Brit Reacts to 1980s Things We Can No Longer Do In America! 

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Calls were so expensive that we learned to WRITE letters to long distance friends and relatives.

Not only did people use aluminum foil on their antennae's but they would also use wire coat hangers, stretched into a circle

“If you don’t stop you’re going to end up on the side of the milk carton!” was a REAL threat from someone. Felt like you would never be seen again.

GenX ( the 80s kids) - we were unsupervised, played with knives, guns & explosives.. the dumb kids didn't survive.. 😂😂

In the 1980's there were no remote controls for the TV. You had to change the channel on the TV. The buttons on the TV you asked about is how you would change the channel.

The days when the phone would ring and you answered not knowing who was calling. Prank calls were fun till Caller ID came along

I was born in 1969. So the 70s and 80s were my childhood. It's crazy how much things have changed.

Who remembers saying something along the lines of “pick me up at school” on the recording of your name for a collect call, so you wouldn’t get charged for the call?

Yes we put foil on the rabbit ears. The converter box was for flipping between games and tv. 😂

I was born in 57. We had wall phone in the kitchen with 25’ cord. You could go to the bathroom or into the garage. You could smoke in the hospital, restaurants and airplanes. 3 tv stations with b/w tube tv. Got color tv and a/c in 67, great year. Had add about numbers to call your cartoon superhero at 1.50 a minute. Gas was .40 cents a gallon. Dad would whip your ass if that showed up on the phone bill. We weren’t stupid.

When he says you could smoke anywhere, he means ANYWHERE. The grocery store, the hospital. EVERYWHERE! YES, the plane, train, taxi, everywhere.

12:36 "Is That A Keypad To A Safe?" Nope, that's how you'd changed them TV channels

When you eventually lost the power knob for the giant floor TV, you had to use needle-nose pliers to turn it on. Also, before there were such things as remote controls, the kids were the remote control 😂.

I'm so old I can remember when we had a big wooden box on the wall. You cranked the handle on the side and held the ear part to your ear. Then you told the operator who wanted to call. You had a party line so more that one house was on the line. You had to count the rings to know if the call was for you or someone else. It was possible but very rude to quietly listen in on the neighbors calls. And that's the way it was:)

if you were born around 1960.. 10 years b4 or 10 years after.. you enjoyed the best of life in the US. Most freedom, best music, best food, best relationships with other people, good times without the government trying to control every aspect of your lives and many more things that RU-vid would probably delete my comment if I brought them up.

Born 1962. The music and movies were great in the 70s and 80s. I loved growing up before cell phones and the internet. We were free-range kids, outside all day and our parents had no idea where we were.

I was a '70s kid and a teenager in the '80s! Best time ever!!

Long distance was very expensive. My Grandmother lived 500 miles away. A 3 minute call was $5.00. Gas was 35 cents a gallon. My dad would joke that it was cheaper to drive to my Grandmas than a 1 hour phone call.

Back in the 50s and 60 my dad had a service station and as a kid I worked in it. From the age of 9 to 14. Gas was 23 cents per gallon. The station and a garage and we did everything from changing oil to major engine repair. We sold tires and batteries. We did a lot of tune ups. When you pull up to the pulls. We came out and put the fuel in and washed your front and rear windows. We checked you oil and battery water looked at you hoses and belts and checked the coolant. If you asked we checked your tires air pressure.

First year GenX in ‘65! We had a milk man who delivered milk to our garage fridge each week! Our phone was a party line that was shared with someone else. My sister and I used to eavesdrop on their phone calls until we got caught! We played outside all day with all of the kids in the neighborhood and nobody cared where we were as long as we were home when the streetlights came on. In my teens in the 80s there were no cell phones so no evidence of all the crazy things we did! There weren’t cameras everywhere! We had so much freedom then that kids today can’t even imagine! We had the best music!

I was 9 years old and in the fourth grade when my entire school watched the space shuttle Challenger explode shortly after takeoff on live TV. Among the seven killed was the first teacher to go to space and all across the US school children were watching. A very definitive life moment for many of my generation.

