we used to rent a VCR too. We had one tape that we borrowed from a non-mo friend of my Dad. It had Superman 1&2 recorded. I watched it pretty much every day. I know those movies in and out. We got cable that same year and I started watching MTV ever day. It all went downhill from there :( And so she wrote

It's funny that I hadn't thought of that in decades, but that post made me think of it.

Dial phones. Then touch tone phones. Now smart phones and I am not sure if I know of a single person with a landline phone! Oh, wait. But they are in their 70's.

I remember when a long distance phone call was a big deal and an international phone call was just BIG news in the family.

notsurewhattothink's wife! 1977.

EDIT: I suck at this reply thing.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2013 07:43PM by notsurewhattothink.

I'm gen-X!

We had Betamax!

One of my favorite toys was an Incredible Hulk thing. It was a green inflatable vest with muscle pockets of air that would inflate with a blood-pressure type ball, and a white t-shirt with Velcro that would rip open when you inflated the muscles.

I would run up to my older brother, punch him as hard as I could, then pump the vest up as fast as I could before he whooped my ass...

I think I'm the only Incredible Hulk with zero victories.

Ha! I remember the BETA VCR. We had ours for forever, even after everyone else had switched over to VHS. And do you know what? I think the BETA was better. The tapes were smaller, the quality was good, and the video equipment lasted longer. Not that it matters now. ;-)

Betamax vs VHS is a classic marketing story. Sony wanted to sell tapes too, whereas the VHS tapes became the mainstay of rental tape companies--thus the defeat of the Betamax machine.

Don't forget the Soundabout--turned Walkman! First music on the slopes. Cool!

Doesn't the victory of VHS owe itself to the fact that porn was released on VHS and not Beta? That's what I've heard, anyhow...

I love to come across Beta tapes in thrift stores and LaserDiscs. Love old technology.

Ah! Beta tapes, vcrs and boom boxes the size of suitcases. My very first cd was The Cure: Boys Don't Cry. Crimped hair, mall bangs, roller rinks, pixie week, Berlin wall coming down :) Great memories!

I think my first CD was R.E.M. "Document."

1970 here. I remember our first microwave, the first cordless phone and call waiting. Our VCR had a remote with a cord. I remember when HBO and MTV came out. Anyone remember hypercolor t-shirts?

Our neighbors had a movie player where the video was a disc, big as a record. Did anyone else ever see those? We watched the Thriller video on that. I also remember the BETA.

I had a purple hypercolor shirt. I also remember our first microwave. My mom got a ton of microwave cookbooks that year for Christmas lol. My grandpa had a Betamax instead of a VCR. He deeply regretted that decision.

We also had a big yellow dial phone. We got a long cord for it so you could almost take it down the hall.

Mt friend had an 8 track tape deck in his car!

Haha, drove a 77' MG in high school (even though I went to high school in 2003). Had the original 8 track player and had to go to the antique store to buy some tapes to test it out. Being an MG though, it didn't work of course.

My stepdad had the 8-track stereo in the house and the car. We bought adapters for them so we could play our cassettes.

I'm also part of Gen-X as well, 1975. We did have a VCR, but my brother and I only had cable when we were adults, as we had to basically move out first. It wasn't until everything was switching to digital that my dad finally got cable, 20 years after my grandparents got it.

Im born in 1981 which means I am too young to be Gen X but too old to be Gen Y/Millennial. Doh!

Hell, I'm an old Gen X'er - 1966.

I had a b/w TV till I was 16 and our cable system didn't get MTV till 1987. I was soooooo deprived! ;-)

Red acid wash Guess jeans.

'nuff said.

Yessss! Levis 501, shrink to fit, too

And Swatch watches, Swatch guards, and wearing more than one Swatch watch on your wrists.

Rolling the bottoms of the guess jeans and t-shirt sleeves.

I think I saw someone wearing one yesterday.

When I was growing up, at the Mormon church, they had Gold & Green Balls (I was too young), daddy daughter dates (creepy to me, because I was abused by an uncle and he would take his daughter to those things), Road Shows, Dance Festivals, ward carnivals, ward fundraising activities (our ward would do inventory for Frederick & Nelson a department store here or we would work at the hot dog stand at the UW games).

Is there ANYTHING fun in the Mormon church nowadays? I've been out for 12 years, but when I was in last, I can't remember anything fun.

Can't forget the killer Christmas party with Santa! I got soo much candy at those. And for the longest time, I couldn't understand why some Viet Nam vets kept talking about how their buddieswere Mutual In Action.

The uncle who molested me played......

Santa at every ward xmas party too.

Isn't it marvelous?

"Beth, some people just need shootin'."

He needs shootin'.

We had ward carnivals too; they were so much fun. Haven't been to one since the 80's. My ward also always had really great Christmas parties and Santa would sit on the stage and all the primary children would line up to see him.

I enjoyed the daddy daughter dates because my dad was always working..

If you really want to have some fun, go to TubeYou and search for the themes for your favorite shows from the era!!!

I have wasted HOURS watching those themes.

nah nah nah na-nah na NA NA
nah nah nah na-nah na NA NA
nah nah nah na-nah na NA NA
nah nah nah na-nah na NA NA

BATMAN!

Spiderman, Spiderman, does whatever a spider can.
Spins a web
any size
catches thieves just like flies
look out!
There goes the spiderman...

I practically, um, er, ______ myself when that song was incorporated into the 1st movie.

Hate to use a post where the count is used to shut an active thread down but just have to challenge your use of the word waste.

Nostalgia, childhood, adolescence....hopefully good, fun memories that attach you to others that you never knew but were going through the same space of time with the same hormonal changes and social challenges.

That's what forms a generation. It can be powerful stuff.

As a boomer, I learnt to repair VCR's and made a reasonable living. Oh for the days when everything broke or needed cleaning or adjustments on a regular basis! TV's were the same.

our 1963 state-of-the-art Philco "Entertainment Center", which was the size of hearse and had a color TV with a round 16" diameter screen (UHF!), and a turntable for 6 records, it could play the old 78s, but also the modern LPs (that's long-playing for you whipper-snappers) even those new-fangled "stereophonic" ones. AND it could pick up stereo FM stations, if you didn't mind a lot of hissing and fading.
We were one of the first ones with a VCR, and the only place to rent them was six miles away, in a store that mainly rented 8mm and 16mm films for the movie projector enthusiasts. Damn, it was expensive too, and *purchasing* a movie was out of the question, the went for hundreds of dollars apiece for '60s drive-in schlock. The VCR had faux walnut panels, knobs to change the station, and the pause/play remote was wired, and everybody tripped over it when they crossed the room.

I have a sudden urge to drag my Atari 2600 out of the basement and play ASTEROIDS.

How's the Philly temple going?

<3

I grew up on Atari too. My bf actually collects old gaming systems. He has everything BUT Atari...it really bugs me

My first crush was on Lion-O :)

I loved ZOOM! and The Electric Company.

Good times.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/03/2013 11:57PM by Beth.

Heeeey You Guys!!!!!

ANd now I'm thinking about West Side Story.