Discontinued products you wish would/could come back

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grampamark said:
Waxed paper bread wrappers.

When I was a kid, in the 50s, bread came in waxed paper instead of plastic bags. We’d save the wrappers, take them to the playground, and rub the slides down with them. Waxing the slide probably increased our speed by, maybe, a factor of .1 or so. But we thought we were really flying down the waxed slide. I’d like to share that with my 4 and 7 year old grandsons.
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We used to sit on the wrappers. The additional mass applied directly to the steel slide did significantly reduce the Coefficient of Friction, but an old burlap sack did even better.
 
Josta. I drank a lot of that in college in the late 90s. Decicious guarana flavor.

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JoeSpartaNJ said:
I can find it here, but fresh.......that's a crap shoot.

Torpedo is getting real hard to find here.
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i'm just glad beer might be a mega cartel, but i can still get wine if i feel the need... 45 minute drive to elgin, and they make a nice bottle!
 
seatazzz said:
REAL Scotchgard. Read many years ago that the original formula, which was absolutely impermeable to dirt/grease/grime, was discontinued because it never breaks down; there are still original Scotchgard molecules in the atmosphere that will never go away. The stuff they have now works for a while but wears off.
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Scotch guard is still available. It can be found in the water supply of much of the eastern side of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Metro area where 3M used to manufacture it. Come on up and have a sip!
bracconiere said:
i just know things like that when i was a kid would cause chaffing....think i tried something similar.

and honestly, i've heard a disturbing rumor more important, that these have gone away?

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now there's a feeling! spining one up as fast as a 6 year old can run and getting slung off like a sling shot!
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I don't want these death wheels back! In 5th grade one of those giant pre-pubescent girls got that thing wound up and little old me fell off backwards and broke my wrist! Just one of the painful memories of Catholic grade school. [Sigh]

You know what I do miss though? Ignorance. They say it is bliss.

Oh, and the Marathon Bar. That was my go to when I rode my bike over to the Tom Thumb. Oh, and what about Tom Thumbs? This memory lane thing is nice.
 
wsmith1625 said:
Goose Island Honkers Ale. One of my favorite pre-brewing beers.
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We had that on tap at the bowling alley I used to bartend for. Many arguments were had as to who got to take the tap handle home when it went out of rotation (of course after telling the distribution rep that it "broke"). Quite a tasty beer as I recall, their IPA was just meh though.
 
Growing up in the 70's in England was great, you could go out and wash a few cars when it was a nice day, that'd earn you a few quid to buy a bag of chips wrapped in newspaper, and a bottle of pop ... you could return the bottle for 5p too.
But what all boys wanted was fireworks... in the late 70's early 80"s a young adolescent could walk into any cornershop in England and purchase the holy grail of fun.
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I bought more packs of mini-rockets, air bombs & bangers than ive had hot dinners....completely irresponsible shop owners were the cornerstone of British society in suburban England, bring the 70's back!
 
TwogunRocky said:
Growing up in the 70's in England was great, you could go out and wash a few cars when it was a nice day, that'd earn you a few quid to buy a bag of chips wrapped in newspaper, and a bottle of pop ... you could return the bottle for 5p too.
But what all boys wanted was fireworks... in the late 70's early 80"s a young adolescent could walk into any cornershop in England and purchase the holy grail of fun.
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I bought more packs of mini-rockets, air bombs & bangers than ive had hot dinners....completely irresponsible shop owners were the cornerstone of British society in suburban England, bring the 70's back!
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Yeah, they had a similar thing in the U.S. when my wife and I got married (over half a century ago). We were spending our “first night” at a swanky downtown hotel with valet parking. We thought no one in the wedding party entourage knew where we were staying.

The next day we felt reasonably sure that no one had sabotaged our getaway car (1966 Ford LTD) parked in an underground garage. Did I mention, my wife had three very precocious younger cousins?

Well, when we got to the car we discovered some “Just Married” and “Hot Springs Tonight” decorations. And a more in-depth pre-flight uncovered the obligatory string of tin cans which would noisily deploy when the car would start to move. Those were disarmed quickly enough.