We didn't have to wear seat belts, we rode in the back of trucks, we could buy cigarettes at any age, and we could roam miles away from home so long as we made it home before dark.

I will also add that the 80's had the best prime time shows (and it was free). Knight Rider, Airwolf, The A-Team, Magnum PI, Riptide, Simon and Simon, Miami Vice. I could go on forever. Glad we had a VCR.

I would drive my family crazy by pulling up one of our swivel loungers just to the right of the tv. Ours was in a built in wall cabinet thingy and I would sit there with my feet up on the counter. It was much easier to then change the channel with my toes. Everyone just LOVED that!

LOL love your reactions, yes all of these things were very real. Of course I was a kid in the 70s so some of this was past my childhood. Aluminum on the rabbit ears would increase the signal. When I started driving it was normal to pull in and have them fill it for you, check the oil and antifreeze, and clean the windows. I remember challenger exploding, it was heartbreaking. I got chicken pox but I was a teen and got very sick. We were not bored as kids, being bored meant chores, we got creative in finding things to do, thankfully I was a book lover and a tree climber. Climb in a tree and read your book and no one knew where you were.

The 80s were pretty amazing. Not having a leash (aka cell phones) on you 24/7 meant you could leave the house, be gone all day and friends wouldn't get upset at you for not responding immediately to missed calls/texts.

What I miss MOST about the 1980's? Rock concerts. I saw so many bands it's hard to recollect them all. It could've easily been a hundred in that decade. Rock bands were my favorite.

Using foil on the antenna was definitely a thing...I remember once someone using wire and a fork to keep me from missing the end of my show😂...And yes my entire childhood was surrounded by smoke.Ashtrays were everywhere, even in stores.We had cigarette machines.

The kitchen appliances were gold, green and brown. The toilet paper came in a variety of colors to match the bathroom decor.

I remember the rotary dial phones. They were big, clunky extremely heavy. The part I loved the best was if you were angry when you finished the phone call you could bang the receiver down on the cradle as hard as & as many times as you wanted to. You have no idea how satisfying that was. The greatest anger & stress reliever there was. You know how some times you feel like throwing your cell phone at the wall? If you picked up the rotary dial phone and threw it at the wall the phone would be just fine. However, you'll have to fix the wall that the phone went through. I really miss those phones.

When I was in kindergarten I had a coloring book, some crayons, a few matchbox cars, some G.I.Joes, a huffy bike, friends to play outside with, and it was fun.

Just watching you react to this makes me feel older than dirt. Lol

Yes, long distance was expensive but you could make calls late in the evening for cheaper rates. You also had to pay for really expensive "roaming" charges when you were out of your area when cell phones first came out. I just usually took it on long trips in case of emergency (aah the brick phone). You were also charged a lot if you talked over your alloted minutes or texts before smart phones.

The keypad on that console TV was the channel and volume control. These came out to replace the tuning and volume knobs found on older TVs. You'd punch in the channel number you wanted to tune to, and there were up and down buttons for the volume. Some even had up/down channel buttons. This was a cheaper alternative to a remote control - the earliest of which were corded as opposed to wireless. Sometimes, foot folds without remotes, the nearest child was the remote. Dad might sit in his recliner and tell one of the kids to sit by the TV and start changing channels until he saw something he wanted to watch. Then he'd tell you to go back if you passed it. Fun times.

That “keypad” on the old television is the dial for the on/off switch, a dial to change the channels, and volume control. Yep, you had to get up to change the channel.

I'm 71 and I liked the 80s the most.

I remember when the Challenger space shuttle blew up. Because there was a teacher on board, every classroom in America was watching when it blew up while taking off. We were all stunned. My teacher was one of the runners up to be on that flight. My husband's teacher (different school) was the next in line and barely missed the cut. When it happened, they both left their classrooms.

