Tk Things Gen X Forgets About the Mid-80s

Fotomats were everywhere in the ‘80s, but what many don’t remember is that you had to wait to see the pictures you had taken. You had to take all the pictures in your reel to go to the fotomat, and you had to wait for a day to get them. And you were usually disappointed that they didn't look like you thought they did.

The ‘70s and ’80s weren't very safe, and a lot of the regulations we have now originated because people were hurt or worse during those years.

The truth is that, if you were a kid at the time, it's pretty impossible to forget about this.

You couldn't charge your things with USB cables because they didn't exist. Instead, a lot of toys needed between 2 and 6 batteries to function, and some even required different types of batteries to make your life harder.

It wasn't a great time to be alive.

Fast food chains used to have this, and they even had ads focusing on the quality of their salad bars.

Another thing everyone remembers, of course, but the reason this existed was the tough AIDS epidemic that struck the US and changed everything forever.

Music stores aren't a thing anymore, but back in the day, they could feel like a home away from home. However, like with everything in the '80s, you had to wait a whole lot. For example, if you wanted to buy a cassette, you had to wait for a clerk to remove this casing.

Yeah, malls thrived in the '80s, and hanging out with friends was awesome. You could spend the entire day there. But without cellphones, you also spent a lot of time just wandering around, waiting for someone to arrive, or looking for your friends in the many stores you could walk into. There was a lot of waiting for pretty much everything back then.

Drug tampering led to deaths by poisoning that shook people all around the US.

Everyone was smoking everywhere. You could shop for clothes and browse in stores while smoking a cigarette, and everything was perfectly normal.

If you weren't paying for premium channels, usually for adult content, this is what you saw on your TV. You could tweak some settings or simply wait a lot and the image would look like a negative for a second, and that thrill was incredible.

Gas used to contain lead, and after some studies, it became clear that it was very dangerous. Today, more updated studies have established a relationship between the use of leaded gas and criminal activity.

The Cold War lasted a good couple of decades, and you didn't know what new menace was going to show up the next day. There were boycotts in important events, like the Olympics, and people went through many different “crises” involving missiles, drugs, and much more.

You'd think a charity event of this magnitude would be remembered for ages, but you hardly hear about it.