1970s Items That Failed! 

Any time you’re embarrassed when looking back, remember this: Unlike today, no one outside of an insane asylum thought there were more than two genders then.

Same!

Yeah I still can't get over those 70s pants and ridiculous looking collars. But it seems like a fun time with lots of great music and films specially.

Yeah, especially the music. Can’t beat it.

I think we had the best cars best music great hair 😊

That was cheap. My father bought a used top loading VHS recorder off a neighbor for $700, in the late 1970s. Bought our second VCR, in 1983, for a bargain $300, new. The 1983 unit didn't die until ~2007.

@@michaelmoorrees3585 The $450 was actually cost, my uncle owned a video store. My first one even had a plug-in remote that only was about a foot long. We both got our money's worth 🤣

I was told years ago that Beta max was the better of the two systems

@@arejaycee5704 Yes beta was definitely higher quality and the tapes were smaller and took up less room.

Yes Beta was better than VHS but Sony owned Beta max and everyone else chose to go VHS for that reason…cheaper than paying Sony fees

I was taught as a kid to obey my teacher or else 'get it' when you get home. And today's kids...well, you know.

I concur! I was born in 1961, and loved being a kid! Kids today have no idea what it’s like to ride your bike all day, play in a stream, or stay out till the street lights came on. Remember freeze tag? Boy, times have really been dumbed down.

Got a few years on you but we kids did exactly the things that you describe in my old neighborhood. At a tender age I learned to repair a flat tire on my bike using one of those little tube patch kits. Fond memories. Today's kids seem too occupied with their 'devices' to care much about bicycles, etc.@@INKOSK4114

So many negative comments on youtube people feel they need to project their personal hate for something and someone . All generations had their positive or negative . Being a teen in the 1970’s we talked worked with many that were in military service in WW2. Seniors in the 1970’s built companies in the 1930’s . I grew up in Oakland California and seen endless job options with factories in California most all gone forced out .

Me too!

Body on Tap! Totally forgot about that one! Smelled so good!

@@sabrinacansino5969 It has beer in it! But dooon't drink it!

Lemon Up is still available through The Vermont Country Store.

@@jeannehall6546 good to know, thanks!

Yes! When my girlfriend at the time used that shampoo, and I smelled her hair, I thought I was in heaven! Also, remember "Love's Baby Soft" perfume?

I can’t believe the maker would put “Yogurt” in bigger letters than “shampoo” on the bottle, then be shocked that some people ate it.

I wonder if the original recipe still exists. 🧐 Could be interesting to see how it compares with modern shampoos.

@@NorseGraphicgosh I’d love to have some!

@@chairman-jenkem-yogurt Lol

I totally agree with you. There is definitely no comparison! Pink Floyd were the first band to us quadraphonic speakers live in concert during their Darkside tour. I got to hear them used live by Waters, a couple years ago, during an intermission. They played a bunch of sound effects such as police sirens, crowds of people in the street, radio transmissions, etc. It was trippy AF! Up to that point, I never heard them live like that in a huge venue.

I have a sansui hifi receiver and a pair of AR11 tower speakers that my dad bought new in the 70s.. I've been using them since the late 90s.. I still use them almost every day, and they sound better than most of the modern stuff available today.. I plugged a Bluetooth dongle into the mic input, and I can stream audio from any of my devices to the receiver.. I will continue to use it until it no longer works, and then I will probably get it fixed instead of replacing it..

@@MarkLada It's 100% about balanced sound. Good speakers produce a huge room-filling midrange while tone and bass support the midrange. Thanks to rap, the tastes have changed, and speakers now are designed to focus on bass. I even saw a new Mcintosh home stereo speaker cabinet that had FOUR 12" bass subs with a single 4" speaker for both mid and tone. They're poorly-balanced for every form of music except rap.

@@3Storms As someone that has been producing music for over 30 years I will say that rap is also the least complex form of musical composition and really doesn't take much talent to make. I have subjective opinions about it as well. The only reason it has become so popular is because the industry heavily promotes it.

