QOTC: Nine Great Formerly-Common Things Minnesotans Now Miss

Remember digging through a freshly-opened box of cereal - rooting around the cereal with your gross unwarshed Kid Hands - to fish out the mystery prize inside? How about buying a new video game, and the cartridge held the complete game? Thems were the days. Now the only prize we get from cereal is diabetes, and video games are sold and downloaded as incomplete and/or bug-ridden half-assed products. The rest of the game is now sold as DLC (downloadable content). Branding, baby!

A recent Question of the Century tugged at those nostalgic strings.

What's a Thing That Used to Be Common, But Quietly Vanished?

#1: VHS Tapes

Rewinding tapes go brrrr (Photo by Bruno Guerrero on Unsplash)

Those days of showing kindness by rewinding the tapes we rented are long gone, as are the days of accidentally recording over your kid's first birthday party with an episode of WCW Monday Nitro (Hulk Hogan turned heel!). Even DVDs and Blu Ray are fading away. Speaking of 'kindness'...

#2: Compassion/Loving Thy Neighbor

How can I love them if I've never even met them? (Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash)

Going outside used to be our Social Media. I feel like it (going outside) was a lot healthier for us. Empathy is a lot easier to learn face-to-face than via The Al Gore Rhythm. And there's that whole "threat of getting punched in the face for saying jerkface things", too...

#3: Cursive

"What is this gibberish?!" (Photo by James Barnett on Unsplash)

In the near future, soldiers will receive vigorous training to crack the code of...cursive handwriting. We Gen X/Xennials will be trying to help, only to get told to go back to our nursing home and fire up the GameCube...

#4: Landlines

"How do you unlock this?!" (Photo by Sam Loyd on Unsplash)

...where we'll also brag about phones that had great reception, all of the time...even when the power went out! We could only go as far as the cord reached, but we also had something to putz with while we yammered on. Landline phones weren't portable, but they were reliable. And in that vein...

#5: Payphones

Crikey! A payphone in the wild! (Photo by Juan Patlan on Unsplash)

Did you also call someone collect and the name you told the operator was a thinly-veiled message so that the person you're calling can reject the collect call but still know exactly what you wanted to tell them? Life hacks, baby!

#6: Full-Service Gas Stations

While the attendant fill up your tank, you had time to 'fog the windows' (Photo by Jim Frey on Unsplash)

Back when gas was leaded, you'd pull up to a gas station, fill up, pay, and drive away without getting out of your car. Nowadays, New Jersey is the only state that doesn't allow drivers to fill-up their gas tanks. It's not a suggestion: it's illegal. More gas stations now make you go inside the store (unless you use a credit/debit card) to prepay for gas, go outside, fill up, then go back inside for your change. It feels like we're regressing, here...

#7: Physical Keys For Our Cars, Instead of Fobs

...the hell is THAT?! (Photo by Ivan Shemereko on Unsplash)

One key for the ignition, one key for the doors and trunk. Now it's one fob for everything, and hopefully the battery in your fob or the battery in your car doesn't die. If either does, you're S.O.L. Some fobs have a physical key that'll get you inside the vehicle (and some - but not all - of those vehicles have a hidden ignition for that key to start the vehicle), but not all.

#8: A Fully-Loaded Computer From South Dakota

Pimpin' ain't easy... (Getty Images)

This one confused me until the very specifics were explained: Gateway computers used to be based in Iowa, and then South Dakota. The company was sold to Acer in 2007.

#8: Prizes in Cracker Jacks and Cereal

Getty Images

Prizes in cereal, prizes in cracker jacks...we used to get participation trophies for our poor choices in food. Now we have to be content with lingering health issues.

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These 9 New Olympic Events Got Kids Grounded In the '80s

The 2024 Olympics marks the first year for many events our parents would have grounded us in if they caught us doing them. While an undeserved stigma surrounded some events, others were perfectly safe activities we made dangerous by not following the rules. Here's a look at 9 New Olympic Events That Got Kids Grounded in the 1980s.

Gallery Credit: Scott Clow

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Filed Under: nostalgia