The Space Shuttle Challenger disaster happened on January 28, 1986. I remember I had come from the printing store to have resumes printed as I just had graduated from college and was searching for jobs. It was the clerk at the printing store who told me the Challenger blew up shortly after lift off. I immediately turned on the television to watch the news coverage when I got home. Needless to say, a very shocking and sad time for the space program. Wikipedia has some very in-depth information entitled Space Shuttle Challenger disaster if you want to learn more about it.

I remember the space shuttle explosion and the jokes. NASA - Need Another Seven Astronauts

At 12:41 in the video, that is the keypad on the TV. It's how we changed channels back in the day. Believe it or not, but not all TVs had remotes back then. Some TVs required you to actually get up and change the channel or adjust the volume directly on the TV.l

We LoVe YoU! I was born in the '80s. Our parents would say "Be home by the time the street lights are on or you'll end up on a milk carton!" All students also watched the Challenger disaster LIVE in SCHOOL.

I giggled when you asked about the key pad on the TV. Lol! That's the controls for the TV! You dial in the channel. It's the fancier version of a knob.

I was a kid in the 1970s and became a teen in 1980(my whole teen years were the 80s) so I had the best of both worlds! LOVED IT!

OMG I'M 47, AND I REMEMBER ALL OF THESE! The numbers you saw on the tv were for changing the channel... there were no remotes to those tv's and you had to actually get up to change the channel. We kids back then were called from other rooms in the house where we'd be playing to come and serve as our parent's remote control LOL.

The keypad on the front of the television was how you changed the channel and adjusted the volume

Omg I laughed so hard when he asked what the keypad was for. That’s how we changed the channel. That was before we had remotes. I remember my dad would squat down in front of the tv changing channels over and over until he decided what he wanted to watch. If there was a commercial he would check on the next round. We had it better than my husband though. His dad made him sit there and change the channel until he was satisfied. I was so happy when we got our first remote.

The keypad on the TV was the channel selector. 80's kid here! Born in 1978. Love these videos. 100% accurate.

Growing up a kid in the 80's was honestly so great..

I was born in the 70s, and I'd say the 90s were the best time in almost every aspect.

The Clapper, I still remember the commercials, reminded me of a scene. I can't remember what it was from, but they had a Clapper for the lights. Someone was being repeatedly being slapped and the light was turning on and off as they were slapped. It went from clap on clap off to slap on slap off.

The clapper was hilarious during a thunderstorm

The eighties is when i saw most of the concerts i went to and met a lot of the bands. Still have ticket stubs and pics and autographs. I saw cheap trick, billy idol, Metallica, Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne, deep purple, scorpions, motley crue, to name a few and the tickets were all under 15 dollars. What a time we had sometimes we would go out of town on road trips like to see Judas priest, Twisted sister, dokken... peace from Central Texas Hook'em Horns 🤘

Long Distance calls got weirder. We could call my aunt who lived about 10 miles away at regular rates but for my aunt to call us would cost her long distance rates, so when she called, she would ring twice and hang up -- we would then call her back (to save on rates).

Not only did you have to pay more for long distance calls, you also had to use an entirely different service for your long distance calls. You only had local calling unless you also signed up and added a long distance company like ATT or Sprint, or whatever.

12:30 That's the keypad. It had the power (on/off) switch, a volume knob, tint & balance controls, and buttons numbered 0-9 for changing the channel. Back then, there were no remote controls, so you had to get up and walk to the TV to change the channel or adjust the volume.

1980s was amazing growing up with old tech and real friends.

2:30 yep, or a coat hangar, or other bits of metal. Sometimes, the TV would not get good reception no matter what one did with the antenna, so we'd have to add things. The really frustrating part was when one's body made a good antenna. Adjusting the antenna worked fine until one let go of it, so you'd have to kind of guess and let go a lot, or just stand there holding the antenna if something really important was being shown.

I was born in 1967 and the 70's and 80's were a completely different society. Kids were like little adults and taught to take care of themselves. We were tough and smart because we had to be, the dumb and weak died.

The keypad was the channel selector. Most TV's had a rotary channel selector, but some had the keypad.

