Products you miss

[Gary E]

1,1,1 trichloroethane, a truly wonderful solvent.

You can still get it but, due to modern Health and Safety laws, you have to treat it like Plutonium!
Pretty much the same with any de-greasing agent that worked unfortunately. MEK (Methyl Ethyl Ketone) was my favourite, we used to keep cans of it in the washroom to wash our hands with. It would pretty much get anything off anything! Nowadays it would be easier to get Dynamite!

 

[Andy in Germany]

Pacers

Try travelling on Northern, they'll cure you of missing Pacers.

I must admit, I like pacers, especially the class 142, which I always thought looked quite smart.

Of course, I never had to commute on them...

 

[Andy in Germany]

Marmite

Sherbet Fountains

Second hand bookshops.

The first two aren't available in Germany, and it's hard to find examples of the third that sell English language books that aren't Dan Brown novels or Fifty Shades of Dull.

Mind you, I never could get a sherbet fountain to work properly: the sherbet always got bunged up in the liquorice...

 

[Alex H]

Those 1970s/80s/90s hifi systems where all you got was an amp, record player, cd player, tape deck (and recording songs off the radio). Two speakers, good sound, good power.

These days you get 7.2 "home entertainment" systems purportedly with 2000Watts but in reality is just 20 or 30W.

I still use mine, but it's down to the amp and tuner now ☹

 

[Jimidh]

Kaolin and Morph used to be the hangover cure of choice. The secret was to be very careful not to shake up the kaolin into the the rest of the solution.

Old pharmacist trick was to give it a good shake when you handed it over and watch their faces drop

 

[Alex H]

and the old fashioned valves.

Did my electronics apprenticeship on valve technology, with a week near the end on 'transistors'

 

[Lonestar]

Did my electronics apprenticeship on valve technology, with a week near the end on 'transistors'

Always gave out a fantastic sound didn't they.

Why is that?

 

[Electric_Andy]

I miss TCP throat pastels. I think you can still get the TCP solution but the pastels tasted like TCP and blackcurrent. Can't remember if they were any good.

 

[perplexed]

Car engines where you had half a chance of fixing what may be a reasonably simple issue yourself, rather than have to plug it into the NASA computer. I fully appreciate and accept (and indeed love) that modern engines are for the most part superbly reliable, but when they go wrong they tend to be spectacularly expensive - often needlessly so.

 

[Accy cyclist]

What about bed and breakfast stays for a tenner. Those B&B's at places like Blackpool seem to have upped their prices a bit. According to reports,a night in a fleapit is now around 40 quid at least!!

 

[User16390]

Space Dust was the craze at school. We used to see how many bags we could get in our mouth at one time. You could then peel us of the classroom ceiling due to the E numbers. Happy days.

 

[Threevok]

Old Jamaica chocolate

 

[Alex H]

Always gave out a fantastic sound didn't they.

Why is that?

No idea - I was an avionics engineer

 

[Accy cyclist]

Old Spice aftershave and other Old Spice products. Yes i know they still make it but it just isn't the same fragrance! That's not all bad as the new smell isn't as shoot as the one in the 1970's i remember.

 

[Accy cyclist]

Caustic Soda. Again,yes i know you can still buy it,but it isn't as widely available and it's not just down to 'acid attacks'. It's been hard to find now for the past 4 or 5 years. In a way it's good that it's not just there on the shelf waiting for some nutter to buy as the stuff is deadly,but great for shifting blockages in drains and stuff.