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A is for…
- Active Learning The late 1960s were a time of cultural revolution in the classroom.
- Agitprop Theatre They may be full of identikit wisecracking unicyclists these days, but once the streets, precincts and schools of the nation thrilled to the shoutily earnest strains of agitprop theatre.
- Angel Delight
- Anti-Static Bumper Strips
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B is for…
- Banda Duplicators
- Barclaycard adverts with Whicker
- Barratt Homes
- Betamax
- Big D Nut Displays
- Bilton, Eileen
- Bio-Tex
- Birdseye Steakhouse Grills
- Bottle of Guinness Supporter’s Club, The From that day on, we worked at such a rate, By six each night we’d built a housing estate!
- Brian Rogers Connection, The
- British Rail’s ‘Age of the Train’ ads
- British Wine
- BSB squarial
- Butler, Neil By the end of the ’80s, the old ‘ask the nice scientist man in the white coat about what low-fat toilet washing-up liquid powder is kind to your skin without static cling’ rigmarole was as old as the hills.
- Button B
- Buzby
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C is for…
- Captain Beaky
- Casual font, The
- Choices Pension Ads
- Choose Your Own Adventure
- Christmas card post boxes As the school term wound up at the end of the year, teachers across the country looked for some form of activity to keep the kids ‘making and doing’ which wouldn’t result in any take-home work for themselves.
- Colour Separation Overlay This behind me… um, pedals… is um, a process, er… called Colour Sepatar… Serapeta… Seppepetera…
- Covered markets
- Crosse and Blackwell Alphabet Soup in a cube
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D is for…
- Deely-boppers
- Dial-a-Disc
- Dingbats, The
- DJ Kat
- Domesday Project, The
- Domino Toppling
- Dry Ice Laser Light Tunnel, The
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E is for…
- Eastmancolor This gets a little technical, but bear with us, there is a point to it all somewhere.
- Energy Saving Campaigns
- Esso World Cup Coin Collection, The The endeavour was, of course, a no-brainer. Cast the complete squad of defending champions in bronze – oh, all right, some kind of tin or something – and offer them free to purchasers of a full tank of the erstwhile Standard Oil’s finest two star or above.
- Everest windows
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F is for…
- Fairlight CMI Not since the Les Paul guitar had one musical instrument had such a massive effect on the sound of popular music as the Fairlight CMI.
- Flash cubes Photography has been devalued.
- Food Awareness Campaigns
- Free milk
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G is for…
- Glacé Cherries It’s 1991, midnight, and you’re scrambling around in a half-lit kitchen…
- Gloy gum
- Gold Spinner
- Gossamer Albatross
- Green Shield Stamps
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H is for…
- Holiday on Ice
- Home taping
- Horace, of ZX Spectrum fame Oversized blue featureless head – er, kind of – on legs, famed for ‘his’ unerring ability to get hit by an ambulance and then rescued by an ambulance…
- House of Dübreq
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I is for…
- I-Spy
- Ice Magic
- Ideal Milk
- Instant Sunshine
- Intellivision
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J is for…
- James Bond Digital Alarm Watches In 1983, Smiths Crisps attempted to surf a wave of James Bond hysteria in the wake of the release of Octopussy by giving away cheap flimsy digital watches with two important differences
- Jay, Ricky
- Jumper, Bored-Looking Men Standing About in the Front Room With Loads of Bits of Pattern Paper Pinned to Them by Their Wife Who’s Knitting Them a
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K is for…
- Karaoke Challenge
- Kesp
- Ketchips
- King’s Singers, The
- Klaus
- Kodak Disc Camera, The Those clunky, boxy old Instamatic cameras, eh? All so very ’70s.
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L is for…
- Liquorsave
- Luminous socks Along with deelyboppers, the epitome of ghastly-but-fun fashion nonsensista that the 1980s retched out…
- Lymeswold
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O is for…
- Oracle
- OTV
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P is for…
- Parker Lady Pen, The
- Pirate Reading Scheme
- Pools Coupons
- Portable television sets
- Postermags What better way to signpost your devotion to the latest short-lived elaborately-coiffured pop sensation than by forking out three times the cost of an issue of Smash Hits on a huge fold-out poster with some extremely basic biographical details on the reverse?
- Prize Yoghurts
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Q is for…
- Quadraphonic Sound
- Qualcast Concorde ads It’s widely acknowledged that, before advertising regulations were relaxed a few years back, British adverts were unable to rubbish rival brands by name, hence all that ‘brand x/another leading washing up liquid/certain chargecards I could mention’ malarkey…
- Quantel
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R is for…
- Rabbit Phone Network, The
- Rap’Tou
- Ready-Mixed Spirits
- Regional trade adverts
- Ronco
- Rondo Veneziano
- Roomsize Remnants
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S is for…
- School book clubs
- Scrolling LED Displays in Newsagents’ Windows In the sixties they were a chilling vision of things to come, dispassionately pulsing out messages of doom whilst Michael Caine struggled to deactivate the timer on a ‘doomsday’ weapon…
- Shatterproof Typeface, The
- Simulcasts
- Slimtel InPhone Those two words alone, surely, mark the historical spot where the trusty, utilitarian telephone got its first stirrings of fashionability and gadgetdom which continue to blight All Bar One conversations to this day.
- SMP
- Soda Stream
- Space exploration being taken seriously
- Spidery Octopus Things That Rolled Down Windows, Those If these worryingly over-adhesive arachnidy cephalopods were affixed to the upper portion of a smooth glass surface, they would gradually roll down in a condensatory motion
- Stage school choruses on adverts
- Stamp Bug Club, The
- Stork SB
- Sugar Puffs Honey Monster, The
- Swing Seats Gardening in the 1970s was all about bringing the indoors outdoors.
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T is for…
- Telex Machines
- Telly cabinets on wheels
- Tesco checkout
- Trimphone impersonators
- TV Repairs A television set used to be for life, not just for the interval between two consecutive Christmases.
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U is for…
- Unterlander’s Heimweh
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V is for…
- Vertical Hold, Fiddling With The
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W is for…
- Wicksteed Park
- Wimpy Bars
- Woolworths Christmas adverts
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X is for…
- X Stamps, Those Little Spot-the-Ball
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Y is for…
- Yellow Pages, The ‘Good Old’ Days ‘We’ve noticed the garden’s been getting a bit much for you lately…’
- Yeoman
- Yugo
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Z is for…
- Zigger Zagger The school play. Fraught auditions, fumbled lines, dad’s old trousers nicked for costumes, and of course the Good Name of the School at stake so don’t cock it all up.
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