Sure, the 21st century might offer luxuries that kids in the past only ever saw on The Jetsons, but there’s something special about earlier decades that Gen Z will just never quite understand. And quite frankly, today’s youth can keep their fancy gizmos and gadgets. No matter the day, we’d choose Snake over Fortnite, Elvis over Ed Sheeran, and the local drive-in over the 19-screen AMC. If you grew up in an era that kids today might refer to as “like, forever ago,” then you’ll appreciate these 100 photos that will instantly transport you back to a better, simpler time. And if you’re looking for a different kind of throwback, don’t miss the 150 Slang Terms From the 20th Century No One Uses Anymore. This photo belongs in a museum commemorating the gloriousness of the 1990s. Everything—from the neon sweatshirt on the left, to that denim bucket hat, to the animal-printed lunchboxes—is a shrine to the era. And for more glory of the 1990s, here are 20 Things You Won’t Believe Happened in 1999. You want to chat with your friends online, but your mom is having an endless conversation with Susan about the designer pocketbook she recently fished out of Century 21. The struggle was oh-so-real. Outside of counting rain drops and telephone poles, this was the only form of amusement on long road trips. For a brief moment in a deliriously innocent pre-9/11 period in American history—when *NSYNC (above) reigned supreme and Jim Carrey was a serious film actor, thanks to The Truman Show—it was the norm for men to put the styling equivalent of cupcake icing in their hair. What a time to be alive! And for more on the go-go ’90s, don’t miss these 24 Celeb Red Carpet Photos From 1990 You Have to See to Believe. Nothing was worse than snagging a copy of a sweet Nicolas Cage action film at the rental store and getting home to discover that the last person who watched the VHS tape didn’t bother to “be kind and rewind.” To quote Stephanie Tanner, “How rude!” No one really knows why we all did it, but we all did it. Rider Strong from Boy Meets World (above). Shane McDermott from Airborne. JTT from Home Improvement. Yes, the ’90s were the undisputed golden age of really, really bad bowl cuts with a center part. But if you were going to a No Doubt concert, nothing made you look cooler. Thanks to this wildly popular game, everyone in fifth grade learned dysentery used to be a very serious illness. For what it’s worth, the computer game now lives on via classicreload.com, if you want to finally make it to the promised land of Oregon. And for more ’90s aesthetic, check out the 20 Photos of 1990s Home Décor to Overwhelm You With Nostalgia Everyone had one of these giant cases and, inevitably, the DVD or CD you were actually looking for would be mysteriously missing. Everyone in elementary school knew what “58008” spelled out upside-down. And yes, it was the funniest thing ever. And for more memories for those who raised 1990s kids, here are 25 Things Only Parents in the 1990s Will Remember. You couldn’t allow those precious wires to get tangled and prevent you from playing Super Mario World, now could you? Literally no one knew how to play this game that came pre-loaded onto computers, but that didn’t stop literally everyone from trying. It was one of the weirdest crazes of the ’90s, a “digital pet” you could watch grow—and, yes, die. When your Tamagotchi signaled its departure from existence, it did so with a passive-aggressive, “Bye.” Kids today have no idea how good they have it. Nothing screamed “I grew up in the era of Reality Bites and Singles” quite like being a skinny teen boy and wearing a XXXL flannel shirt. Years ago, teenage athletes across America had the ingenuity to pull off the sock-less look well before ankle socks became one of the greatest fashion inventions of all time. (We’ll give you that one, Gen Z.) Before text messages, this was the only way to let your crush know you were madly in love with them. To this day, the simple synth intro of this classic hit submerges millennials into memories of their first school dance. Chances are, you’ve still got the moves down pat. Try to imagine your Spotify account breaking. Now, take that feeling of despondency and multiply it by a thousand. Then you’ll know what it truly feels like to literally hold the remains of your broken Alanis Morrisette cassette in your hands. Etsy may have loads of BFF necklaces, but none will compare with the originals from Claire’s, which were composed of a heart ripped in two, united only when two BFFs conjoined them. Long before crossovers ruled the highways of America, soccer moms of the 1990s delighted in ferrying the neighborhood kids to school in one of these then-futuristic-looking minivans. If you were a truly lucky kid, they came equipped with a TV and VCR in the back for catching up on Power Rangers episodes. You probably already knew drugs were illegal from your school’s D.A.R.E. program, but Nancy Reagan’s omnipresent campaign—where “Just Say No” posters were plastered on nearly every public school—really drove the point home. With the