@3Storms Yeah, I agree.. Everyone is all about the bass these days.. I like bass, and you definitely need good woofers to hear the music like it's meant to be heard.. If you want to run 4 12" subs, that's fine, but then you have to run mid range drivers that are just as loud as the subwoofers and tweeters that are just as loud as your mids.. All of these portable bluetooth speakers that have come out in the recent years have the opposite problem.. They are using 3.5" and 4" "subwoofers" that won't play under 200hz, and there's absolutely no bass at all.. I believe my AR11 speakers have a 10" woofer, a 6.5" midrange driver, and a 1.5" tweeter in each box.. You can hear everything from 30hz all the way up to 30khz.. The balance is absolutely perfect and there's still enough bass to shake the windows..

Ahh, yes! "Super Elastic Bubble Plastic! I think it was toxic; something akin to some kind of PVC mixed w/ rubber cement, as I recall...One could produce these rather flaccid "balloons" w/ the stuff...About the same era as "Kabongers" or "Clackers"...

I remember that stuff well...lol

That stuff was great! I loved the insanely toxic smell. 🤪

@@craigmclean8260 That stuff was always lame because it was half dried out or worse, even before it was purchased. It made the lamest bubbles not even close to bubble gum.

​@@freyashipley6556lol

I used fabrasea wheat germ and honey shampoo, and I told two friends and they told two friends and so on and so on😐

I used to use lemon up shampoo and conditioner. I grew up with that and I used it all throughout my childhood and I loved it.

I had a set of those and luckily nothing ever happened to me. i loved playing with them but my parents hated them. Thank you for watching Jay!

Still have mine!

Yeah it's hard to believe they thought making the first ones out of glass was a good idea. The cracking glass was hurting so many kids they had to make them out of plastic then.

They were fine, the issue was other companies made fake ones that is when things went wrong

Yes; one of the trade names was "Kabongers", IIRC; they were a colored, clear acrylic; I guess a few did shatter, and I'd even heard of fires started as the things made pretty good magnifying glasses when in sunlight...

September 1980. BOMP ! BOMP ! BOMP ! Another one bites the dust. BOMP ! BOMP ! BOMP ! Another one bites the dust !

Back in the 80s & 90s, friends would buy their favorite movie on Laserdisc just to watch it at my house on a largescreen TV, in wide-screen, with surround sound. I got a lot of movies free that way. 🤠

A few years ago I saw a bunch of laser disc in a thrift store. I started to buy them to sell them eBay but the prices they were selling for weren’t very much in comparison to how much they were selling for at the thrift. I didn’t count but there were at least 20 of the laser disc. I didn’t want to take the chance of buying all those discs and they not sell.

The lazer discs sucked.

Did Sony have anything to do with laser disc?? Cause usually when a format is a flop… Sony had something to do with it!🤔

@@PREPFORIT You have an anime/manga character avatar, yet you say that "lazer discs sucked"??? A big part of my anime collection are LaserDiscs imported from Japan, and they are *BEAUTIFUL*.

Actually better quality.

Yes, it was also popular in South America. All video rental stores offer only that and VHS was unknown. VHS came late when the DVD players were arriving.

Definitely not the best idea. Thank you for watching and I'm glad you enjoyed this one.

When I moved to Alaska in 1990, my first room had no toilet, shower, kitchen, or refrigerator. I survived the first few weeks on crackers and real baby food, which required no refrigeration or cooking. I made me feel like a little kid again.

I think I read about that once.

I remember them introducing that stuff, but we never bought it.

In defense of the 110 cameras, many of the later models with built-in flash had the flash just far away enough from the lens to minimize red eye which which plagued many 35 mm cameras of the 80s and 90s. I know some of those cameras with red eye reduction that fired preflash butt that's not really ideal if you want to take a candid shot.

Some of the 110 film cameras were quite sophisticated SLRs but the film format let them down - just too small with less variety of film available. The Disc cameras suffered from the same problem, too small a format and even less choices of film stock than 110 - they were however quite sophisticated for their time in every other way.

