E-Mail Post To A Friend
Email a copy of '37 Fads That Swept The Nation.' to a friend
Loading ...
63 comments to "37 Fads That Swept The Nation."
-
Pablo Thomas
January 16th, 2007 at
10:44 am
Nice post except on thing….Coke is back….I know it sucks..but its true look at the stats for busts over the last few years.
-
Ant
January 16th, 2007 at
11:05 am
Ant Farm. Coke rocks. Pepsi sucks.
-
keith
January 16th, 2007 at
11:08 am
YAY COCAINE
-
Denita TwoDragons
January 16th, 2007 at
11:27 am
Zoot suits are hawt, I always loved the look. I hope they come back into fashion someday soon!
As for the smiley face…ACK! I have to stare at that thing all the time at work! Now I’m stuck staring at it on my days off, too! AARGH!!
–TwoDragons
-
Don
January 16th, 2007 at
11:34 am
Ahem, no Tiki bars romanticizing World War II vets visits to Polynesian islands?
-
Miss Cellania
January 16th, 2007 at
11:34 am
When I was a kid, I wanted a fallout shelter so bad… I was scared of nuclear radiation, and besides how COOL would it be? But all I got were troll dolls. Now I have a kid who can’t get enough of those nasty wall walkers!
-
joe mama
January 16th, 2007 at
1:13 pm
you forgot beanie babies, I hated those things.
-
neato
January 16th, 2007 at
1:14 pm
Under Wacky Wall Walkers, the original author wrote: “It’s not every day you meet a guy who can say his fortune was built on slimy, plastic octopi.”
The plural of octopus is octopodes, not octopi.
If Mental Floss is going to claim to be where knowledge junkies get their fix…
-
Raz
January 16th, 2007 at
1:15 pm
I remember when I worked (And I’m talking a year ago) as counter staff at a bakery, and there was this one guy I worked with who would always voulenteer to clean the bathroom. He would be in there for a good 2 hours, come out all energized and would clean every thing eles and help all the customers, but at the end of the night we would go and check the bathroom, and it was still just as messy…
Hmm.. -
ANONYMOUS AMERICAN
January 16th, 2007 at
2:23 pm
yay troll dolls!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!
-
Brsmnky
January 16th, 2007 at
3:27 pm
Octopodes? Not according to Merriam-Webster…
-
JEff
January 16th, 2007 at
3:42 pm
you forgot POKEMON, that most popular thing to ever hit the 90’s
-
Paul
January 16th, 2007 at
3:48 pm
Mood rings.
Pet rocks.
Max Headroom.
Lava lamps.
Blacklight posters.
Cabbage Patch Kids. -
Steve
January 16th, 2007 at
4:00 pm
Don’t forget Pogs!
-
Chapu
January 16th, 2007 at
4:29 pm
coke is definitely back.
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/criticsMusic -
Cory OBrien
January 16th, 2007 at
5:28 pm
Great list, though I would have definitely added Beanie Babies due to their quick rise and very quick fall in popularity.
-
brett
January 16th, 2007 at
5:51 pm
How about Garbage Pail kids or Pound puppies. Everyone had to have one if you wanted to be cool!!
-
Connie
January 16th, 2007 at
6:18 pm
lets not forget pop rocks, fizzies, furbies, pez candy with the dispencers I had popeye and porky pig
-
P-Sack
January 16th, 2007 at
7:10 pm
Yeah, Pokémon definitely should have been included.
-
foofdawg
January 16th, 2007 at
7:22 pm
Yeah, beanie babies.
My wife has 3 boxes of those things in the closet, all individually enclosed in plastic baggies. She never even looks at them, but we can’t get rid of them……….
“They are worth a fortune!”
-
Jakob
January 16th, 2007 at
7:52 pm
what about bukake?
-
Denita TwoDragons
January 16th, 2007 at
8:07 pm
And Tamagotchi! Many a teacher’s desk is still full of dead virtual pets, long-neglected by their “owners” after being confiscated.
–TwoDragons
-
amanda
January 16th, 2007 at
10:18 pm
you cant forget slinkys
ya know
it rolls down stairs rolls over in pairs it makes a slinkidy sound
-
John Adams
January 16th, 2007 at
10:33 pm
The plural of octopus in Greek is octopodes. Since it’s a Greek word, this would be the proper plural in Greek.
It’s not a Latin word so it would never be the distasteful octopi.
In English, the plural of octopus is octopuses.
Now go win a bet or make someone feel dumb when they tell you about octopi.