popularity of aerobics at an all-time high, leotards were to the ’80s what yoga pants are to today, meaning they were worn anywhere and everywhere, regardless of whether or not you actually planned to exercise. And you always felt like a member of Jane Fonda’s entourage when you wore one. The ’80s had us all clamoring for acid-washed jeans. Whether in a dark wash or bright color, acid-wash adherents genuinely saw these strangely-patterned pants as the perfect complement to the crimped hair, crop tops, and Day-Glo accessories also popular at the time. Your love for Wham! extended well past dancing every time you heard “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go.” In fact, your “Choose Life” T-shirt happened to be one of your most prized possessions—and something you proudly wore everywhere, from school picture day to more formal occasions. With records rapidly being replaced by cassettes, music became instantly more portable in the 1980s. And the advent of the boombox meant you could bring your favorite music anywhere you went—preferably sharing it with everyone around you while perching the machine between your neck and shoulder. They say the higher the hair, the closer to God—and that was certainly true when it came to your bangs in the ’80s. Even if you had to use a whole can of Aqua Net to achieve your desired look, it was well worth it. There were plenty of real-life villains in the ’80s to be afraid of, but none of them made you quite so frightened as the redheaded menace known as Chucky. In fact, the doll’s evil deeds made you so scared, you actually started to suspect your own playthings of murder, as well. Cabbage Patch Kids weren’t just a thing in the ’80s—they were the thing. And you were proud to own one, knowing your parents likely risked life and limb at your local mall to make sure you had one in time for the holidays. While pagers may seem antiquated by today’s standards, back in the ’80s, if you had one, you couldn’t have been cooler. Sure, you had to learn a million codes to understand what people were trying to communicate with you and you still had to have access to a landline to get in touch with anyone else, but there was no denying that a pager was the ultimate in high-tech accessories at the time. There was nothing more enviable in the 1980s than your friends’ waterbeds. They may have made you a little seasick to lay on—and there was, of course, the ever-present worry about accidentally flooding the room—but they were still just about the coolest piece of furniture you’d ever seen. While they may be an object of derision today, in the ’80s, mullets were just another standard hairstyle. In addition to stars like Billy Ray Cyrus and John Stamos sporting this regrettable haircut, your family members and your teachers had them, too. The only thing more fun than shopping at an actual mall? Pretending to shop with your friends during a game of Mall Madness. In the 1980s, you had two choices when you wanted to watch a movie at home: head to your local video store or tap into your private stash of tapes. Of course, no matter the provenance of your VHSes, playing or rewinding one always put you at risk for this mangled mess—and the heartbreaking realization you’d have to shell out another month’s worth of allowance for a new one. While not every political scandal or international crisis made it past your radar as a kid, you totally remember exactly where you were when you heard about the Challenger disaster in 1986. You could barely walk past a newsstand without seeing the ship breaking apart on the front pages of newspapers and covers of magazines for months after. The color of toxic slime, loaded with sugar, and generally the greatest thing you’d ever tasted in your life, getting one of these at lunch had you pitying the kids who got sent to school with water or juice. In the 1980s, rocking a pair of Zubaz or Skidz with a fanny pack cinching the waistline was the move. Basically, if the brand of your pants didn’t have a Z in it (hello, Z. Cavariccis), you were probably not one of the cool kids. Your teachers hated them. They left marks on your arms for days. They hurt when you slapped them on your wrist. But nothing in the world was going to keep your collection of brightly-patterned slap bracelets from growing until they reached your elbows on both arms. From the tutu skirts to the black rubber bracelets to the fingerless lace gloves to the beauty mark, every girl growing up in the 1980s was a head-to-toe Madonna-be.