The Beta tapes allowed quality selections but the overall tapes just didn’t get as many minutes as VHS

I know what you mean, but none of them were anywhere close to "high def"

The nail in the coffin for beta as I recall was that beta tapes weren’t long enough to record an American football game but vhs could.

@@bwise7739 Yup, that'd do it

Same here,my Dad wasn’t going to spend 80.00 per movie,he wanted to record off HBO in the SLP mode,so we could fit 3 movies one one tape depending on how long the movie was.

I think you’re talking about the RCA Video Disc?

I remember those. My next door neighbor had one and an Atari 2600. I thought they were the richest people on the planet! I loved watching movies on that thing. It was so innovative. 🤠

I still have one of them and a bunch of discs

I had a mood ring, as a teenager in the '70s. (It was a Christmas gift from my grandma.) Loved it. Only wore it at school though, because I was a farm kid, and was afraid of getting my finger caught on something while doing chores.

I still have mine. I loved my mood ring but it always stayed blue.😊

I just bought one 😄

I loved mine. I noticed not long ago you can still buy them.

It's a temperature sensitive liquid crystal.

Oil rain lamps were beautiful…and they are worth a mint now.

I want Choco Lite and Marathon candy bars again.

@@Lemmon714_ I remember the Marathon candy bars. Loved those. ❤

​@@VickiCampbell-1216 In the British Isles, Snickers bars used to be called Marathon (up until sometime in the '80's). But then, what we call the Mars bar is, I believe, known as the Milky Way, your side of the Pond, while our Milky Way, you guys call the, I dunno, the 'Dreamy Whip', or some such! So, guessing the Marathon may have been a different thing to what I got in mind...

@@richiehoyt8487 Oh yes, right. I dated a guy from Liverpool years ago and he tried explaining to me how different, yet the same, some of our candy bars were. Sweets from the UK seemed to taste much better than ours in the US.

@@VickiCampbell-1216 Interesting... It's hard to say; I think it's complicated by "the other man's grass is always greener" phenomenon. The first time I tried a Hershey's bar, which I suppose would be the nearest equivalent to a Cadbury's 'Dairy Milk', I did notice it had a distinctively different taste to British chocolate which I quite liked. However, I've noticed that a lot of people trying Hershey bars for the first time say it "tastes like _sick!_ " I mean, I've seen them spit it out! And though I like them, I kind of know what they mean - there's something in there that's not a million miles different from that hard cheese you grind up onto pasta. Still, given that's what it brings to mind, it ought to be disgusting, but, I dunno, I think it gives Hershey chocolate a certain 'piquant' quality? I've read that it goes back to when Hershey were first trying to bring a milk chocolate bar to market, but, intent on a 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' strategy, their recipes were proving prohibitively expensive until someone came up with an inexpensive way of treating the milk so that it - and the chocolate - wouldn't spoil in transit. The bad news was that the method left the chocolate with a certain _'tang'..._ The _good_ news was that most of their working class customers didn't know chocolate (especially milk chocolate) was supposed to taste any different! Mind you, if you want a source, I'm going to have to plead 😕🤷..! I expect that's probably not quite the way Hershey tell it. I remember when this shop opened in the city where I live selling imported American candy, breakfast cereal, junk food, etc., about 10 or 15 years ago. This was the real deal, not one of the sketchy, money - laundering outfits that have taken over high streets since around the time of the pandemic. Of course my sweet - toothed (late) American born wife was rapturous, and dragged me down there. Given that the stock was shipped in specially, in relatively small amounts, the mark~up (margin?) was eye~watering, but no matter, we must have spent a good share of a weeks wages in there, just on that first visit, on swag. My God, the _variety!_ They didn't just have, say, the fabled Reece's Peanut Butter Cups -- they had them in _milk,_ they had them in _dark,_ they had them in _white..._ ALL sizes, from delicate morsels, to saucer sized! Kripes! You guys don't know you're born, lol! Of course, it would have been a bit puritanical of me not to join my beloved in her 'Golden Ticket' spree... from the preceding, you'll not be surprised to know I was quite smitten with the Reece's Nutrageous bars. I'm actually more of a chocolate (and candy) dabbler rather than a true chocoholic, so I can remember only a fraction of the treasures before me... Charleston Chews, Baby Ruths, Butterfingers... the 3 Musketeers bars I liked, and the Paydays - a chocolate~less 'chocolate' bar there, if there can be such a thing! (Actually, there can - bow your head in shame, Scottish manufacturer, Tunnocks! Ever wonder where the Scots got the mostly unfair reputation for being skinflints? Now you know!) All manner of other stuff too, that I'd frequently heard of, but never previously seen - Mike & Ike's, Swedish Fish, Pez's, Nerds, etc - Hot Tamales (or am I confabulating those ones?) and these dental nightmares made of 99% corn syrup that came in the _shape_ of little corn cobs! I would make a couple of observations about the riches to be found within this vault of treasures, though. There was certainly some stellar finds to be had, some of which have become semi - regular indulgences... but much as I -like- *love* Nutrageous bars (and their other Reece's brethren), are they, in fact, nicer than the broadly similar Cadbury's 'Star Bar', or Nestlé(??) 'Catch'? That is _such_ a tough call. Maybe. Marginally. It's more a question of _different._ 'Separate, but equal', if you like. I have noticed, the American offerings generally seem to be sweeter; but there's more

