Things Rich Kids Had in the 1970s...That You Wanted!
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- Опубликовано: 18 ноя 2023
- If you think back to middle or high school, we all had friends that we thought were rich. They always seemed to be one of the cool kids and all of them had certain things that everyone else wished they had. The biggest house, the nicest clothes, and the best toys always set them apart. So, here are some things that meant you were one of the rich kids during the 1970s.
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#recollectionroad #nostalgia #1970s 
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Growing up in the 70’s, my family was far from rich, but we never knew it.
Amen to that.
We were rich, but our parents never told us. Thanks, folks. I'm a better person for having learned to be self-sustaining and frugal.
Same here. I had no complaints
@@johndrennan5933 if you didn't need to worry about money, you are upper in the middle class. Sadly, even the middle class needs to worry about money today.
@@johndrennan5933The prettiest girls didn't give you the time of day BECAUSE of money. How old are you that you haven't figured that out?
In the 70's most families had devices to change the channels remotely for them. They were called kids.
Our first non child remote for the TV had the TV making a "kaChunk" sound while the TV knob actually moved through the 4 channels. Today's kids would never understand that.
reminds me of one of the comic strips I forget which comic it was but the gist of it was someone had a tv in which the person had a big room and they had a bit of a walk to change the channel on the tv. And there was someone else with a tv not as much distance away from the person and this person had and used a remote control to change the channel. maybe it was one of those side by side comparison things or something. It was sort of funny to me. We had a b & w tv until either 1975 or 76 when my father bought the colour one. No remote control though.
My parents were so rich they had four of those devices.
LOL right on!
@kevinstaggs5048 When us older four were in our teens, my parents must have realized their days for having a remote control were numbered, so they went and had another one. 😂
My Dad built me a chopper bike using the frame from another bike (which he painted the same color as his car) then adding the banana seat, handlebars, etc. RIP Dad ❤
😢😢😢
Man that hits home. To the dads with every skill ever! 🍻
@pjesf-You are telling my story word for word. My dad did the exact same thing! It's uncanny right down to the heartbreaking RIP. My dad passed in 1978 at the age of 34. I think about him, and that bike and all the things he did for his kids right up to the day he died.
@@kristineo6600 It must have been difficult to lose him at such a young age but so glad that you have memories that you cherish as I do that one. It never ceases to amaze me how my folks did so much with relatively little. I miss them, as well
@@chrisxshock Indeed‼️
Being a kid in the 70s and 80s was awesome 👍😎
Yes I totally agree with you we really were blessed to have experienced those days.
It was much better being in your 20s in the 70s than it is being in your 70s in the 20s!
Yes, we grew up with enough in technology but not too much. 70s and 80s were best time to be a kid.
@@chiarac3833 I think you got it right. We had enough tech that it gave our imaginations a real workout, but not so much that it gave us a completely artificial cocoon to submerge ourselves in.
"swimming pool" is definitely what we gauged a "rich" friend with, as well as fireplace. Any friends that had a swimming pool and/or a fireplace was instantly considered "rich", lol. I know they were commonplace up "north", but, in the south, they were considered "luxury", and were only for the "rich", since they really weren't a true home necessity as would be in the colder climates.
Living in South Florida back then we had a pool growing up and my friends would always come over during summer vacation. Also we had a sunken living room I don't know why that was a big deal it was basically just a step down.🤔
@@frankrizzo4460
It's sort of like if everyone has a hard top car and you have a cabriolet, that is the difference it gave you status. The lady of the house would be pleased to invite you to the " pit room " as it used to be called instead of the sunken living room which was the same thing. Unless you lived in New York, then it was the sunken living room. But in the suburbs it was a gathering/party room reserved for entertaining only.
and thats the only two things on this video that qualified for rich because everything else was pretty much in the hands of most income levels .
@@frankrizzo4460Yeah. I never got the sunken living room thing. Faux jet set stuff.
I only knew 1 kid with a built in pool. We had a doughboy and even with that, it was the only one on our block. We put it in ourselves and it was packed with kids from the neighborhood.
