""Do you remember when?"" Topic

(Cue the Statler brothers song)

Based on the "retro" thread, I started reminiscing about my youth:
D&D getting started.
Star Wars getting started.
Star Trek re-runs every afternoon after school.
Atari console with Adventure, Missile Command, Asteroids, Super Breakout…
Video arcades where every game cost a quarter and you could play as long as you could stay alive— Pacman, Red Baron, Star Wars (the sit-down version!), Galaga, Gorf…
Soccer was just showing up in the US, so even a hapless clutz like me could be a "star player" (in my own mind) on the local championship team.
Traveller getting started.
The early (and best) years of Dragon magazine.
Star Wars toys weren't "collectors items" yet; they were toys.
Model rocketry was in its hey-day.
The Space Shuttle was launching and becoming a movie star (Buck Rogers, Moonraker— yeah, they both sucked, but I was a kid, so they were awesome).
Rock groups still wrote songs that just seemed to go along with my obsessions (Toto's Hydra got many a playing during our gaming sessions).
Battlestar Galactica came on TV. "By your command…"
Raiders of the Lost Ark was the best movie ever made.
Toy guns looked like real guns, and nobody cared, and everybody knew the difference.
I had a "real" Kentucky long rifle that shot cork balls— which you actually had to "ram" down the barrel, and had to "prime" the pan by tearing a "cap" of a "cap strip" and placing it in the pan (it propelled the ball!) Sold by Disney, no less, in their Frontierland— with real coonskin caps made of real fur (well, rabbit fur… but the tail was really a raccoon tail).
The hottest computer on the market was the Apple II, but you could also get a TRS-80 and program it yourself— or a VIC-20 or eventually the Commodore 64. I was a BASIC maestro (again, in my own mind).
As I said in the other thread— Dang, was that a great time to be a kid.

How about your childhood?

Hmmmm. let's see
The Cuban missle crisis.
Soldiers came in plastic, all one color.
The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur were the coolest movies ever.
Collectables? We don't need no stinking collectables.
Forbidden Planet scared the bejeesus out of me, but it had Robbie the Robot (my family called me RobbieLiving in France 1960-1963, 20 francs to the dollar.
The Kennedy Assasination.
Vietnam.

Still, in my little corner of the world, life was pretty good.

All of both of your lists except for the Cuban Missile Crisis and soccer (footie didn't take off in my state until some time after I'd left the state to join the military).

The first time I saw Star Wars was at a drive-in from the third row, sitting on the top of a Vista Cruiser station wagon. The opening scene was set against a pitch-black starry sky. Good times, good times…

Seems I'm you Parzival (well plus or minus a couple of things from the list).

Hard luck on being that old !

Geez, guys, I deliberately avoided political stuff— Cold War kid here (I honestly snapped the pin off a little plastic lapel button my grandfather brought back from a trip to the Soviet Union because I was convinced it was the antenna of a KGB micro-transmitter— not that my family was in any way rabidly anti-Communist; I just had an over-active imagination…). I left all that out, because that's not really a kid's life. I knew about the Iran hostage crisis and all that, but that's not where my focus was. It was on the cool stuff I could see and do— so what "cool stuff" could you see and do?

I guess I'm another around the same age, although my first computer was a ZX81.

I grew up on a farm and used to go out "rabbiting" with my air rifle from about 8 years old. My hound and I used to stay out all day helping my old man with the cows (or walking a couple of miles up to the local corner shop to but him a pack of Embassy No6). I look back on my childhood with incredible fondness and a touch of amazement at the complete freedom that I had.

When I was a little kid John Wayne was still making movies.
Batman was played by Adam West. And one could go to a supermarket grand opening and meet Batman and Robin. And there would be Adam West and Burt Ward in costume!
Toy soldiers were plastic. And looked like Americans, Germans and Japanese.
Computers were in movies. They took up whole buildings. And had names like Maniac.
The Police were good guys and portrayed by people like Jack Webb. "Just the facts, Ma'am."
The Beetles were a new "Rock and Roll" band from Britain. I saw them on the Ed Sullivan show. Ed said they were "really big" so you knew it was so…

Im right there with you Parzival. Simpler times.

My memory doesn't go that far back.

From my childhood – things you couldn't do any more…

– taking Grandpop's beer bucket and 50 cents to
Mitchell's Tavern and bringing him back his nightly
quart – and keeping the 20 cents change !

– Going to the store and buying a pack of Herbert
Tareyton's for my mother.

– Taking my cousin's .58 Springfield (a relic, not a
repro !) to school for show and tell.

– Carrying PBJ sandwiches to school in my lunch bag.

– Picking up the telephone (no dial/buttons) and telling
the operator I wanted to talk to Grandma – and being
connected w/o telling her the number (RI-9-0055).