12:33 that was a key pad to push to change to an individual channel

1968 here .I'm an aircraft mechanic and when I started in 1988 one of the nastiest jobs was when the" new guy "had to change the cabin air filters.They were black/yellow from all the smoke and I swear I can still smell it to this day.

foil on the rabbit ears helped get rid of interference

I remember watching the challenger explode in school my teacher turned that off so quick..

My grandparents had one of those big wooden tvs, but on that one the number pad flipped out like a flip phone and there was no remote so we had to walk up and manually enter the channel. I even managed to hook up a play station to it via a VCR in the late 90s and played Tomb Raider on it. 😂 My aunt still has it and it still works.

Not only was the missing kids on milk cartons but there also was Tv Commercials that said It's 10pm Do you know where your children are? LOL

Highlights magazine was one of my favorites. I had to get allergy shots every week and after being exhausted from wrestling w my Dad every time he tried to get me in the car to go to the clinic, reading Highlights Magazine was a great way to calm down and save my energy for the fight with the doctor trying to give me the shot.

I am quite nostalgic for the 1980s. The music was awesome, much better than today. There is a video of two teenagers (cousins) trying to figure out how to make a call on a rotary phone (like the yellow one in the video). It is hilarious. The VCR and movies not rewound....the movie rental place would have stickers on the video cassette saying "Be Kind. Rewind." You could even buy a gadget that would rewind movies separate from the VCR. Never heard of "chicken-pox parties." Must have been a California thing.

I remember picking up the receiver to see if the line is clear, we had a party line. That meant other people, usually neighbors, used the same phone line as us. If you heard someone talking, you were supposed to hang up, wait a while and check again. Most times we did! LOL

The keypad on the television is the power, volume, and the only channels that were offered. ❤📺

First teacher to go to space all the classes at school were watching. And it blew up. I'll Never forget it.

Smoking in airplanes ended by the late 80s. I remember people smoking right outside hospital doors, forcing everyone to walk through a cloud of smelly smoke 🚬 Hitting the TV jiggles the tubes inside the TV, sometimes improving the picture temporarily, in 1970s sets. Eventually, you have to take the suspected bad tubes to the store and test them, replacing the bad ones.

I used to work in Customer Service for a Long Distance carrier. We got so many calls from parents questioning these charges that a special office was created for the sole purpose of handling complaints about these "900" calls. The company would usually give parents a break the first time, but they also warned them that the companies that owned the "900" numbers would sometimes try to collect in other ways, such as lawyers and collection agencies. There was a similar problem with video games. Some games had "900" numbers that kids could call to get hints on how to get to the next level or to win. Yep, the charges could be .99 cents a minute and on up. "900" numbers also existed for "Adult" entertainment. They were even more expensive.

Hearing you say, "What is that?" Has me laughing tears! I remember pulling into the gas station with 1/4 tank of gas and a ten dollar bill. I would leave with a full tank of gas, a carton of cigarettes, and change. I never had to open the door of the car! They even cleaned my windshield! The pilot wasn't the only one smoking. There were ashtrays built into the seats. There were even ashtrays inside movie theaters & In every restaurant. BTW - chicken pox is caused by a virus. There is a vaccine now, but it wasn't introduced until 1995.

12:30 that was a keypad for direct tuning to the channel you wished to view. Instead of the knobs you didn’t have to click, click, click. If you were on channel 4 just press 3 then 9 you were on 39.

I started High school in 1981 and graduated in 1984, all of this is true. The thing on the large wooden TV that looked like a calculator was how you chose channels. Most TVs in the 1980s still had knobs for that.

Im in my 60s. I could tell you some interesting stories growing up in the 60s and 70s. During the summer I would get up around 8am and be on my Schwinn crate bicycle by 9am and come home by 5pm for dinner. Then out until 10pm and back home, take a shower, go to bed and do it all over the next day. And each day was different.

I only got rid of my rotary phone around 20 years ago! I had so much fun watching my son's buddies the first time they had to use my phone....it was a riot! the eighties were the last decade of true freedom and your rights were still respected. it was the last decade of innocence. big hair? I had a dyed black Mohawk!