We were far from rich, I was one of six siblings,but my blessings were rich to be able to grow up in the 70’s. 🎉❤
Exactly
I remember the rich kids always having ski passes on the zippers of their coats. They just kept adding them. It showed which ski resorts they went to regularly.
I remember that, too.
Those were day tickets from resorts. Ski passes came laminated with a chain to wear around your neck. 😉
Definitely simpler times. Parents taught their children morals and to respect others. Americans were proud of their country. People's feelings didn't get hurt over ridiculous nonsense. It's been a long journey and it's all been downhill.
Exactly. That is the root cause of most of the mayhem in the U.S. For example, from the 1850's to the 1950's the number of U.S. school shooting deaths ranged between zero and thirteen PER DECADE. Then it started increasing exponentially as many societal norms decayed. Respect for others. Responsibility to community. Being a part of the community. Not expecting something for nothing. Not blaming others for your own lack of success. And the country was awash with guns and had almost gun laws yet there had been almost no such problems. This decay is what separates the U.S. from other democracies, and also what separates it from itself 70 years ago.
I remember the old guys in the 70s saying exactly the same thing. Smog pumps on cars, computers in cars, computers in banks, computers in Government, gay people, seat belts in cars, anti-war protests, Kent state, questioning the government, bra burning, crime was going up every day until it finally peaked in the 90s, swingers, key parties, women working was a big one, kids alone after school because women were working, gas lines...................... I'm sure I've forgot a lot but the 70s was a crisis every day for the over 60 crowd. I'm sure they thought the whole country was falling apart every day and wished to go back to the good old days.
@@trainliker100 - 100% A culture without consequences or standards.. .is a culture of chaos.
@@williamrosenow6176 Your comment is essentially nonsense. Why not bring up the "good old days of slavery." as a further deflection? That is not the topic. The topic is things like lack of personal responsibility, lack of personal accountability. Kids growing up thinking the world revolves around them. They expect they should get a high paying job just because. Many think it is OK to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to get useless degrees that don't lead to employment and then expect others, many who have no degree at all, to pay for it. Mock all you want, but there is something wrong when churches get denigrated and the most vile filthy rap music wins awards.
@@williamrosenow6176 Women, going to work, was pushed, by Gloria Steinem, who worked for the CIA, as a way, to generate more tax dollars, from women, look it up, and don't be so naive
In my neighborhood, a family was "rich" if they owned two cars. Another thing that only one guy in the neighborhood had was a garage with a garage door opener. We just stood in awe in the street and watched the "rich" guy drive up to his garage door opening like magic and knew he was obviously a gazillionaire!
You know, I had several of these things in the 70's but our family wasn't very wealthy.
Same. I'm the youngest of 8 kids. We all started working at 12 to have spending money. We had several phones in the house all the same number. I think clothes and decor were what I associated with rich kids. I wished life was like the Brady Bunch. But, the funny thing is, they only had 2 bedrooms for the kids. But, their maid had her own room!
You didn’t have to be “rich”. Life was pretty good. Lots of middle class families
Right, dumb!
You were rich, but you didnt know
@@Ariosto336 I kind of doubt that. We lived on the wrong side of the tracks and there was a lot of gang violence around me.
You didn't necessarily have to be a "rich kid" to have any of these things. Me and my friends who came from working class family had banana seat bikes. Goody combs weren't even expensive. You could buy a Tiger Beat magazine with pocket change.
I took it to mean that kids, in their point of view back then, would have thought that other kids were rich if they had those things.
@@jenniferhansen3622 very true i had a orange schwinn crate, my parents were barely makeing it,i saved worked odd jobs,and the rest my parents tossed in the hat. but we always had food,clothing,and warm safe place to hang my hat............god bless the 1970s AND,MOM,AND POP THANK YOU,WILL SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE.😇
yeah, thankyou for saying it, this really makes a mess of things.