Did she give up on them because she had a lot of cellulite?

Cellulite is not a flaw! It's a natural part of the human body and not something anyone needs to get rid of. @@leftylou6070

We'd wait till mom got hers on then ring the front doorbell, watch through the windows as she freaked out. It took quite awhile to deflate those things.

​@@sharksport01You monsters! 😜

They're basically back, girls now wear short shorts that show the curve of the buttock where it meets the thigh. Funniest thing I ever saw was this past Sunday, a girl wearing super short shorts, a long sleeved hoodie and a big wooly scarf! It was a cold windy day.

That's so cool!

Pioneers last video disk player also played dvds

The downfall was the price of movies and selection available. No you couldn’t record unlike VHS.

I still Have to laser disk players and about 100 movies

May your roommate RIP

@@coachrobwille4176 I still repair LD players, have about 20 of them right now and about 5K movies and programs. It's a niche but still viable,

@@raychristy5027 😂

My brother did too. I don't know the brand or anything, but the music sound it put out was awesome.

I started working in the repair shop of an appliance store in 1978 and there was a GE quad system in the shop for us to listen to. There weren't any quadraphonic radio stations in the area but we had the 8-track demo tape which had a pretty decent recording of The Girl From Ipanema.

@@daveh7720 I had a few records and a bunch of quad reel to reel tapes big speakers it took up room but sounded great. I had a couple of stereo systems plus the Quad I found out the Quad in a certain mode would reproduce Quad sound from the list information in the tracks. It was great

I bought a used quadaphonic stereo system from a friend's dad in 1984. Really nice sound quality as far as I was concerned. Some Beach Boys records were in quadraphonic and you could hear different tracks in each corner of my bedroom. I'm not an audiophile but that stereo was a good purchase!

@@snowrocket I loved Quadraphonic systems, you could get great sound from the passive recovery mode. It wasn't as good as the active but it beat plain Stereo.

😂😂 you my mom had a pinto, I believe it was the only car she ever bought cash out. Needless to say it didn't last long.😂😂

A friend of mine had a pinto for over 10 years, never had an issue with it.

I remember back then a horrible accident on 95 down here in South Florida. Woman and young child died after being hit in the back and the gas tank blowing up. The attorney who successfully sued Ford still has the Pinto in his law office parking lot. He had it brought to the courthouse during the trial. He kept the vehicle because it was the first big case he ever won.

And the Chevy Vega was another failure because of the engine that was an aluminum block and a cast iron cylinder head.