1980’s - It was really cool back then. The music, concerts, and the fun we had with them. The prices were way cheaper for concerts. The most I spent was probably around $27. Just a real fun decade

on the tv, that panel was how you controlled the tv 😅😅 Volume, channel, any tuning adjustments you might have had too. And yes, The Clapper was around back in the 80s over here in the states 😅

The big box tv on the ground. Those switches off to the side was how we changed channels. When i was younger my siblings and i always fought to be channel changer. We fight to sit as close as we could to the tv so we could be the channel changer. I miss Saturday morning cartoons laying on my belly eating cereal watching cartoons. Has to wake up really early though so we didnt miss it.

Yes, in the US a call outside your "Local Calling Area" was called "Long Distance" and [if I remember correctly from Agatha Christie] it was called a "Trunk Call" in the UK. Here's the kicker, even within your "Local Calling Area" there could also be "Local Toll Charges".

Born in ‘72 so grew up in 70s and 80s. BEST time! And yes, if the call was outside of your area (may only be 15 miles down the road) then it was considered a “long distance call” and you paid by the minute extra. Could be as much as 10 cents per minute. You didn’t make a long distance call unless you HAD to. Then they came out with a flat fee per month that allowed you to call most areas that were considered long distance. We DID put aluminum foil on the rabbit ears and it did actually help get better reception. We didn’t have cable. Ppl could smoke anywhere in the 80s. Remember we didn’t know just HOW dangerous second hand smoke actually was back then. I remember full service stations. They would not only clean your windows but they would check your oil too. I remember watching with the rest of my class when the space shuttle Challeger exploded right after it took off. It was so shocking and unbelievable! I was in the 8th grade. That was the “remote” on the console tv. There was no remote that you had at your chair. You walked over and pushed those buttons to change the channel. OR if you did happen to get a new model with an actual remote you still had the option of using the pad on the tv to change the channel, volume, contrast, brightness, etc. We still have TV trays but they’re nice wooden ones with their own rack. This is from the 90s but what is so surreal to me is to see my son (33) and my granddaughter (14); she is his niece, play Pokémon together. I never imagined when he was just a little boy and got sooooo into Pokémon that one day he would be sharing that passion with my granddaughter. Crazy! Love these videos! Keep ‘em coming 😊have a great day! ❤️

I do miss getting the Sunday paper. Miss the N.Y.Times Sunday paper. When I lived on east coast it was coffee, fresh bagels & Sunday paper.

About the fish and chips in a paper wrapper vs. on a plate... It will 100% be better in paper since the paper will absorb extra oil while you eat it, keeping it crispy. On a plate, the crispy aspect will get steamed by the flat side of the fried fish that's sitting on the plate, making the whole thing less crispy.

The key pad on the TV was the channel changer (sometimes it was a dial to turn on some models) & your "remote control" was the youngest kid in the house who had to jump up & manually change the channel. 😂

The 80s were the BEST decade to be a teenager in!!!! Chicken Pox. Painful, itchy, fluid-filled blisters that were highly contagious. We did have chicken pox parties, so everyone was exposed and had the chicken pox behind them. Everyone was going to get them anyway. They were very itchy and painful. You don't know about them because you were probably vaccinated against them, as you are the age of my kids who received the vaccination. I'm so glad my kids were vaccinated in the 90s against the chicken pox, just like my mom and dad were glad we were vaccinated against the mumps and measles (highly contagious in the 1950s and 1960s) due to the vaccinations we received in the 1970s and 1980s. Shingles are the 'adult version' of the chicken pox. and are extremely painful. Although I had chicken pox when I was 9 years old, I still get the shingles vaccine. I don't want shingles. BIG HAIR AND BRIGHT, TIGHT CLOTHES!!!! Welcome to the 80s!!! I miss being a teenager!

We put foil on rabbit ears and use to bang the tv to get it to work better

We lived out in the country. HUGE antenna on a pole out in our back yard--and we could only get 3 channels; which 3 depended on you going out and using vise grips to point the antenna in a certain direction.