You’re so right. My uncle was a NYC Detective & got Pong early on. I’m sure it was a “gift”. My dad was an Ironworker & he was always bringing new bikes home. My brother & sister got Raleigh Choppers one Friday. His was orange, hers blue.
well, i suppose the example of a goody comb in this video was more about having a "store bought haircut" instead of your mom cutting your hair... for me a long handled comb was a fighting tool along with my belt and buckle...
None of these were for the rich other than the bedroom color TV and the unground pool. Everything else, either I or my friends had and we were far from rich. But one thing that will always make the 60's and 70's better was no social media.
You've got that right! I'm right there with you! In fact, I was my grandparent's remote control! The chair I sat in was a lot closer to the TV!
And 80s..and 90s..
And yet here you are commenting on RUclips! 😄
@@vulpo Yup. The pandemic made it necessary!
@@vulpoWhat a stupid comment.
I saved my allowance to buy a subscription to Tiger Beat. I looked forward to receiving it in the mail each month. They had the best pictures of all the teen idols. I had Donny Osmond all over my wall. We never had a pool, but my Grandma did. Wonderful memories. Thanks for the memories.
I would save my allowance. I was a David and Shaun Cassidy fan.
@@pennierkaide4985 David Cassidy was a doll baby.
The one I wanted was CARtoons. There was only one store in town that sold it, I finally got a subscription and one issue in it folded. No refund, they sent 10 months of Car Craft instead. I still roll my eyes every time I see a red Camaro.
I used to get the Tiger Beat magazine at the magazine section of the grocery store. I also read a similar one called 16 magazine.
@@maryyoung4046 I remember 16 also. Tiger Beat was better. Sorry.
We had 1 of those wall mounted rotary phones in the hallway. But the cord was so long it stretched from there all the way across the living room, into the kitchen, and all the way over to the sink. That way Granny could move around in the kitchen as needed. And CLOTHESLINE us in the process, as we walked through the living room!
Good times!
Good times indeed. Our wall phone was in the kitchen and the cord stretched down the hallway into the back bed room. Good thing needed the privacy to talk to my boyfriend. 😉☺️
When a family had a second phone line for the kids back then, it would be listed in the phone book under the parents' name, with the phrase, "children's phone" next to the number.
Yes! I remember that!
Teen Line
Isn't that funny we never thought twice about doing that. Nowadays?
Never heard of that.
same here@@keithwilson6060
We had phones in our rooms BUT, we had to pay the bill for our own line. TigerBeat was where all my pretend boyfriends were!!!😂 Comb in the back pocket always!! No water beds allowed in our house. They make me queezy. Cable was in our house and everyone wanted to come over. Great memories!¡! Thanks my friend 😊
I just had an extension
My parents didn't get cable til I was away at college. 🙄
@@Mick_Ts_Chick Same. All our lines were underground so cable came to us much later. But even my parents were amazed at the picture.
I never realized my siblings and I were rich kids until this video! Sans the pool 😂 Grateful beyond words. My parents worked so hard!
I was rich, i lived on a dairy farm and in the winter on Sundays i would go snowshoeing in the woods and see wildlife and also try tracking them . That was my best time along with building models and customizing them to my imagination. I learned how to work hard for no paycheck as my stepfathers farm was on the poor side.
More of a 1960s thing for me (good lord, I'm old) was starting the school year with the 16 Crayola Crayon box. Some lucky kids had the 24 pack, but the rich kids were the envy of all when they showed up with that glorious 64 pack. Not only did the 64 pack have colors like Brick Red, Plum, and Goldenrod, the box had the ultimate accessory, a build in sharpener. While a few months later, most of us were doing our best with blunted crayon, the rich kids using crayons with like new pointed tips. It could have been worse. Could have started the year with the 8 pack.
In the 70s my basement was very much like That 70's Show. The HiFis, stereos, speakers, older TVs, couches and fridge came to live in the basement. It was fairly awesome.
Basements were popular because most people didn't have air conditioning and you went to the basement to stay cool in the summer.
Lol, remember that hanging lamp in that show? I've got one of them!
Hey, Eric!