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb IBM introduced its first personal computer, the IBM PC, in 1981. While it would be at least a decade before everyone had a computer, if you had a Commodore 64 in the early ’80s, you were a real gamer. In the ’80s, there was nothing that topped the appeal of a polyester Members Only jacket. No matter what the weather, no outfit was complete without that label on your lapel. Today, we have games so realistic it feels like you’re actually in them. In the 1980s, decades before the advent of Fortnite, we had the thrill of outrunning those pesky ghosts in Pac-Man. Of course, Pac-Man wasn’t the only video game that occupied hours of your time after school as a Gen Xer. In the ’70s, you were addicted to Pong, which felt awesomely modern at the time. While a sleek SUV or sports car may be a more eye-catching option by today’s standards, in the ’70s, there was nothing cooler than hitting the road in your parents’ wood-paneled station wagon. And when you were being especially good, you got to ride in the way, way back and look out the rear window. Dogs are messy and expensive, cats leave fur everywhere, and parrots (at least in the ’70s) only repeat phrases their owners learned from MAD magazine. So, instead, your parents got you a pet rock. And while it may never have licked your face or kept your feet warm at night, you loved it nonetheless. Picasso had paint. Rodin had marble. And you had your Magna Doodle, on which you created your own masterpieces before swiping them away for good. It was basically ’80s kids’ SnapChat. In the 1970s, budding hairdressers had to practice those banana curls and teased bangs somehow. And without YouTube tutorials to guide them, Barbie Beauty Centers tended to bear the brunt of amateur styling attempts—and all the curling iron singes that went along with them. Long before scanners were a fixture in every home and office, you copied things the old-fashioned way: with Silly Putty. And, of course, you relished the opportunity to ball it up after copying a Family Circus panel and starting again. Covering your floors wasn’t as simple as popping into Pottery Barn and picking up a rug in the 1970s. Your house—apart from the patterned linoleum in your kitchen—was covered in shag carpeting in a variety of earthy tones, from moss to pumpkin. Big hair was the name of the game in the ’70s, and nobody had a more iconic mane than Farrah Fawcett. And though you may have lost a good portion of your hair trying to emulate her classic ‘do, you still teased and curled and sprayed until your waves were just right. If you grew up in the 1970s, male or female, there’s a good chance you wore high socks and precariously short shorts to the mall. Behold: the measure of masculinity in 1975. While kids today have been going to Disney theme parks for decades, children of the ’70s were the first to see Walt Disney World in all of its glory when the park opened its doors on October 1, 1971. Of course, you begged your parents every summer to ditch your trip to your grandparents’ house to take you there instead. And if they said no, we hope you’ve made it since. Fancy china has its place, but as a ’70s kid, you know that the true height of sophistication is enjoying your mom’s tuna noodle casserole straight from the Pilgrim-patterned Pyrex it was baked in. Understated fashion rarely made the cut in the 1970s, and if you grew up in that decade, there’s a good chance you happily followed the fashion stylings of ABBA. Breaking out your feather boa and finest pajamas, you’d twirl around your living room to “Dancing Queen,” imagining you were the fifth member of the Swedish pop quartet. The candy may have been chalky, but you weren’t going to rest until you had every Pez dispenser in the market lining the shelves in your bedroom. While an annual international vacation may not have been in your parents’ budget, ’70s kids got to explore the world anyway with your ViewMaster reels. With a single click of the lever, you traveled to the Eiffel Tower, Machu Picchu, and got an up-close-and-personal look at the pyramids, too. With their tight jumpsuits, long hair, and high voices, the Bee Gees were about as cool as bands got in the 1970s. And even today, any kid who grew up with them will still tear up a little when their version of “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart” plays somewhere. While you loved the bands of the time, you also knew that listening to them on-the-go was quite the endeavor. Nonetheless, you brought your bulky 8-track collection with you on every car trip, often sacrificing precious suitcase space to do so. You may have mastered the basics of Simon Says as an elementary schooler, but years later, you still struggled to follow directions when passed a Simon. Any ’70s kid could play for hours at a time trying to get the pattern right. If you fancied yourself a fashion designer in the 1970s, odds are you begged your parents for a set of Fashion Plates for your birthday. Once you got them, your after-school hours were spent tracing their designs, imagining yourself becoming the next Gloria Vanderbilt with every pencil stroke. In the 1960s, shorter hemlines became all the rage among young women on London’s trendy Oxford Street, and it wasn’t long before they made their way across the pond. Soon, miniskirts became not just a fashion staple, but a symbol of the women’s liberation movement—and by the end of the decade, an even shorter version called the “micro-skirt” emerged. With her short hair, androgynous look, big eyes, and long eyelashes, Twiggy was the definitive “It” Girl of the 1960s. Women