Older Adults Are Sharing The Products And Trends That Were All The Rage Back In The Day That Have Disappeared Entirely

Yahoo

21-05-2025

Though trends and products are often reimagined and revisited every few decades, many end up vanishing from present-day society completely!! So we recently asked the older folks (Boomers, Gen-X, and older Millennials) of the BuzzFeed Community to share which trends or products were once popular but have since disappeared. Here are their responses!
1."Department store catalogs just before Christmas and going directly to the toy section in the back to circle what you wanted for Christmas."
Ames / Via reddit.com
—homeychef856
2."Napkins that fit on your lap. They are all so small and thin now, they don't even lie across your leg, nor do they do the job when wiping your hands. Even using several modern napkins together doesn't really work…so we all look like rude slobs now. Good luck finding a decent hand towel when you use the washroom… if they exist, hope that 3' worth helps, if you can get the dispenser to cooperate."
—dizzyking434
3."The decline of civilization began when they stopped putting toys in cereal boxes."
—sparklesthecupcake
"In the 70s, cereal boxes had single-song cardboard 'records' on the back that you popped out and they played on a phonograph. My first was 'Sugar Sugar' by The Archies."
—emoswan12
4."Event television. There were shows or programming that, if you missed it, there wasn't any other way to watch unless there were reruns. You had to watch it at the time it was airing and talk about it the next day."
—givemeallthebooksandtea
5."Prank Calls! It was so much fun to make a silly, anonymous phone call to your friends, your enemies, or even your grandmother. It would be hard not to laugh while changing your voice to pretend to be someone else. To this day, Grandma still doesn't know how Elvis got her phone number."
—Anonymous, 46, North Carolina
6."The Avon Lady coming to your house and leaving those tiny lipstick and perfume samples."
—ginnyjensen
7."Paper maps. I grew up with one of those thick Rand McNally map books in the car when we took long road trips. Navigating in a completely foreign area was a fun activity."
—syringistic
8."8-track tapes and their players. Sometimes the song would click to the next track while it was playing, and you couldn't rewind to listen again."
—shaboomer
9."Kids will never know the joy of going to Radio Shack and checking out toys, gear, and all the batteries you could buy! Walkie Talkies! Tesla Lightning Globes and Tandy Tandy Tandy toys! It was Best Buy before there was Best Buy!"
—tendtomebollocks
10."Remember stores where you could listen to CDs with headphones before buying?"
—sparklesthecupcake
11."Play places at fast food establishments. There aren't that many that still have them."
—u/justhewayouare
12."Voiceovers in movie trailers. For some reason, I can't think of when exactly they died out. I just remember that they were a thing, and then they weren't."
—u/Sugarbear23
13."Does anybody else remember that trend where handlebar mustaches were put on everything? Pillows, shirts, etc. Like, some people even got them tattooed on their finger so they could put it on their lip and pretend they had one?"
—u/CalypsoCrow
14."Oatmeal used to contain a small milk glass or dish towel as a free gift, packed inside the oatmeal container. When I was a child, the milk glass was actually made of glass! It's scary to think about it now. By the time I was a teenager, it was a plastic cup. Now you get nothing!"
—Anonymous, 59, Texas
15."Salad bars. In the '80s, every restaurant had one, even some fast-food burger places like Wendy's."
—u/MarshmallowSoul
16."Cracker Jack boxes had real prizes in them, not paper or little pieces of plastic. I remember the first time my prize was a piece of paper. We stopped buying it. The box before that had a yo-yo in it, and another had a watch."
—Anonymous, 64, Idaho
17."Cigarette lighters/ashtrays in cars."
—u/Timmy26k
18."Quality of clothing. In the eighties, I wore Forenza, OBR, Benetton, to name a few. In the nineties, I was all about Old Navy and Gap. As I write this response, I'm wearing Gap jeans and a Gap shirt. Years ago, I could get a tear in an article of clothing, and it was barely noticeable. Now, if I get a tiny tear, the material is thinner, so it tears easily."
—Anonymous, 52, Chicago
19."One trend I miss is simply being in the moment — before smartphones turned every experience into a photo op. There was a time when vacations, concerts, family gatherings, or even a simple night out felt more genuine because we were actually present. Now, even if I choose not to record something, the moment is disrupted by others who feel compelled to document every second. Let's be honest—no one's going to rewatch that shaky, overexposed video of last year's 4th of July fireworks."
—Anonymous, 41, Oregon
What other once-beloved products and trends from the past have completely disappeared? Let us know in the comments!
Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.