Star Wars getting started.
Star Trek re-runs every afternoon after school.

Yep. Still like both of them!

Atari console with Adventure, Missile Command, Asteroids, Super Breakout…

I REALLY wanted one of those back then, but we couldn't afford it.

Video arcades where every game cost a quarter and you could play as long as you could stay alive— Pacman, Red Baron, Star Wars (the sit-down version!), Galaga, Gorf…

My local mall had a Bally's Aladdin's Castle arcade back in the late-'70s until about the mid-'80s. The interior was painted black, and there was a mix of video games and pinball machines. It wasn't long before a six-screen movie theater with a built-in video arcade opened up in the same mall, and pretty much usurped its business. I can't tell y'all how many quarters I spent back in the day.

Soccer was just showing up in the US…

The old NASL. The Dallas Tornado was my team, with Kyle Rote, Jr. The team folded in 1981.

Model rocketry was in its hey-day.

Estes model rockets. They had some really cool designs back then! I bought a couple, but never flew them.

The Space Shuttle was launching and becoming a movie star (Buck Rogers, Moonraker— yeah, they both sucked, but I was a kid, so they were awesome).

Maybe 'Moonraker' sucked, but 'Buck Rogers'?! Really?!?!

Battlestar Galactica came on TV. "By your command…"

One of my favorites, and still is! Of course, there were "the girls" on the show: Maren Jensen, Laurette Spang, and Anne Lockhart.

Toy guns looked like real guns, and nobody cared, and everybody knew the difference.

Times have certainly changed.

Grade school:

27 cents for gas
6.5mm Mannlicher Carcano cost $30.00 USD, ammo common
Fizzies
13 Ghosts in 3d
Nuke drills
Gemini Space Shots
going to the library and using the Dewey Decimal system

High School:
Sliderules
Body counts on nightly news
Riots/Dissent/
M16 was controversial
Mac-10
Russian MayDay Parades
Moonlanding

Working:

D&D/Tractics/Fletcher Pratt Naval Rules
Drang Nach Osten
Empire(closet Napoleonic gamer)
Traveller

…and we're off…

I don't remember Bay of Pigs, and didn't know what the Missile Crisis was about, though I do remember everybody was upset about it.

I remember Space Invader comping out, and I loved Galaga, but my favorite was Gauntlet. Did you guys have that over there?

First interactive TV : Winky Dink
Bit o' Honey
Penny Candy
10c comic books
Metamophosis Alpha
When GE Unions had Christmas parties for kids (1950s) I got my first helicopter model
Freddie Freihofer (Schenectady 50s)
Baron Demoan (Syracuse 60s) with movie serials like Buck Rogers
Raiders of the Lost Ark is still the best movie ever made!

PBJ sandwiches yep
I had a recurve bow in my locker at school in High School in 1966. Sure couldn't do that today (oh and arrows too but not broadheads)
I also brought a pitchfork to school that same year for a prop in Music Man. Was discouraged for bringing it (simply because the music teacher was concerned about safety) but I wasn't expelled.

Dyptheria
Thyphoid
Smallpox
TB
Hitler

Ahh… great years

but my favorite was Gauntlet. Did you guys have that over there?

"Elf needs food. Badly."
"Wizard is about to die."

Yep. And I heard the above phrases *a lot*.

Atari console with Adventure, Missile Command, Asteroids, Super Breakout…

I REALLY wanted one of those back then, but we couldn't afford it.

I got my first job— as a paper boy— so I could earn enough to buy my own console. That job paid for the console, lots of cartridges, D&D and Traveller stuff, and a Honda Express motor scooter…

And I still have the console and the games. Occasionally I awe my son with my gaming skills. (And that kid of the Nintendo 64/Gameboy/X-box era loves to play Adventure— and howls when his little square gets eaten by a dragon that looks like a duck.)

Atari 2600, eventually with Activision cartridges (I even had a denim jacket with the badges I'd won).

Woolworth's in the local strip mall.

Montgomery Ward's two blocks away (anyone remember D&D and other RPGs in their catalogs?).

Being able to ride my bike until dark; also, playing with other kids in my neighborhood without a "playdate".

LEGO sets that weren't licensed (Galaxy Explorer, anyone?).

In the younger days, watching "Wee Willie Webber's Cartoon Club" out of Philly after school. Also took in a lot of Three Stooges, Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, Hogan's Heroes, Munsters.

"Being able to ride my bike until dark; also, playing with other kids in my neighborhood…"
Neighborhood-wide games of Hide n' Seek once it got dark. We had a local Bethlehem Steel Plant in town that blew a steam whistle at 4:30pm, 10:00pm and 10:15pm. I had to be home for supper right after the 4:30 whistle. I had to catch the 10:00 whistle and be home by the time of the 10:15 blast.