spent hours in front of the mirror applying layers of fake eyelashes and coating them in mascara to get her signature look. The banana bike—also known as a wheelie bike, high-riser, or spyder bike—consisted of ape hanger handlebars, a banana seat with sissy bar, and small wheels. They were designed to resemble a chopper motorcycle, and if you were a kid, nothing was cooler than racing down the street in one of these babies. With their fondness for free love, nudity, rock music, and illicit substances, raising a hippie was every ’60s parent’s worst nightmare. But even if you weren’t down with their psychedelic lifestyle, you couldn’t help but think all of those earth colors, loose dresses, and unkempt hair were kind of cool. Bell bottoms became all the rage for both men and women in the 1960s. They made you look like you had calves the size of an elephant’s, but boy, were they comfy after a few washes. In 1964, the French fashion designer André Courrèges created the first go-go boots, which were white, low-heeled, and mid-calf in height. They were an overnight sensation, and paired perfectly with a miniskirt, allowing them to easily dominate the footwear market in the 1960s. You collected their vinyl records and hung up their pinup posters from magazines, because Beatlemania was at fever pitch in the ’60s. Barbie first launched in March 1959, after the iconic doll’s creator, Ruth Handler, noticed that her daughter, Barbara, liked to give adult roles to her paper dolls. The very first Barbie wore a zebra-print bathing suit and was available in both blond and brunette. By 1960, Mattel had sold 300,000 of them. The style was popularized by Jacqueline Kennedy in the beginning of the ’60s, and soon every woman was backcombing for hours and blinding themselves with hairspray to achieve this coveted look. As gross as encasing meat in Jell-O may be, it was also a relatively inexpensive way of making meals out of canned products and seemed to have an infinite expiration date if properly refrigerated. Pretty crafty, moms of the ’60s. “Sea monkeys”—a brand name for brine shrimp—were sold as novelty aquarium pets in the 1960s. Thanks to a genius marketing strategy that involved placing ads in comic books in which they bore very little resemblance to the real-life crustaceans, every comic book lover wanted one of these as a pet. According to legend, the first modern tie-dye shirt was created by a group of hippies who took a white T-shirt, dipped it into a pond, and poured enamel-based model airplane paint all over it to make some pretty colors. It soon became the unofficial wardrobe at rock concerts, and Woodstock even had a tie-dye booth for those who needed to create their outfit on the go. Though blacklight posters were invented in the 1930s, they didn’t become mainstream until the late 1960s. Venues like the Fillmore in San Francisco began using them to promote concerts, and musicians released funkadelic blacklight artwork for teens to adorn their walls with. A few decades ago, your shaggy carpeted bedroom wasn’t worth a thing without a few of these babies hanging on the wall. Iconic women of the ’60s—like Gloria Steinem and Audrey Hepburn—were often pictured sporting turtlenecks with retro skirts and black jeans, creating the ultimate sleek-but-sexy get-ups for the era. Why these creepy dolls picked up in popularity is unclear—but for better or for worse, Troll Dolls will always be a part of 1960s nostalgia. Before there were hair straighteners, there were actual irons and women on a mission. Every girl growing up in the ’60s remembers getting ready for prom, their mom holding their hair over the ironing board as they struggled to straighten those pesky waves. Straighteners may have made our lives easier, but in the 1960s, the struggle made the final product that much sweeter. In the 1960s, fallout shelters were so popular that the government even offered financial assistance for civilians who wanted to build them under the Community Fallout Shelter Program. And what ’60s baby could ever forget President Kennedy’s famous letter in Life magazine, advising everyone to educate themselves about how to survive a nuclear attack, as “nuclear weapons and the possibility of nuclear war are facts of life we cannot ignore today.” For kids today, the iconic moon landing of Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969, is little more than a part of history class. But for people growing up during this time, it was the event of the decade, where everyone gathered around the biggest television in the neighborhood to watch Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin take one small step for man, and one giant leap for mankind. Back in the ’60s, nothing accessorized a room quite like a lava lamp. Not only was it funky, but it was also fun to watch as the wax mixture inside moved around. Groovy, baby! Before there were selfies, there were confident young women making sitting on the hood of a car look oh-so-glamorous. To date, there are few cars on the road that look as cool as the ones released in the 1950s. From