Back in the days before protective padding and fibreglass helmets were ever dreamt of, the first skateboarding craze took off. Grazed knees, concussion and splintered bones…
Browsing: Fads
Manhattan button manufacturer NG Slater brought out his new line of yellow “smiley face” buttons in 1969, but nobody seemed to want them. Perhaps it…
In 1967, Hasbro introduced its little icy treat factories to sweaty summer cities and suburbs everywhere. The Frosty Sno-Man Sno-Cone machine was the first. Just…
Nobody ate Space Dust because it tasted nice. In fact, most people probably couldn’t tell you what it tasted like. It wasn’t intended to be savoured though.…
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, the USA and the Soviet Union raced each other to be first into space. The Soviet Union won. On 4…
The Star-Club opened as a music club on Friday 13 April 1962 at Große Freiheit 39, just off the Reeperbahn in the St. Pauli quarter…
Streaking first appeared in the early 1970s when students in the USA used it during protests and demonstrations. They streaked the Lyndon Johnson Library, making…
The craft of string art – creating pictures and designs by winding coloured threads between a set of pins or nails – first appeared in…
The late 1970s saw a huge Disco boom across the world, fuelled by the success of the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever. As the records…
Once the ancient sport of Hawaiian kings, modern surfing became synonymous with the slacker lifestyle. But it wasn’t laziness that drove these surfers to a…
July 1979 saw the introduction in the USA of the new Susan B Anthony dollar coin, stamped at the Philadelphia Mint. The first US coin…
Swiss watch company Asuag-SSH scored a hit in March 1983 with its low-priced ‘Swatch’ range of brightly coloured watches. Ernst Thomke and Nicolas Hayek developed…
“Swinging London” is a generic term coined by Time magazine in April 1966 and used to describe the fashion, music, cinema and cultural scene which flourished…
“The Talkboy” was originally a cassette recorder and non-working prop designed and built for the 1992 blockbuster Christmas film Home Alone 2: Lost in New…
Already hugely popular in Japan, Bandai’s Tamagotchis – or “virtual pets” – were all the rage in the US in 1997. Attached to a keychain,…
The original teen fashion rebel of the post-war era, the “Teddy Boy” paved the path of rebellion for all hooligans to come. During the war…
One of the most well-known fads of all time was the art of Telephone Booth Stuffing. In taking part in this event, several students would…
American chemist Earl Tupper was creating moulds at a plastics factory in Massachusetts shortly after the Great Depression when he came up with the idea…
Since television licenses first appeared in the UK, the TV Detector Man has been a ghoulish spectre who can allegedly track down telly-watchers by means…
Of all the fads, foibles and crazes that swept the Sixties (and there were LOTS), few caught on as universally as The Twist. It started…