Whatever Happened To...? 21

afternoon tea (Oh, it’s back!)

asparagus quiche

aubergines (Middle-class people used to put them in everything.)

blueberry cheesecake (ordinary cheesecake with jam on the top)

calling people “wet” (Don’t be so wet!)

chicken bricks

clipframes (Many years ago it was the fashion to frame pictures with an unedged sheet of glass held in place against the hardboard backing with clips. morrice@cix)

Don Marquis, Ogden Nash (humorous poets)

flatlets (bedsits)

flock wallpaper (originally found in grand 18th century houses)

fun fur, fun everything (a brief 60s fad)

instruction to grate raw turnip into salads (now celeriac)

jazz dance classes

kitchenettes

leek quiche

making model villages
monopolies (You couldn’t buy a pair of reading glasses, you had to get them on prescription. It took months to get a phone installed, and the service was terrible.)

notelets (Like a sheet of writing paper folded in four, with weedy watercolours of cowslips, bluetits etc, so you could treat as card or fold out for longer letter. Came in boxes with matching envelopes.)

optical character readers

paper diaries, phone books, address books

plain boiled cabbage (There is no need to eat it any more. There was never any need to eat it. There was never any need for it to be so disgusting.)

polo necks (or polar necks as people used to call them)

potato guns

Sainsbury’s “unbranded” range which was going to save money/packaging/the planet by labelling stuff BEANS or FOIL in a plain typeface (Rebooted as Sainsburys basics, with a different typeface.)

ships in bottles

Shubette dresses (Still trading! Founded 1913.)

spoon warmers

straciatella soup

Terry’s cocktail assortment (Miniature chocolate bars in different flavours with foreign names and a gold palm-tree on the wrapper. How did they co-exist with boiled cabbage?)

the avant garde (We should have caught up with it by now.)

The Golden Turkey Awards (became TV Tropes)

throwaway folding plastic rain bonnets (on sale in newsagents and much worn by little old ladies)

timers on ovens (Nobody used them.)

tramps who stole raw turnips from fields (and claiming that they were Gentlemen of the Road who chose their lifestyle)

Van-Dal shoes (Still around.)

vibrating exercise belts

Video Plus

wall-mounted ovens (They’ve gone back underneath hobs even though the two aren’t connected.)

More here, and links to the rest.