90s Throwback: 15 Things We No Longer See
The 1990s don’t seem that long ago, but life has changed in the last 30-plus years. Many things that were a part of daily life during that decade have mostly disappeared, often without our even realizing it.
Some of the things we no longer see will be greatly missed, and other things have been replaced by newer technologies.How many items on this list have you forgotten about?
1. Payphones
Before affordable cell phone technology took off, there were phone booths on street blocks from coast to coast. Today, there are so few payphones around that they’ve become collector’s items.
Tens of thousands of red telephone boxes, as they’re called, still exist in the United Kingdom. There’s also the most famous telephone police box in the world, the TARDIS from Doctor Who.
2. CD Carry Cases
If your car had a compact disc player and wanted to listen to music, you packed up all your music CDs in a carry case and took it along. Listening to your music was better than listening to the radio any day.
The CD carry case has been replaced by satellite radio and Bluetooth-capable audio systems that connect to the music playlists on your phone. It’s a huge improvement over carrying a bunch of CDs around.
3. VHS Tapes and VCRs
In the 1980s, there was a battle between VHS and Betamax for the title of home entertainment tapes. VHS won that fight, but the technology was eventually replaced by DVDs, which were replaced by video streaming.
The DVD and Blu-ray markets took over the VCR stronghold in the home entertainment market, but there are still some VCR holdouts, and some VHS tapes have become highly valued collector’s items.
4. Video Rental Stores
An awesome weekend ritual was going to the video rental store to get a copy of the newest releases. What wasn’t so great were the extra fees charged for not rewinding the tapes before returning them.
Video rental stores transitioned from VHS tapes to DVD rentals. Competition from Netflix, with its affordable direct-to-home DVD plans and cable company on-demand streaming services, essentially put them out of business.
5. Answering Machines
If you had a landline, calls received were diverted to the attached answering machine when no one picked up. Answering machines took messages while you were away and were also a great way to screen calls.
Some phones had built-in answering machines, so you didn’t need a separate device. Eventually, answering machines were replaced by voicemails, which is another great way to filter calls at home or on the go.
6. Caller ID
An even better way of screening calls to landline phones was caller ID. It was a small device – about the size of the palm of your hand – and it displayed the name and number of the person calling.
Several home phone models have built-in caller IDs, and so do smartphones. Although the device may have become obsolete, its updated use and purpose live on in mobile phone technologies.
7. Dial-Up Internet
It’s embarrassingly funny to think that we believed dial-up internet service was the greatest thing ever created. It was downright primitive compared to today’s high-speed internet.
Dial-up service connected you to the internet, but there was one hitch: it tied up your telephone line, so you couldn’t make or receive calls if you were online. Thank goodness we’ve come a long way.
8. Phone Books
Every year, new telephone books were published. In bigger metropolitan cities like Philadelphia, two phone books were printed, the White Pages containing residential listings and the Yellow Pages with commercial or business listings.
Online listings have generally replaced phone books, although they are published in some regions and are available upon request. It may seem silly, but there was something magical about getting a new phone book every year.
9. Floppy Disks
In the 1990s, floppy disks were the preferred method of saving computer data. They were compact in size and were the digital equivalent of a file cabinet but with less storage capacity.
The downside to floppy disks was they were easily damaged by not being stored in the right environmental conditions. Today, cloud storage solutions have made the floppy disk obsolete.
10. AOL Instant Messenger
Before sliding in people’s DMs was a thing, we were using AOL’s Instant Messenger software. It was a way of chatting with other AOL users in real-time from the dial-up internet that tied up our landlines for hours.
AOL Instant Messenger was fun to use, but with the rapid growth of social media sites and other instant messaging platforms, it became less visible. Those were good times, though.
11. Cereal Box Toys
One of the highlights of childhood for many of us was finding the toy surprise at the bottom of the box of our favorite cereal. The toys were not necessarily of the highest quality, but they were still cool to collect.
Most manufacturers of kids’ cereals stopped adding toys, maybe to reduce costs or for environmental reasons. Something was lost when the toys stopped and the QR codes started. How many kids are going to scan a QR code for prizes?
12. Cassette Tapes
When a new album was released, and you couldn’t spare the extra money for a compact disc, or you didn’t have a CD player, you bought the much cheaper cassette tape. Who didn’t have a stack of cassettes in the 1990s?
Cassette tapes were cool to have, at least until they became unwound, and you needed a pencil to wind the ribbon backinto the cartridge. That was quite an undertaking requiring a lot of patience. Thank goodness for music streaming.
13. Disposable Cameras
When disposable cameras first came out, they were considered a cutting-edge alternative to standard cameras. These single-use cameras were lightweight, easy to use, and relatively inexpensive.
They were also nice because the film was built into the camera. When cell phones became equipped with cameras, and smartphones were made with even better cameras, the disposable ones weren’t needed.
14. Mall Arcades
Back in the day, going to the mall on a Friday or Saturday night with a roll of quarters and heading to the arcade was something to look forward to. Mall arcades had their own culture, with skilled gamers competing against each other.
At present, mall arcades are disappearing because malls are disappearing. Malls are closing at a rapid pace, which means the arcades are closing. Arcade gaming has also taken a backseat to online gaming, too.
15. Paper Maps
Before GPS systems, online maps, and mapping apps were a thing, paper maps were used to navigate unknown areas.Many of us had more than one paper map in the glove compartment of our cars.
Paper maps haven’t completely disappeared, but they aren’t as visible as they used to be. Drivers who prefer paper maps or want them as backups can find them at visitor centers and local auto clubs.
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