To remind myself just how old I am turning tomorrow, I thought it would be fun to share a round up of 20 nostalgic things I remember from my childhood and through my teens.
This was seriously such an entertaining rabbit hole to go down.
A lot of these items were popular among 90’s kids too and some of these things have even made a comeback for kids today!
If you’re my age, I hope this post takes you back!
1. Raggedy Ann & Andy Dolls
I think I still have this set somewhere in my parents’ attic…
2. Skip It
I remember playing with my skip it for hours as a kid. The 80’s version (different from the one below) even kept count of how many circles you completed!
3. Just Say No Campaign
Definitely remember this campaign from elementary school.
4. Blockbuster Video
Every Friday night my mom took me and my siblings to Blockbuster to each pick out a movie. It was the highlight of our week. Here are a few movies that certainly stood out (either for traumatic scenes that scarred me for life or they we rented them a billion weeks in a row). I know I’m forgetting SO many. Also, if you’re side eying any of these movies…it’s because my grandma let us watch them at her house (where ratings didn’t matter)…
- The Goonies
- The NeverEnding Story
- Labrynth
- The Land Before Time
- Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
- Mary Kate & Ashley
- Dirty Dancing
- The Sandlot
- Hocus Pocus
- …and of course, many Disney movies.
5. Hair Accessories
I had an incredible collection of hair accessories…
6. Precious Moments Figurines
I had an entire shelf of these porcelain collectables…
7. Mall Madness
The game played at every little girl’s sleepover.
8. The Best Nickelodeon Game Shows
The shows that every kid wished they could be on…Double Dare & Legends of the Hidden Temple. 
9. Nintendo
And you definitely had to blow into the cartridges to make them work…
10. School Back in the Day…
One of the best parts of back to school shopping? Picking out a new Trapper Keeper!!
Remember sharpening your pencils?
Unless you used these…
Remember passing notes in class like this? Or playing M.A.S.H.?
You found your library books using the card catalog system…
12. The Evolution of My Phones
My first phone — the Chatter Phone.
It was a really big deal when I had my own landline telephone in my bedroom — and of course it was this one…
My parents wouldn’t let us have pagers like our friends. But many years later we finally got our first cell phones where we paid by the minute and spent too much time playing the snake game…
13. Lite Brite
So many incredible creations made on this!
14. View Master
We had a full collection of reels for our view masters.
15. Easy Bake Oven
How my love for baking began! And don’t forget…the Creepy Crawlers Bug Maker Machine for the boys!
16. Candy
Some of these were so…gross (ahem, wax bottles and squeeze ooze tubes, circus peanuts)…slightly inappropriate (candy cigarettes — “just like dad!”) and delicious (chiclets, satellite wafers). We LOVED all of these as kids.
17. The Evolution of My Music Collection…
And if you wanted to know the lyrics, just unfold the cassete insert!
Eventually we moved to CDs…and it would take me all night to burn a CD on my computer. How I stored my music library…
18. Beauty Products
The amount of chemicals I put on my body from these products growing up…
Other scents I loved through the years — anything by Bath & Body Works (but Sun Ripened Raspberry was definitely my favorite) and eventually I became obsessed with Victoria’s Secret Love Spell Mist (which is STILL available today!!)
How I stored all my beauty products…the caboodle! I cannot tell you how happy it makes me that caboodles are BACK! Caroline loves hers!
19. Beverages
Back when no one cared about sugar or artificial flavors, our milk, orange juice and juice boxes looked a little different…
20. Computer Games
I’ll never forget how mind blowing it was for us to get our first computer…and then eventually — internet! We didn’t even care if the dial-up internet took forever to connect…
Thanks for the awesome memories. Did no one else from the 80s play with sweet secrets dolls? I loved them and hope they would make a comeback for my daughter. For music, did you have a pocket rocker. It was the tiny music player with these mini cassettes that had two songs on it. 🙂
Also I still have love spell spray in my bathroom. It is the best:) I get headaches from lots of perfumes so when I find one that doesn’t I hang onto it forever ! Happy birthday !
The juice bar perfumes!!! Ahhh I miss those so much. I also really wanted a cool landline phone like you had!!
xoxo A
http://www.southernbelleintraining.com
Ummmmm, EVERY SINGLE ONE! That was a fun stroll down memory lane. I turn 40 in March. 😒
Totally agree! I didn’t want the article to end!
Love all of these (but the trapper keeper was my all time favorite)! Did you know they are coming out with a Legends of the Hidden Temple reboot?
Thanks for the walk down memory lane! I love this. Also, Polly Pockets, Beanie Babies, and Tamagotchis were some of my favorites! I remember when the teachers had to ban bringing our Tamagotchis to school because we were spending too much time feeding them and not enough time reading.
I had the same clear phone in college and I loved my Caboodles in the dorm LOL. What a fun trip down memory lane. Hope you have a wonderful birthday tomorrow. 🎈🎉🎂
Flash back to the past! My first grader came home and started playing M.A.S.H. and it made me chuckle.
Love this! I bought a box of candy cigarettes from Amazon last week lol…they’re so good
Mall Madness was a favorite in our household. “Ohhhh long line! Try again later!”
Oh my goodness, I think I owned/watched/etc. almost everything in this post, at one point or another, ha! I forgot about the tube-of-goo candy. Gross! My siblings used to cover and “trap” ants with that stuff. Such a fun idea for a birthday post!
This was an awesome walk down memory lane. I had forgotten about a couple of these. So cool! Thanks for sharing. And our kids think they have it”tough”. 😆
Lots of these things I remember having. Girl Talk Dateline was a fun game, i don’t think we actually played it, but looked at the cards and called guys, then tried to find the guy with the hottest voice. Punky Brewster was huge, she was my idol and everything I’ve aspired to be. Scary movies… I swear I watched them all, even when I was only 5 years old. LOL
I loved watching “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” and “Salute Your Shorts” on Nickelodeon in the 90s. My brother loved,”Clarissa… Explains it All.”
Do you remember TGIF on Friday nights? My mom and I always watched those shows together. It was our favorite thing to do. She would buy us snacks and pizza every Friday.
Happy Birthday! Loved this post
True Story: I knew a guy (our age) whose mother didn’t know she was having twins and therefore didn’t know she needed two names. Someone brought a Raggedy Ann and Andy set as a gift while she was in the hospital….. and the twins are called Ann and Andy. HA!
Nailed it. Just took a trip down memory lane! Babysitters club books
OH my gosh, that cotton candy body spray brings back SUCH memories!
Geez, this made me feel old and I am only 20, most of this stuff I still used. mostly due to us living below the poverty line and all but still… I remember mom getting me an easy bake oven when I was 7 because I was getting into cooking at the time, playing old nintendo games on our NES, that I still have and all the games still work, to making my own games in the old MS Paint. very nostalgic.