But the real surprise came from the surreptitious ’poppers’ that had somehow been booby-trapped to detonate when the locked doors were opened. We never did find out who set those devices, or how they were able to get into the car, set, arm and relock the car doors undiscovered.

Did I mention the three cousins? One went on to serve on U.S. Navy nuclear subs, his brother graduated from Purdue in Electrical Engineering before earning his pilot’s license and also becoming a qualified pilot of the Alvin deep sea submersible. And their baby sister? She went on as an aerospace engineer to help design the NASA space shuttle.

I think we have some likely suspects.
 
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I miss .22 ammo and McCulloch chainsaws.

The McDonald’s McHomestyle was taken off the menu, but you can still get it by request, same as Sonic’s peanut butter and bacon shake.

I wish they still made Ford 8/9Ns, although seeing as how 90% of them are still in use, that would have been a terrible business decision to continue producing them.

Remember headphone jacks on smart phones, and HDMI and Rj45 ports on laptops?

I liked going in O Tasco when I was a kid, although I’m not sure I wish they still made half of the stuff they sold in there.

Busch Copper, cheap Mellow Bourbon and Blue Bell’s Banana Pudding flavor.

I’d also like to know what happened to grits. Most restaurants scarcely serve them for breakfast anymore, and when they do they are served very plain, with no chicken broth or cheese. I’ve noticed many smaller grocery stores don’t even stock them, or only stock instant grits in small packets.
 
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TwogunRocky said:
Growing up in the 70's in England was great, you could go out and wash a few cars when it was a nice day, that'd earn you a few quid to buy a bag of chips wrapped in newspaper, and a bottle of pop ... you could return the bottle for 5p too.
But what all boys wanted was fireworks... in the late 70's early 80"s a young adolescent could walk into any cornershop in England and purchase the holy grail of fun.
View attachment 808687
I bought more packs of mini-rockets, air bombs & bangers than ive had hot dinners....completely irresponsible shop owners were the cornerstone of British society in suburban England, bring the 70's back!
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We used to go to the local shooting range, collect spent shot-shell casing and fill them with the gun powder from broken apart fire crackers.
Many a mail box were blown to smithereens during my youth...
 
Erik the Anglophile said:
We used to go to the local shooting range, collect spent shot-shell casing and fill them with the gun powder from broken apart fire crackers.
Many a mail box were blown to smithereens during my youth...
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We did something similar with spent CO2 cartridges. Quite dangerous actually.
 
we would tape marbles to the bottom of the shotgun shells, then toss them up in the air as high as we could... then scatter...
 
BongoYodeler said:
We did something similar with spent CO2 cartridges. Quite dangerous actually.
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I used to do that with large spent rifle brass (.30-06, .270, and .300 Win Mag, etc) using FFFF black powder and cannon fuse. I can't imagine that using that much flash powder, much less in a CO2 cartridge or shotgun hull!
 
z-bob said:
I used to do that with large spent rifle brass (.30-06, .270, and .300 Win Mag, etc) using FFFF black powder and cannon fuse. I can't imagine that using that much flash powder, much less in a CO2 cartridge or shotgun hull!
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We actually didn't use powder per se, we would cut the heads off matches and stuff them in. The very last time we blew one off we put the cartridge in a hollow metal tube to aim out over the valley like the speeding projectile it became. The major mistake we made was that the tube was made of aluminum, and we didn't use a fuse. It took off with a BLAM, never to be seen again, while filling my buddy's leg with shards of aluminum. He ended up going to the emergency room to have the aluminum removed and leg stitched back up. After that experience we thankfully moved on to much safer activities.
 
When I was a teenager my grandpa gave us a full paper grocery bag full of M80's and cherry bombs. I think they had been up there since my dad was young. We blew a lot of stuff up with those. I still have all my fingers and eyeballs, miraculously.
 
