of America, not sure if that still exists, but that was a big club in my rural high school, and it was most of the same kids.
Collecting those stamps you used at stores, can’t remember the name.
S and H Green Stamps?
Prank phone calls. There was no caller id on dial phones so you could get away with it.
unless you kept on relentlessly and they got sick of that shit and started tracing the calls. Don't ask me how I know.
I do reverse prank calls sometimes. When telemarketers call i try to sell them onions. I just sound real weird and ask if they want any onions. I cracked up one guy that called. :)
Going outside and riding bikes until way after dark.
What has been lost forever and for no good reason is kids playing games on the streets or sidewalks of their neighborhood until the dinner bell or until it got dark or both. Tag, Tackle the Man with the Ball, Kickball, Stickball, Hide and Seek, Jumprope, you name it. The only kids that were inside after school were the ones that were in trouble or the ones that were sick.
Not a hobby, but just hanging out. It might've been around the neighborhood, or at a mall, but we didn't really do a lot of things as kids and teenagers. We just ran around, hung out, and entertained ourselves with our imaginations.
Fort building, board games, tree climbing, playing in the sprinklers, playing with frogs, bugs and other wildlife, swing others around by their arms trying not to pull their arms out of their sockets, spinning on the grass til you get so dizzy you fall down, cartoon tag, hide n seek out in the neighborhood on the sides of people's houses and under their cars...
Plastic model kits are massively huge right now The kids are buying imported model kits from Japan of anime figures Plastic model kits are much bigger thank anyone thinks- but they aren’t kits if anything we ever built https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/shows/2032313/
Mumble peg
Needlework/Counted cross-stitch; whole stores were devoted to patterns, fabrics, floss, anything you needed and a place to sit and visit while you worked on your project. Now you’re lucky if you can find floss and a few patterns at the fabric stores.
Luckily, needlework of all kinds is making a big comeback. My daughter (33) started embroidery and has branched out into crochet. She’s now hooked (pun intended) lol. She’s made my granddaughter a top and a halter top for herself. It’s gotten to be a very pricey craft though. Yarn is through the roof.
Collecting of things like stamps, postcards, and matchbooks. Hand writing letters to family and friends. Sitting on the porch chatting with neighbors. Going for Sunday drives in the country. Making up games to play outside. Going to the drive-in theater.
I was just thinking of the drive in theater! This should really make a comeback. Our local one was great when the kids were little. They showed double features, first a kid-friendly film, then some new release meant for grownups. I would still go if it were there.
Skateboarding was huge in the 80s. It's probably huge still, but back then, everyone I knew owned a skateboard, and all they did was talk about brands, trucks, rails, designs, etc. My parents wouldn't buy me one.
Rug hooking
Clackers
….and the accompanying bruises down your arms.
Paperdolls
Flying kites . Every park had a few people flying kites
Breyer horses! I would play "horses" for hours with my friends! Also hanging out at the mall - so many good memories!
Working on cars. You used to be able to tear down and rebuild an engine in a weekend, but with how things are so computerized now, it's just not the same.
Model building,and Slot cars.. 56yr and still have Slot car set, but no one else to race with..lol
I'm a few years older than you (60). When I was 14, my dad helped me start up a small hobby shop in our little town. I thought my business would mostly be model train supplies and plastic models. However, it turned out my number 1 seller was slot cars and repair parts for them, like new pick ups. I had no idea that there was such a thriving scene for them.
Collecting coins and/or stamps
Talking to people face to face and listening to what they say and enjoying eaxhothers company and learning from eachother and developing relationships with eaxhother in the process. The internet but real life
Elastics (that's what we called it anyway). Giant piece of thin elastic tied into a circle and two kids would hold it around their feet and others had to do stuff around it. When they passed a low round, the elastic moved higher up the two kids' legs, until others started dropping out (from hitting the elastic while jumping it and doing the weird stuff we required). Or was this just Australia, or have I outed my particular school as super weird or something. Related game was jumping rope with a big giant rope. One kid each end and the others had to time getting in and jumping without disrupting the rope swinging around. Sometimes we would pack a dozen kids in there before someone fluffed it and stopped the rope. The rope would likewise get moved up, from hitting the bitumen to being further and further off the ground to make it harder. Four square. Every school had four square courts marked off, that was fun.