-
Beandaddy
January 16th, 2007 at
11:48 pm
Mexican Jumping Beans are back!
http://www.mypetbeans.com -
Samuel L. Jackson
January 17th, 2007 at
12:01 am
i just ate out my pet kitten, it was very tasty, u should all try it sum time… could be the next big fad
-
Samuel L. Jackson
January 17th, 2007 at
12:04 am
P.S: I really liked the sound of it yelping and the way it kept trying to get away. But i finished the job and cleaned up after and everything was fine. I gotta go tho, im guna go bludgeon an infant in the skull for fun, bye
-
jimmy bill
January 17th, 2007 at
11:44 am
yea pogs were off the chain.
-
Kerry
January 17th, 2007 at
12:25 pm
Anybody remember Clackers?? The Lucite balls on a string that you swung together so they would bounce off one another. I remember our school banning them. My brother swung mine so hard they shattered.
-
Baby Jebus
January 17th, 2007 at
1:36 pm
sorry worn out fads that should have never happened: popped collars, tilted hats, socks
-
Dahlia
January 17th, 2007 at
4:25 pm
beanie babies? iron-on decals/shirts? slap bracelets? i could go on!
-
beckermanex
January 17th, 2007 at
4:31 pm
I like the giant add for Blu-Ray in an article about Fads sweeping the nation. Somehow I just laughed and laughed.
-
Dorian Major
January 17th, 2007 at
5:32 pm
What about those stupid PET ROCKS!?!?!
How basic can you get. A freakin ROCK in a lousy little box and the guy makes millions…
jeeeeeeeeeeeez uzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
-
What about...
January 17th, 2007 at
9:21 pm
Jelly shoes?
-
JEFE
January 17th, 2007 at
9:27 pm
The telephone booth stuffing photo was actually taken at St. Mary’s College of California, a small, private liberal arts college in the San Francisco East Bay…
-
Clem
January 17th, 2007 at
9:56 pm
A fantastic collection of information and thoroughly enjoyable until one realizes that the majority of reference citation are Wikipedia . Wikipedia is not a reference. Wikipedia is a blackboard bolted to the back of the stall door in a public restroom. Anyone can go in and scribble anything they want, and then others can go in and add or remove or clean up or vandalize. Wikipedia lacks an editor and lacks a publisher (“Jimbo†Wales has successfully sidestepped legal responsibilities that go with being a publisher) therefore Wikipedia has no one person or body willing to be held accountable for content. That leads to slanderous, libelous, incorrect and inaccurate information. Ultimately Wikipedia is worthless as a source of information for any serious research. Lots of interesting stuff is collected and presented there – but who can attest to the validity of any of it?
-
DJ
January 18th, 2007 at
1:05 am
What about Magic Eyes in the mid 90’s.
-
Alex
January 18th, 2007 at
1:53 am
“A fantastic collection of information and thoroughly enjoyable until one realizes that the majority of reference citation are Wikipedia”
Goes to show that you can’t satisfy everyone all the time time … :). Darn that Wikipedia! Ruined a perfectly good article.
-
mike
January 18th, 2007 at
6:53 am
parachute pants.
-
Mad Mike
January 18th, 2007 at
10:32 am
How about the 70’s? The 70’s was a fad that really sucked! And DAMN all you stupid fashion freeks for bringing it back. Leave it be, that is one decade I would rather forget!
-
no chemistry
January 18th, 2007 at
7:18 pm
The cocaine section is wrong. Freebase is the correct name and freebase is indeed “technically cocaine.”
I wonder if much else in this list is just as innacurate?
-
Savage Wombat
January 19th, 2007 at
10:19 am
The waterbed was actually invented by science fiction author Robert Heinlein, and he didn’t even patent it.
-
Gary-O
January 19th, 2007 at
1:47 pm
Aww….leave the 70s alone. That decade was unique unto itself. Very few things that ever were popular during the 70s would ever have been popular at any other time in history: the clothes, the music, disco (yes - it sucked then and still sucks now - but try to deny it’s impact on music today still), pet rocks, Lawn Darts, Clackers, the Starland Vocal Band. Life today would be much more exciting if each day didn’t blandly blend into the next. In the 70s, each day promised something so completely different from the previous that you literally never knew what was coming next. 70s = do you own thing; 2000s = conform, conform, conform. You don’t believe me? Try counting the number people wearing little white earbuds today.