Our basement had my dad's electronic repair shop which he did as a side job, our washer, my grandmother's old piano from 1917, and a bunch of stuff we stored which should have been gotten rid of long before then, lol.
@@Mick_Ts_Chick Did you ever play the piano?
Hell in the 90's I knew a gal in high school who had her own phone line in her room. Not just her own phone, her own separate line and number. I'd never seen that before, or since. It seemed like a whole new level of sophistication and status.
In the 80s some of the other high school students had their own phone lines in their rooms and most of them had a job to pay for it
I had that around 1980-1981 when I was in high school, but we weren't rich. I had two part-time jobs and paid for it myself. My parents put a limit on how long we could talk on the phone and I liked to yack so I forked out the money for a year or so.
@@reneedoiron7560
Exactly
Anyone I knew of in high school in the 80s who had their own phone line had a job to pay for it so they could talk in private in their room whenever they wanted to instead of sharing the house phone and being limited to not tie up the line for everyone else in the house
Yep, I was poor. I did have a Goody Super comb, but didn't have my own phone or water bed until I moved out and was living on my own. 😍
Wow. Growing up we were a family of 6 and had all these things. I even had my own phone with my own number. We never thought we were rich. We lived a humble life and were taught to care for others and always share. No negative feelings towards others. Grew up very grounded.
Same. We were taught to appreciate what my parents were able to provide and to be grateful for having such things. I am absolutely grateful.
@@chiarac3833 It’s so nice to know that there are still good people out there. 😊
I miss being a child in the 1970's😫When The United States of America was great and things were made here and NOT China😁It was rare to see something made in Taiwan😉ROCK ON!!!!!!!🤘🏻🤙🏻✌🏻
lots of things also made in Japan
I remember KNOWING that if it said 'MADE IN (Japan, China, Malaysia, India and Mexico)' it was garbage.
@@lovly2cu725 And Hong Kong...well remember those days.
The US is still great..we just were better able to have differences in opinions in the 80s..and 90s because they still taught civics and ethics in school. And there was no reality TV so we didn't feel like we had to outmanuever, outdo or whatever. We were civil when we disagreed.
Haha I remember when I was a kid I actually thought it was cool to have something made in another country. Like it was exotic or something.
My parents got our clothes from the Salvation Army and I walked to school with my friend. He joined the army and I joined the Air Force. I retired a couple of decades ago and I am living a wonderful life. Happy Thanksgiving 🦃🍽 everyone 🏈📺
Also what ended the waterbeds was their weight paired with more people having two-story houses as well as second-floor apartments. They weighed a ton, and those 2-by-4 boards that make up the floor don't support their weight for long. Apartment complexes still ban them to this day for that reason.
I thought it was the leaks
What ended waterbeds was that they sucked.
2x4's are generally for framing and wall studs, if your apartment complex has 2x4's for floor support GET OUT NOW
Water is 8 pounds per gallon and a king size water bed holds about 235 gallons. So that’s 1,880 pounds of water not including the bed frame. The total weight is easily over a ton. Then you add two people who are “rocking it” and it could easily damage an old building.
I didn't get one until I was adult. We had one until about 10 years ago when it finally died and we decided to go with the memory foam one, but kept the big wrought iron bed frame (california king). I miss the bed but don't miss the leaking (we had cats for awhile.)
Rich people never think they're rich, but poor people sure know they're poor.
Well, not always. Growing up my two brothers and I would take our bath in a 55 gallon drum by the back door. Dad painted it black so the sun would heat it during the day. We still had the old single door refrigerator with the freezer compartment inside at the top. The only thing that fit there was 4 metal ice trays. One day a friend of mine from school stopped by pay me back some money I loaned him months earlier. He looked around and apologized, saying if he had known we were so poor, he wouldn't have borrowed the money or at least paid it back quicker. It was at that moment, when I was 11 years old, that I realized we were indeed "poor folk!"
That is certainly the case. We didn't see friends as rich or poor. We just did stuff. Most of my friends had nothing.