Unsafe at any speed

There were so many products like that, "As Advertised on TV," that looked great in the ads but were often difficult to assemble, were used once, and then abandoned. I recall "20/20" doing a segment on such items.

I remember those

Your comment reminded me of something else that was short-lived: two sided CDs and DVDs. You could watch or listen to a whole side, then you had to turn it over. I think those flopped at least in part because with the disc 2 sided, they couldn't put a label on the disc, both sides had to be playable. But with a one sided disc, they could label them, and if more space was needed, they could stick it to the consumer by adding a second disc and charging more. Do you remember the 2 sided discs?

OMG!! Thanks for letting me know how the CED Videodiscs work. I remember my neighbor had one (RCA) and during a family party everyone was watching Planet of the Apes. Then there was an awkward silence since the host was outside and nobody knew how to flip the Videodisc to continue watching the movie!

And yes . . . I do remember the 2 sided DVD. I think the first movie I bought that had to be flipped was Goodfellas. Most of the other two sided discs was the option to watch it in widescreen or standard format.

Did you have the polavision one?

@@RhettyforHistory , no. Just the instant camera. I think James Garner did their commercials. 😊

Absolutely! Thank you for watching bobblowhard8823!

@@ZombiedustXXX Yes! I remember a story in "The National Enquirer" that told of one pair of clackers exploding and killing several people in a fifty foot radius! Total mayhem and pandemonium!

I See those available for sale in health shops opposite the military hospital in Ghana, West Africa, and used by health clinics around the country. Strange how some things are old tech in one country and new tech in another, the scam lives on.

I remember seeing those in public places. Nickel or dime for a few minutes. I got nauseated just looking at them.

My aunt had one of those machines in the 70s, too. She demonstrated it for us kids; her voice shook when she talked while using it, which made us kids giggle. I don't know how often she used it.

Do you mean "what a waist"?😂

@@deirdre108 hee hee love it !!! 🤭👍

Today you can buy vegetarian egg substitutes that say they can be toasted. I’ve never toasted them, but they taste great microwaved.

I don't remember them, but the very idea sounds absolutely horrid...

Looked like something you could freeze solid then use as a hockey puck! 🏒 😂

@@johnw2026 Or you can sit on them and slide down a very slippery hill😂 See, you don't have to eat them! LOL!

How do you know what cardboard tastes like?

Today adults drink products meant for babies like Pedialyte

There were a bunch of artists that recorded on that technology. It really was a big deal. Thank you for watching Bobster986!

I had an aunt that had a bottle of shampoo with real gold flakes in it, very expensive stuff. Does anybody remember that?

My cousin had a Laserdisc player in the 90's. I remember the first movie I watched on that thing was Hook. It was very good quality....but if you got the slightest scratch or piece of dust on the disc, it could foul up the whole thing.

The haziest foggiest fringes of my memory seem to resonate with this.....

It really was a great decade to experience. Thank you for watching Deidre!

You’re welcome! I’ve subbed. Lots to watch now!

Thank you for watching Alan!

Maybe they would have been better off to make and sell Soylent Green, a "protein rich food". LOL

Thank you for watching and sharing a little more about them with us.

Thank you for watching and letting us know AmalgmousProxy!

That would be the U matic betas big brother 1" tape .

You're welcome Brian. Thank you for watching and sharing what you still have!

I have a Sansui TV. It's a flat screen and I've had it a LONG time, and it's still going strong.

😂

I still eat baby cereal. Yum!

Ha!!! Those sauna pants were pretty interesting. 👋😁🇦🇺🦘🚙

@@paulstan9828 👍

I can't imagine wearing those around, They look uncomfortable and ridiculous. Thank you for watching Jodie and I hope you have a great weekend too!

Thank you for watching and sharing your memories of what you had oldmanwood5011!

I remember the twisty thing, but not the hammock thing.

Twister! We had one.

LOL... Did she put the donut cut into pieces on a plate and have the nerve to say "Desert is served"?

She went 'Greek Style' ?