That thing on the old fashioned TV that looks like a keypad is where you changed the channels manually. 📺

I was born in 74 and as far as I remember, you could not smoke in stores. Restaurants, hospitals, airplanes? Yes. Even some high schools. By the time I was in high school, end of the 80's, it was no longer allowed in schools or, I believe, inside hospitals.

The key pad on the ginormous TV was the way we turned it off/on and selected the channels. In the time before TV remotes, I was the TV remote!

Growing up we had a party line - different rings for different homes, making sure you weren’t on too long so the line was free for everyone, being sneaky and listening to others’ calls lol.

I was born in 1958. I was NEVER bored!

The keypad on the console tv was how you changed the channel. You had to actually get off the couch and walk across the room to manually change the channel. Yes, putting foil in the rabbit ears was a real thing and actually worked. Metal coat hangers worked too. Yes, we had to pay extra for long distance calls and if you were away from your house and needed to make a call, you had to find a pay phone, 15-25 cents for a 3 minute local call, 1 dollar for a long distance call. I remember it was no big deal sitting in the waiting room at a doctor's office and adults were smoking cigarettes. Even our school bus drivers smoked while driving their routes with kids on the bus. The guy didn't explain the converter connector very well. You had to attach it to the antenna screws in the back of your tv. There was a toggle switch for "tv" or "game". Your game console would plug into this converter box by a coax cable, turn your tv to channel 3, then toggle the switch to "game" so you can play your games. When you are done playing, you toggle the switch back to "tv" so you can watch tv. If you forgot to switch the toggle back to tv and turned the dial to the station you wanted to watch, all you would see is squiggly lines.

Long Distance Calls: It used to be wherever you lived, you had a few area codes that were considered "local" so if you called them you'd get charged a base fee for the call, and if you called outside the 'local' area codes, you'd be charged extra. Calling to other countries would be charged even more. This has largely gone away with the popularity of various mobile phones. The thing on the TV there: That's the controls for the television. Those were made before the days of the remote control, so one had to use that keypad to control the channel the TV was on, or change the volume

I loved growing up in the 80's. We got to experience the evolution of technology, but we still knew what it was like to be without it. We were not chained to tech like the youth of today. we had tons of freedom, and no social media. Our mistakes were never permanently documented on the internet. We got to see the fall of the Belin wall and the demise of the Soviet Union. New and interesting styles of music were created almost everyday. We played real dodgeball and enjoyed the tradition of Saturday morning cartoons. We would take off on our bikes, mopeds or motorcycles for the day, and no one was concerned as long as we checked in by dark.

Loving your channel. I'm an American who grew up in the 70s-80s and I can break some of this down .. 1. Long distance calls were basically anywhere you called outside the county you lived in (not country but county) 2. The antenna was how we got to watch our local news channels and some nationwide news channels. Now if you want free TV you have to buy ab HDMI antenna. And yes the foil was real lmao. 3. You used to be able to drink alcohol on airplanes if you were under 21 because there was no drinking age limit on an airplane 😂 4. Gas stations were on almost every corner and they would have "price wars" on Fridays...you could get gas for 39 cents a gallon when they really went at each other. 5. The space shuttle disaster was viewed live on TV by kids all across America. Teachers had set up TV's so everyone could watch it because there was a teacher on board. It was a slap from reality to every kid that things can go wrong. 6. Chicken pox parties were real. In adults it is called Shingles and can cause bacterial infections of the skin, soft tissues, bones, and sepsis and is very painful. 7. The clapper commercial....Clap on..clap off...the clapper 😂 8. Bell bottom pants have already come back into style but those were pre 80's lol

Those controls on the TV console were to press the channel you wanted if it was the ones without the dial. They also had a button to push to increase the contrast

Console TV - hahaha that is a keypad so you can change the channel. The older console tvs had knobs, usually one for UHF channels and one for VHF channels. Channel 13 and below is VHF, and 14 and above is UHF. The "newer" console tvs had a keypad and you just punched in the channel number and pressed enter