Brooothru said:
Did I mention the three cousins? One went on to serve on U.S. Navy nuclear subs, his brother graduated from Purdue in Electrical Engineering before earning his pilot’s license and also becoming a qualified pilot of the Alvin deep sea submersible. And their baby sister? She went on as an aerospace engineer to help design the NASA space shuttle.
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Ya gotta watch out for electrical engineers from Purdue. We figure $#!+ out lol 😂

Just on Christmas Eve we were all talking about growing up and what our parents would (or wouldn't) let us do. This was in the early days of cable TV, and back when MTV actually played music.

One of the folks was saying that his parents wouldn't let him watch MTV. I replied "Yeah, neither would my parents. But this was back in the days of cable TV boxes where you would use a physical key to lock out channels, so I just borrowed the key from the girl across the street and turned it back on." I mean, it's not like these keys were unique...

As a kid, my parents thought I might either become a locksmith or a burglar because I enjoyed finding ways in (or out) of places that I wasn't supposed to be able to...

I think, in hindsight, my parents are grateful that I chose to use my powers for good...
 
TheBluePhantom said:
Vernors Ice Cream, Farrells restaurants, and McDonalds original fried cherry pies.
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I really liked the ginger ale, did not know Vernors made ice cream. Yeah, I did a birthday or two at Farrells, remember the big deal they made when you ate the "Pig Out"?. Fun as a kid, as I recall....

Near 14 mile and Woodward in the '70's, been a long time, but remember it well.

On a beer related note, when 14 year old, me and a few friends used to get one of the dudes hanging around the liqure store in strip mall around 13 mile & woodward, gave them $10, and we got a case of Colt 45 or Stroughs malt liquer, and they got a pint of Nite Train, Thunderbird, or Ripple. Win win, and then we went bowling and watched the drive in from the train tracks, and rode our bikes regardless of rain or snow.
 
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TheBluePhantom said:
Vernors Ice Cream, Farrells restaurants, and McDonalds original fried cherry pies.
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I always have to stock Vernors Ginger Ale for holiday get togethers.
I tastes like no other and it has that nifty habit of zinging your nose the first sip or two.
 
Dland said:
I really liked the ginger ale, did not know Vernors made ice cream. Yeah, I did a birthday or two at Farrells, remember the big deal they made when you ate the "Pig Out"?. Fun as a kid, as I recall....

Near 14 mile and Woodward in the '70's, been a long time, but remember it well.

On a beer related note, when 14 year old, me and a few friends used to get one of the dudes hanging around the liqure store in strip mall around 13 mile & woodward, gave them $10, and we got a case of Colt 45 or Stroughs malt liquer, and they got a pint of Nite Train, Thunderbird, or Ripple. Win win, and then we went bowling and watched the drive in from the train tracks, and rode our bikes regardless of rain or snow.
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14 and JohnR, Oakland mall. The Pizza jooint with the organ was at Universal mall, but the pizza was crap and the organ was rarely played.
 
Southwyck Mall, Toledo Ohio.

I spent so much time there. I know it's gone now. Don't know what replaced it. God I miss being a kid and running around that mall. I apologize 40 years later for the shoplifting and for eating all the samples at Hickory Farms.
 
grampamark said:
When I was a kid, in the 50s, bread came in waxed paper instead of plastic bags. We’d save the wrappers, take them to the playground, and rub the slides down with them. Waxing the slide probably increased our speed by, maybe, a factor of .1 or so. But we thought we were really flying down the waxed slide.
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Waxing the slide makes me think of this scene...
 
Brewsmith said:
Waxing the slide makes me think of this scene...
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When my kids were little I used to watch them go through those twisty tube sides, they have ridiculous friction and the kids usually didnt make it to the exit. I wanted to sneak in a can of turtle wax ( I once slid off a freshly waxed car, it is slick) and give it s quick coat to put the thrill back in slides. But I would feel bad if there were a bunch of kids doing Mach 2 horizontally through McDonalds...
 
Bass Pale Ale. Even visited Epcot earlier this year and I went to the Rose & Crown Pub in the England pavilion. I asked about it and the bar tender who I see all the time there told me that they discontinued it here in America. I thought he was joking at first and then I didn't see the tap handle anymore. I guess it is still being made in England but Anheuser Busch InBev does not import it and will not produce this in America anymore. Sad...

John
 

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