I'm guessing that regardless of how they advertised it, the real market they were after was (if I can be real, here) elderly people who, for dental reasons, or whatever, couldn't manage 'regular' food... and maybe the odd person who took nostalgia for their childhood way too far. But basically, old people. They probably figured anything after that was a plus. But blenders were a thing in the 70's, and certainly nobody with a degree of self respect who didn't absolutely have to was going to be seen eating baby food!

I had a round, donut shaped phone! 😊

Hi Paul 👋😁 🇺🇸 🦅

That really was a lot of money back then. They were good players and it's interesting how one made it while the other didn't. Thank you for watching and sharing your memories Paul!

Nope. The professional / broadcast standard was Betacam. Totally different format than Betamax. Not compatable at all. In the digital world brodcasters used Digibeta format.

@@billrenfro9798 You are correct. My mistake. I meant Beta Cam, but for whatever reason, had Beta Max stuck in my head.

Thank you for watching and sharing what you had. That would have been a cool set up in the car.

Oh yea; I also remember a few ski resorts had longer versions to try to get people grass skiing during the warmer months.

@@XianHu excactly! It was on those ski resorts that i tried that double steering bike! 😉

I remember seeing a piece on Evening Magazine (TV show) about "grass skis". I thought it was a great idea but never ever saw them anywhere.

Thank you and I appreciate you watching bradfordbarrettluckotheIrish!

Yeah waterbeds were neat but mine always got a leak on the underside of the mattress which were a pain to patch

Lose*

Baby food in their original jars would be great for portion control.

Yes, my SIL was on the FormuThree diet for a while. She was always buying baby food! Constant yoyo dieting was her thing.

You're welcome and thank you for watching J-Rad_moderndaypirate!

Every decade had it’s fails. 80s,90s let’s not even get into anything further 😊

Oh yes! Bell bottoms - Paisley shirts with gold medallion necklaces worn by creeps who come up to girls in bars asking "Hey baby, what's your sign" and who could forget turtle neck sweaters...

@@mikeb359 You forgot to mention collars that could put an eye out

@@XianHu True! Or those Jeffrey Dahmer glasses that had the darker lenses that made guys look like a creepy pedophile.

@@XianHu You could hang glide with those collars on a windy day.

Reading your comment made me remember the JC Whitney catalog with junk like that!

I would occasionally buy things from the JC Whitney catalog. I wish I would have saved one of them as they had stuff in there you just scratched your head over and I would say "will this really work." Are they still around?@@deirdre108

@@deirdre108 Yeah, I concluded that if you bought all of the applicable J.C. Whitney stuff for your car, you'd get 400HP, 40 MPG, and the engine would last forever. I sensed, and my dad who was a '50s hotrodder agreed, that it wouldn't work that way.

@@snowrocketI remember the tire pump that was plugged into one of the spark plug holes, then start the engine and “your flat tire is filled in minutes”! Lol! Can you imagine all the error codes that would be thrown in a modern engine!

It is Part of the Deception.

Looked healthier and wholesome, even though a vast majority of adults smoked.

You're joking, right? I lived through the 70s, and people were never more awful looking. The clothes/hair were hideous, makeup was little to none, men wore bushy facehair, and few went to the gym. People today look better than ever, because they put some effort into it. Everything about the 70s was ugly...people, cars, clothes, architecture, commercial design, fine art...it was a bottomless abyss of bad taste, especially pre-1977.

@@raychristy5027No, not really. Why?

I agree. We weren't plastered with tattoos and piercings everywhere, and we weren't surgically attached to cell phones and other devices. And it seems there were a lot fewer obese people back then.

@@teptime I disagree. I too, lived through the 70's. Young people weren't plastered with tattoos and piercings everywhere. And we weren't surgically attached to cell phones and other devices like everyone today is. I thought the hair styles and the clothes were pretty cool. To each his own.

Thank you for watching Maggie!

Thank you for watching jackpine1033!

Beats me....haha! Thank you for watching Thauma!

The hot pants are still around but the kids renamed them booty shorts.

You're welcome and thank you for watching ronm6585!