Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

[TipDab]

"Five & Dime" stores (esp. those with things worth buying...)

 

[TipDab]

Band-Aid's™ supplied in metal boxes (which seems like it wasn't *that* long ago...)

 

[Trenchfriend]

Cute!

But, I know this cans from german crispbread or similar.

 

[Stanley Doble]

"Five & Dime" stores (esp. those with things worth buying...)

Now they are called Dollar Stores.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Now they are called Dollar Stores.

Exactly. They're everywhere. There are probably 10 "five and dimes" within 2 miles of my house.

 

[Zombie_61]

Now they are called Dollar Stores.

Several years ago I walked into a local "99¢ Store", and they had a big sign hanging from the ceiling which stated:

Any items with a price tag lower than 99¢ are 99¢.
Any items with a price tag higher than 99¢ are 99¢.
Every item in this store costs 99¢.

Apparently, some of their customers had difficulty grasping the concept. I think I laughed for five minutes straight.

 

[Fading Fast]

^^^ I remember the opposite experience when, growing up, items in Woolworths 5 an 10 cents stores cost more than 10 cents and my Mom trying - not well - to explain inflation to me.

 

[sheeplady]

There's a brand of stores here called "family dollar" which isn't a dollar store, and has items up to $10. Some people get confused by this given the name.

Also, it's a running joke to go into dollar stores and ask how much something is by teens.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Woolworth's abandoned its strict 5-and-10 policy in 1932 -- in the depths of the Depression, no less -- as a way of increasing store traffic, by going up to a 20 cent maximum. They dumped the price limit altogether a few years later, but they were also cost-efficient enough not to want to replace all the existing pre-1932 signs:

They had thousands of stores with these signs in place, and preferred to leave them in place rather than update -- they'd usually only change the sign when they lost their lease and moved the store. So even as late as the 1970s you could find these signs in small towns or obscure city neighborhoods.

McDonalds ran into the same problem when it built hundreds of big neon signs with "15 c" sticking out of the top, and then had to change them all when they raised the price of their standard hamburger to 18 cents. Moral of the story is never, ever put the price on your sign.

 

[tonyb]

^^^^^

And don't be too darned specific about what your business does, either. Best to allow for changing markets. Apple Computer is now just Apple, for instance.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Or the Columbia Broadcasting System, which is now just CBS Corporation. With an emphasis on the BS.

One more interesting fact about Woolworths -- it always had a reputation for cheap schlocky merchandise, but in fact, at least from the 1937-43 era that I can verify, Consumers Union often rated their products as "Best Buys" for their categories of goods, especially for things like household consumables, and after the big Woolworth sit-down strikes of 1937 that forced the company to recognize the Department Store Employees Union, they were also given a good rating for their labor practices.

Wonder how today's "dollar stores" would rate?

 

[Trenchfriend]

"Supreme Steel Wool".

 

[LizzieMaine]

Better and less expensive than Brillo!

 

[MisterCairo]

^^^^^

And don't be too darned specific about what your business does, either. Best to allow for changing markets. Apple Computer is now just Apple, for instance.

A guy goes to an "Open 24-hours" store and finds the clerk closing up.

"What's the deal, it says open 24 hours!"

"Oh, that's just the name of the store..."

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

Another item that had to be replaced en masse somewhere in the 60s was the gas pump. Until then their price windows only had three slots for the flip-over numbers because there wasn't a car or truck in America that would hold $10.00 worth of gas.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When we had our station, Texaco would send a man around to replace the computer heads on the pumps and leave the actual pump units in place. The first big swap was in the early '70s with the coming of the Embargo -- and the second, and worse one, was about six years later when they had to swap out to cover prices above 99 cents a gallon. This was a big problem because it happened so fast that it caught the manufacturers flat-footed. It took a couple of years to manufacture enough new heads to equip all stations -- and in the interval we, and most other dealers, had to price gas by the half-gallon and then double the price shown in the "This Sale" windows.

When we finally got some service from Texaco it wasn't new heads -- rather, they sent a man around to apply stickers to the "THIS SALE" wheels to recalibrate them for the new realities. We still had to sell by the half gallon for about a year after this, but at least the amount of the sale displayed was now accurate.

 

[Fading Fast]

A guy goes to an "Open 24-hours" store and finds the clerk closing up.

"What's the deal, it says open 24 hours!"

"Oh, that's just the name of the store..."

There is a small convenience store - papers, soda, snacks, etc. - that opened a few months ago around the corner from me that is called "Dawn to Dusk -" which sounds like it would be open early in the morning to early in the evening. On the same sign it says right below its name, "Open 24 hours." Hmm....

 

[MisterCairo]

There is a small convenience store - papers, soda, snacks, etc. - that opened a few months ago around the corner from me that is called "Dawn to Dusk -" which sounds like it would be open early in the morning to early in the evening. On the same sign it says right below its name, "Open 24 hours." Hmm....

Is that "irony"?

 

[Fading Fast]

Is that "irony"?

My girlfriend and I were stunned when the sign went up +/- 3 months ago. How does this stuff happen? Those signs -two reasonably large well-lighted signs - are expensive. Unbelievable.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Or the Columbia Broadcasting System, which is now just CBS Corporation. With an emphasis on the BS.

One more interesting fact about Woolworths -- it always had a reputation for cheap schlocky merchandise, but in fact, at least from the 1937-43 era that I can verify, Consumers Union often rated their products as "Best Buys" for their categories of goods, especially for things like household consumables, and after the big Woolworth sit-down strikes of 1937 that forced the company to recognize the Department Store Employees Union, they were also given a good rating for their labor practices.

Wonder how today's "dollar stores" would rate?

Why is it that all women from the 1930s look like they could kick the crap out of me?