Fads

Tupperware, a company making plastic kitchen containers and other domestic items, always concentrated on selling its products through party-plan selling, allowing housewives to buy...

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...

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...

"Left foot . . . red, right hand . . . yellow". These familiar words echoed through houses throughout the 60s as children of all...

The Unisex fashion movement largely came and went in one year: 1968. The trend began on the Paris runways, where designers like Pierre Cardin,...

When it happened we can't say . . . fer sure - All of a sudden everything the 'Vals' did or said was blown...

The technology behind the Sony Walkman - a portable personal device for listening to cassettes - might never have developed without Sony Chairman Akio Morita....

In 1968, Charles Prior Hall, a furniture designer in California decided to create the world's most comfortable chair. Taking his cue from the very popular...

It all began when the producers of the two-year-old Dallas devised a cliff-hanger ending to their popular super soap. "Who shot J R Ewing?" was a...

After several rumours of licences not being renewed, battles with the police and the drugs squad and many other problems, it was ultimately none...

In Britain in 1967, a man working in a factory was paid about £21 a week, while a woman was paid only £10 a...

X-Ray Spex came about in 1964 when Harold von Braunhut (the mastermind behind Sea Monkeys) repackaged an optical effect made popular by a device...

In addition to debating whether 2000 or 2001 would mark the "real" beginning of the new millennium, the Western World pondered the effect the...

A playground favourite for millions of schoolchildren the world over, the Yo-Yo is actually, according to some historians, one of the oldest toys around. Museums...

What rich 1980s white-collar workers were called in the decade when the western world revelled in unapologetic materialism. Yuppies (an acronym for "Young Urban Professionals")...