12 Things at Grandma's That Were Super Weird but Kinda Fun

Yahoo

a day ago

I am a child of the 70s — when children were supposed to be seen and not heard. So anytime our family visited our grandparents' house, we were tossed in a basement or backyard so the grown-ups could talk without distraction. And while we were left to our own devices, at least both sets of our grandparents had stuff we could play with or marvel at when we went to either of their homes. Not all of those things were toys, but we still made great use of them.
I am now the same age my grandparents were back then. I don't have grandkids, but if I did, I wonder what stuff they'd find to play with here that they think is weird. From unlocking core memories in my own experiences with 1970s grandparents to others who visited their grandparents as kids more recently, these are some of the weird and wonderful finds from grandma's and grandpa's house.
My dad's parents lived in Seattle, and since we lived within an hour or two, we visited them often. Their house had a basement room with "toys" that my sisters and I would play with. One of the things we loved was this flat 2"-thick orange disc that was kind of like a super sturdy lazy Susan. We'd stand on it and twist back and forth — and we'd do it for hours.
I dug around to see if I could find it, and it turns out it's a 1970s piece of exercise equipment meant for whittling your waist (waist twister), and versions of it are still sold today. Must be why I have such stellar abs. Thanks, Grandma!
Related:
Speaking of random 70s and 80s exercise equipment that was fun to play with, our Editorial Director Carrie and her siblings also found fun in grandma's pursuit of physical perfection. "My grandmother had a vibrating belt machine," Carrie says. "That thing was an absolute riot to use. We'd strap in and turn it on, and then talk — it was a hundred times better than talking into a fan."
Kind of makes me long for grandma's old exercise contraptions, because I'm pretty sure if my grandma were still alive and had one of those, I'd do that whole trying to talk while vibrating thing today.
Life in the 70s and 80s was very different than today, and the pursuit of the perfect figure was definitely something that both my grandmothers were involved in. My maternal grandma used to take this weight-loss product that was a chewy chocolate candy — it was called Ayds. I think it was an appetite suppressant. She'd hide it in the top cupboard, but we knew it was there, so my sisters and I would climb up on the counter and eat it when she wasn't looking. Maybe that's why we were all so skinny.
Both sets of my grandparents had HUGE console TVs that were essentially pieces of furniture in their own right. Nobody could ever figure out the color balance, so the picture always had a green tinge (not the worst thing, since my granddad always had golf on the TV). But, according to one of my grandmas, we could never sit too close, because the television would irradiate us. Ironic, given that the picture was so fuzzy (and green — did I mention the green?) that we'd sit practically on top of it just to be able to see it clearly.
Our Editorial Director Carrie also remembers a gigantic TV: "My grandparents had Pong hooked up to one of those combo TV/record player/radio/liquor cabinet jobbies." We also played Pong when I was a kid. Making two bars of light hit a square back and forth seemed exciting at the time.
We couldn't wait to head to my grandparents' house in Seattle because they had a Wheel-O. The ultimate low-tech toy, we had contests with this gyroscope to see who could get the wheel going with enough force that it would roll up and over the hump multiple times when we held it vertically. Over the years, this toy (which is still for sale in a cool light-up version) has appeared in various family members' Christmas stockings, and like riding a bicycle, once you figure out the motion to get it to go, you never really forget how to do it.
For our Editorial Director, Carrie, binders of real estate listings were something she loved at her grandparents' house. "My grandfather was a retired real estate agent, and he had these old binders full of black & white pictures of houses in the city. They were super fun to colour." And in a modern paperless world, I know that there's almost no good use for a binder today, but I still LOVE them.
Whenever we'd head over to my grandparents' house, the furniture would be covered in clear plastic slipcovers. My mom told my sisters and me that they were only there when we came over. They were... not comfortable. But apparently, they gave Grandma peace of mind when her grubby-handed grandkids came for a visit.
My Zillennial son fondly remembers the Find It Hidden Object game at his grandparents' (my parents') house. This simple game hides small objects in a cylinder filled with plastic beads, and you twist and turn the cylinder to see if you can locate all the objects inside. The hardest to find (and the ultimate game winner) is the penny. There's a trick to finding it, but just in case you want to play, I won't share it (you can find it online if you get desperate). My son loved this game so much that he recently bought one. He assures me that the penny trick still works.
My grandparents lived in an old house in a South Seattle neighborhood, a few blocks off Lake Washington. We had a basement room we played in when we visited that was one of two finished rooms downstairs (the other was a bathroom). My grandpa had a workshop in the dark, creepy, unfinished part of the basement, and there was this strange window in the wall (it was only about a foot square) between the finished room and the workshop. It had a little square wooden door on it that opened into the finished part. The bravest of the three of us would go into the creepy part. We'd pretend she was a store owner, and we'd "shop" through the window.
Before she married my grandfather, my grandmother was a hairdresser. She gave that all up for love and motherhood, as one did in the 1940s. But when we were kids and needed our bangs trimmed, my mom would take us over to Grandma's house. She'd whip out this pink tape, stretch it across our bangs, and use it as a guide to cut. It never came out great, which could explain why Grandma gave up her beautician ambitions for motherhood.
I was curious, so I looked up the pink tape. Turns out, Grandma was engaging in a — shall we say — creative use. The tape was actually used to hold pincurls in place while they set.
How does one explain Wiz-z-zers — a toy that came out in the late 1960s? They were sort of like a spinning top, but smaller. You'd wind them up by running them along the floor (they'd make a whizzing sound), before setting them on the tip to spin. My dad used to "put them on our heads" to spin (turns out, he was putting his hand on top of the head and putting the Wiz-z-zer on his hand, but I didn't know that). I tried this wondrous feat with my younger sister and wound up winding up the Wiz-z-zer in her hair so tightly that it had to be cut out. Oops.
My great-uncle Harold (my grandmother's brother) was an artist (a painter), and they lived in this super-cool big old house that had a HUGE art studio in it. The house was decorated in a very sophisticated, wealthy person's style, with the exception of his studio, which was full of all sorts of curiosities from his travels and other things that had caught his fancy. The thing I remember the most (aside from the stacks and stacks of his paintings) was a huge fuzzy bright green rug that was shaped like a bare foot. It was, to my young eyes, magnificent. And looking back? It was the most 1970s thing ever!
We may not have interacted much with our grandparents when we went to visit, but we had a heck of a time anyway. Whether we sat two inches from a green-tinted TV or cozied up on a fuzzy green foot rug, we found ways to entertain ourselves with all their weird stuff.