fins to chrome accents to their candy-colored paint jobs, you couldn’t—and likely still can’t—help from oohing and aahing when you see one on the road. Created in 1947 by singer and fashion designer Juli Lynne Charlot as part of a last-minute Christmas outfit, the poodle skirt quickly caught on as a conversation-starting item of clothing, making the rounds at dances and dinner parties alike. In the 1950s, all it took to be the popular kid in school was having a color TV that everyone from your class could come over to watch Bonanza on. Even though most shows were still only offered in black and white, it was enough just to be able to brag about having that brand-spanking-new color television set. Kids who grew up in the 1950s (and people who live in homes that haven’t been renovated in decades) can look at photos of pastel-colored bathrooms with fondness rather than disgust. While calling a friend today is as easy as instructing Siri to do your bidding, in the 1950s, it was a lengthy process. Every time you wanted to dial a number, you had to wait for the rotary dial to go all the way back to its original position before entering the next one. While it was no easy feat to master the rhythm necessary to get the Hula Hoop to stay up, you spent hours wiggling your hips and watching it fall before finally figuring out how to get a few rotations out of it. Long before ellipticals were invented, moms of the ’50s hoping to shed their baby weight wrapped themselves in a belt that promised to jiggle their fat right off and hoped for the best. Obviously, this is not a workout; actually, it resembles some sort of medieval torture device. Luckily, we’ve evolved since then. Home-cooked meals were the name of the game in the 1950s—until McDonald’s changed everything. As the newly-franchised company expanded throughout the 1950s, kids across America began to clamor for their hamburgers, begging mom and dad to ditch the dinner cooking in the Crock-Pot and head to the Golden Arches instead. While you may not have been the King of the Wild Frontier, you were the next best thing: a ’50s kid in a coonskin cap with a penchant for adventure. Sure, kids these days might appreciate Elvis’ music, but they’ll never know what it was like to grow up while the King of Rock ’n’ Roll was still alive and making hit records. (And they’ll certainly never know the pleasure of decking out their rooms with posters, photographs, and other paraphernalia of the sultry singer.) Before hardwood floors came back into fashion, patterned laminates were the pinnacle of home décor in the ’50s. Inexpensive, easy to install, and impervious to even the messiest spills, virtually everyone you knew had these plasticky floors in their kitchen. If you wanted to show your school pride in the ’50s, there was no better way to do so than by wearing your letterman jacket around town. And if you didn’t have one, maybe your boyfriend would lend you his. Even before she went platinum and breathily extolled the virtues of diamonds as female confidants, everyone in the ’50s thought Marilyn Monroe was the most glamorous woman they’d ever seen. From her auburn waves to her curvy shape, she was peak ’50s perfection. Whether you were inviting friends over for cocktails or having a massive holiday celebration, fashionable 1950s homes were meticulously maintained for entertaining purposes. Of course, no room was better suited for gathering guests than your sunken living room, where you could relax far from (or at least a few inches below) the hustle and bustle in the kitchen. While formal restaurants had their time and place in the 1950s, the only acceptable place to hang out with your friends or take a date on a Friday night was your local soda fountain. Prior to the advent of the multiplex, drive-in movies were the best way to see a film in the ’50s. You’d park your car, tune in on the radio, and enjoy hours of entertainment every weekend during the summer. There’s a reason every TV station plays White Christmas on repeat during the holiday season: There’s something about the tinseled tree, the old train car toys, and the wooden sleds that still warms your heart like hot cocoa. While your furry pets were, of course, sources of joy as well, ’50s kids found few things more fascinating than watching the ants move through their ant farms. And while the box may have read “escape proof, " you’d occasionally catch a straggler who hadn’t made its way in. Though, by today’s standards, having an entire family wear matching shoes might seem noteworthy, in the 1950s, you, your mom, dad, and siblings all had matching saddle shoes. And, of course, you kept them so well-shined you could practically see your reflection in them. While no-show socks may be essential by modern standards, in the 1950s, people proudly wore their bobby socks cuffed above the ankle with everything from shorts to formal dresses. For what it’s worth, Prince George and Princess Charlotte still rock that look. And for more nostalgia, here are 50 Facts About the 20th Century That Will Make You Feel So Old Today.