-
Semolina Pilchard
January 20th, 2007 at
2:36 am
How can you include fashion items like zoot suits, pointy bras and Bermuda shorts (yawn) and omit bell bottoms, railroad pants, paisley mania, Carnaby shirts, dayglo everything (in the ’70s I had a dayglo orange raincoat with smiley face buttons), the wet look, crushed vinyl, Capri pants, pedal pushers, platform shoes, Nehru jackets, the Mary Quant hat, love beads, granny glasses, macrame, granny squares, fringed jackets, moccasins, sandals, those little white Courrege boots, white lipstick, Twiggy lashes (painted on), the Cher line (eyeshadow trick), teased up hair, ironed hair, Cuban heel boots, and irridescent suits?
-
alec
January 20th, 2007 at
4:59 pm
I nominate Family Guy, the Macarana, feminism, and oral sex.
-
daleallenbaker
January 20th, 2007 at
6:19 pm
I wish Mental Floss included reference information, even if it was only published on the website.
-
subcorpus
January 21st, 2007 at
2:32 am
kewl post …
slinkys shud’ve been there fer sure … -
crazy woman
January 21st, 2007 at
8:25 am
What bout, Simpsons , Family guy , ask anyone favourate show Family guy, simpsons is dieheart favourate of all Americans .Including mine Course:)
Ooooooo and yeah not sure about the Zoot suit but yeah cocaine is back for sure ………!!!!
btw Hell i always wanted one of those Fallout shelter so bad -
joedaddy
January 21st, 2007 at
11:08 am
This list os biased towards old people. How about Cabbage Pacth Dolls? Furby? Tickle Me Elmo?
-
sol aisenberg
January 21st, 2007 at
9:49 pm
Much earlier, Joe Cossman introduced has ant farms to the market along with many other products including the “spud gun” which shot potato pellets.
He was an expert in promotining his devices.
Try a Google search on his name. He wrote a book about his activities including his ant farms. He sold millions of them.
-
Dondi
January 22nd, 2007 at
1:13 pm
>Women resorted to D.I.Y. hosiery, rubbing liquid foundation onto their >legs to simulate the color of pantyhose…
PANTYHOSE? No such thing in 1941, youngins. One bought a pair of stockings, one for each leg, usually held in place by a garter belt or a girdle. A quick check on exactly when pantyhouse came on the market produced no immediate answer, but it must have been sometime in the 1960’s. Today’s women seem to think pantyhose are a diabolical product, but they really are more comfy than having to wear garters, tho’ with stockings, you could usually make three pair out of two when a stocking got a run.
-
kc420
January 22nd, 2007 at
5:34 pm
i finnaly know what kilroy is my uncle always draw it… pogs and pokemon should be up there ….and omfg coke is back
(and plz dont freebase its pointless just blow it) -
JACK BAUER
January 25th, 2007 at
5:39 pm
MAGIC EIGHT BALL
(NOT A COCAINE REFERENCE)
\m/ -
Dob
January 25th, 2007 at
8:06 pm
How can you leave coonskin hats off the list?
-
Dave Kaufman
January 26th, 2007 at
11:11 am
Trackbacks weren’t working but great post. I linked to it.
http://theextrapoint.com/archives/2007/01/22/do-you-remember-these-fad s/trackback
-
corine sponcia
January 26th, 2007 at
1:19 pm
are there more fads in the 1940s?
-
Matthew
January 26th, 2007 at
3:51 pm
seamonkeys, rattails, mullets, acidwash…
-
Vince
January 26th, 2007 at
7:36 pm
How bout picking up VW Beetles and moving them on the sidewalk or the like
-
Starch
February 27th, 2007 at
2:42 pm
Don’t forget those infernal hackey sacks. AGGGGGHHHHHH
-
johnnyr
February 28th, 2007 at
1:23 pm
Lawn darts!!
-
Matt
April 9th, 2007 at
12:17 am
Umm… How dare you call Pac-Man a fad. It’s arguably one of the best video games of all time and is in no way shape or form dead, not one year after its realization, not now, not ever. My friends and I regularly patron one particular coffee house solely to play Pac-Man. and now Pac-Man is being re-release on virtual consoles for current video games systems and is popular as ever.
-
jo mama
November 26th, 2007 at
3:39 pm
i think that the telephone booth stuffing should still be around.. that would be sick.. but it should just be hot girls with white shirts on.. then fill the booth with water haha.. lmfao
-
liy hof
May 23rd, 2008 at
8:20 am
hey that was really long!
Want your own avatar? Get one for free at Gravatar!