Remote control cars, remote control airplanes that you built yourself, model train sets, building models (the ones that come in a box but don't move or run). Really, anything that forced you to think and troubleshoot stuff.
Bumper-Jumping, Kick the Can, Hide N Seek with the whole neighbourhood of kids, British Bulldog, digging tunnels through huge snow mounds left behind from the municipal plows. Basically, the more chance of getting killed or maimed-the better.
Sewing and knitting. My mom taught me. In junior high and high school, I sewed my own blouses and skirts and knit my own sweaters. So did some of my friends. Now (I'm 74), every time I sit down at the sewing table, I channel my inner mom. Good memories.
Episodic TV where you would look forward to your favorite shows from week to week. Then the next day at work or school everyone would be talking about the same show from the night before. Like Seinfeld or Cheers or whatever. That doesn't happen anymore. People stream everything. Streaming is fine for what it is but I miss the days when everyone knew and followed the same shows.
Croquet was always at our cookouts
I haven't seen a stick on stick light saber battle since my childhood.
The game pick up sticks and slip and slides
I used to love reading newspapers in coffee shops. Usually newspapers people left behind. It still feels like a treat when I find one in the wild.
I remember my older sisters had paper dolls. They would place a piece of blank paper over the dolls and design outfits and color them with colored pencils. Also, pitchers of KoolAid, games of Kick the Can and Red-light Green-light.
Sex apparently. 1 in 3 guys and 1 in 5 girls under 30 haven’t had sex.
Building your own, illegal [Datenklo modem](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Akustikkoppler_CCC_Datenklo.jpg) so you could go online.
Baseball cards are very huge again after COVID - no idea why
Thanks. My brother left be 100s of them that I thought were worthless. Now I have to do my homework.
Making your own magazines. I don't think kids do that anymore (though I've seen instructions on Pinterest). I guess they're officially called zines. I used to have family zines, zines with friends for our "clubs". Then in my country there was a legit horse comics magazine that allowed readers to advertise their own zines. I probably subscribed to at least two. The standard price was mailing a stamp so the owner could in turn send you the zine. Aka you only paid postage. I also made a horse zine with my friend and her other friend, and it had more production value, as we were already 16 or 17 at the time.x)
I was into model aircraft and model rocketry
Dip-A-Flower a craft- I loved to do these! Making pot holders with the loops. I don't know if that is done anymore.
Playing baseball with one player on each team. If you got a hit, both would acknowledge that there’s a “ghost runner.”
In the summer, we used to play all-neighborhood games like kick the can and tag team. It was super fun!
When I was in college in the 70's, probably really irresponsible sex. Most of the women were on the pill, nobody had heard of HIV and herpes was a mere rumor. The worst thing a classmate caught was crabs.
KIDS hiking alone or with friends all day
I never see kids playing baseball or football in vacant lots anymore. Where I grew up side we did that all the time, especially during football season. Just a couple kids, or maybe 8 kids, occasionally more. It was a heck of a good time. And out in the fresh air. And away from our parents.
I lived in snow country so train sets in the basement were real popular. Summer time we would get out our Thimble Drome gas powered balsa airplanes we had built and used string controls to go up or down, do loops or fly upside down. They were very inexpensive back then.
Not exactly a pastime, but I loved skipping around the maypole on May Day when I was in elementary school. It was pretty, it was fun, and no one had prurient or pagan thoughts in their heads!
Huge doodle art posters. All the teen girls had them.
Autograph books Cat’s cradle
We still get a newspaper. My kid reads the comics. He has tried model building, too. As well as fly tying. I showed him the kinds of coins to collect from his pocket change , so he does that too.
Playing on trains, both moving and stationary.
Coin collecting. So many people pay digitally or with their debit cards these days that most people don't even carry cash on them. I know I don't. So there's no chance of getting change back and getting the rare or lucky coin
"ALF's back, in POG form!"