Same here. I grew up being best friends with two brothers. Their family treated me as one of their own. Looking back I can definitely say they were very well off. I, however came from a dirt poor family who had nothing. The brothers had new motorcycles that daddy bought for them and I had an old 20 year old motorcycle that I bought with my own money. But, we all rode together, new bikes and old. We fished together, them with their new tackle and me with an old cane pole and bobber. We hunted together, both of them having new semi-auto shotguns and I had my dad's old single shot, breakover. It wasn't a competition with us as it is today with so many. We just enjoyed each other's company!@@Number6_
One thing missing from the list that I remember being particularly fascinated by when a friend's parents had one, was a car phone.
Now that was rich if it was real✌️🌹
@@markjulianoriginalhooli2217 Your channel and comments are irrelevant, no facts are in evidence, you are cautioned about "improper thinking", and all your comments will be stricken from the record, thanks for playing, you lose
@@saminaneen stop playing with yourself get out and get some fresh air 😄
@@markjulianoriginalhooli2217 You have been TROLLED & PUNKED, and you took the bait, Babyboy. Now go lick your LIBTARD wounds, soyboy, and get back to yo momma's basement, where you belong.
In the early 80’s vcrs were very expensive when they first came out. Microwaves weren’t in most homes in the late 70’s early 80’s either, very expensive too.
Those are good ones!
I had a microwave in 1984 and a VCR in 1986. We were not rich. Only a $800 a month income in 80s ( which paid at lot more back then)
I remember going over to a friends that had the first microwave. It was a big deal to cook a hot dog!
I bought a GE Spacemaker microwave that fit over the stove in 1979 in my first house when I was 22 years old. And yes, they were very expensive and uncommon (most people had those clunky countertop microwaves)....but worth every dime!
Ha I remember my Dad bringing home our first microwave and how amazed we were to cook things so fast.
We were the first kids to get an Atari Super Pong, or any video game on our street, I think '76. Not because we were rich, but because my folks were hip...
I had one because my parents wanted all the kids to come to my house so they could keep track of me and what I was up to. We also had a swimming pool and game room for the same reason. It worked pretty well 😂
I was a little girl in the 70's and I never knew one wearing "moonboots" lol
I remember when the Moonboot phase hit - though for some reason I recall it being in the 80's.
I was a teen. Graduated in 1976. I don’t recall moon boots. But I didn’t ski or any winter sports…
My neighborhood was 💯 lower middle class. Nobody had much of these. No pools, no video games, nothing. The one thing that may have stuck out as to difference in wealth between the families were the vacations they went on. My family didn't go on a vacation til I was in 6th grade and it was only 3 days total, 1 day at Cedar Point. I never thought about any of the other stuff tbh cause nobody had them.
Yeah we went camping a lot. The neighbors went to Acapulco.
Cedar Point . . . Yeah! Company picnics. You went there first and for most for a picnic . . . the rides were second!@@MasterMalrubius
You never miss what you never had, amiright?
@@k.b.tidwell That's why we were happy as clams when we were kids. We got everything that was necessary. Never went hungry, went to ball games, were involved in many activities that you paid to participate in. Never missed a thing.
The only reason we could travel was because my dad worked for the airlines and we could fly free. My mom's relatives were in Texas and my aunt and uncle were in Arizona, so we could stay for free there. Also in Charleston where my great aunt lived.
Some of those stuff weren’t just for rich kids in the 70s like handheld electronic games and Goody combs were actually cheap, because discount stores like Woolworth sold them! But I would say backyard swimming pools and Kenner’s Star Wars toys in the 70s were considered luxury! Also Pong consoles were considered cheap pretty quickly by mid 1970s that drugstores sold them at bargain prices!
True. My parents never sprung for an Atari, but I did have that exact handheld football game. So addicted to it!
@@norwegianblue2017 my uncle gave me some Mattel electronic handheld games for my birthday, they were Football and Baseball! Tiger Electronics also made handheld electronic games.
In ground pools were (are) a luxury, But my family was solidly working class (We lived in a three story 1870s rowhouse in Pittsburgh) We HAD a pool, It was an ABOVE ground 15' diameter X 3' deep pool from K Mart! We also had a "bitchen" swing set, Also from K Mart!
@@jamesslick4790 I never had any pool in my house due to small backyard space, but my cousins did have an above ground pool that just for standing which was 3 feet deep! Also I miss Kmart so much, because that store smaller and more convenient than Walmart and Target!
only rich folks had central airconditioning,
Not true. All newly built homes came with central air. My parents first house had it. $17K in 63. My BF from college had a huge house, pool & tennis court but had an attic fan!
well honey, you were rich and didnt realise it , lol@@samanthab1923
When I was a Kid growing up in Hawaii I had happy childhood. It was a simpler time. Riding our bikes, going to the beaches, playing our favorite board games. We got our first Color TV in 1971 and it was like wow !
My family wasn't rich growing up in the 70's. We were happy to get what my parents could afford.
I had a fried who had a huge collection of Star Wars toys, I remember going to his house and seeing all the Star Wars action figures and vehicles and being so jealous - when I got older I realized that those are just superficial material things and what's really important is family and Love
A buddy of mine used to bring his to school and we'd play with them at recess and during the playground period. He had the big Millennium Falcon case to hold the action figures and all of the ships...wow! This was in second grade in 1977. His dad was a car salesman who must have been more crooked than most lol because they always had the nicest stuff. But like you said...family and love...his mom and dad got divorced and messed his life up bad. I'll take low-middle-class-poor anytime over that. And I don't remember ever getting any of the Star Wars toys of my own lol.
We were far from rich but we did have a generic pong game. We also had a trash compactor. I loved my Goody's super combs.
My neighbor had a clicker for his TV and I remember being amazed that such a thing existed lol.
we also had a trash compactor. the first model was the foot of whoever was on garbage detail. not that it mattered much since we used paper grocery bags (free) that got tossed into metal cans and the city charged a flat rate. but then some "wise" acker persuaded city council to switch to a by-the-bag billing structure. my grandpa showed me how to make a manual compactor from scraps of wood and 3 bolts. business minded as i was i started making them to sell and could barely keep up with demand despite copycats. before end of summer most of the town had a manual compactor, and a lot of people were competing to see who could make the densest block of trash. WE ACTUALLY BROKE THE GARBAGE TRUCK MULTIPLE TIMES bc it couldn't compact what was already compacted. we were back to flat rate the next year.
Even though we lived in a cinderblock house, my brother and I had chopper bikes in grade school. We finally got a color TV when I was in junior high. So while we never had more than one phone or anything else on the list, we WERE rich!😊
It seems that everybody had a goody super comb in the back right pocket in the ‘70’s, now mostly everybody has a cell phone in the back right pocket today.😊
Never heard of Moon Boots. I was too busy taking care of my Pet Rock.
lol yeah I remember it was all the rage, but I never had one.
My husband was on his high school golf team back then. He said he knew the kids were rich when they had their own golf carts in their garage. I just remember looking at some of the clothes on some of the girls. Somehow I realized that they didn’t buy their clothes at Grants. Kinda like a Walmart or Target of today in south east PA.
Grants was awesome. We had one in walking distance from home.
Yes! And pic-way was just a few stores away. When I was young I thought everyone got their clothes and shoes from Grants and pic-way. 😂
The "rich kids" could head off to camp or "upstate" where they had a vacation home where'd they spend the summer. We did not as my father never believed in taking vacations ( he worked six and a half days a week), so we were the kids that stayed on the block all summer long. I swore that when I was an adult I WOULD go on vacations... and did. Saw a goodly part of Europe and the US.
My oldest sister and husband were not rich, very middle-class as my BIL was an engineer at John-Manville in CO. They were hi-tech with the Atari game system and the first Apple Computer. They gave me the Mattel Football game during a visit and it was addicting. On my flight home, I was admonished by the flight attendant and told to put it away because the noise was annoying the other passengers.
I had an OTASCO banana seat bike, knock off chopper, the rich kids in my neighborhood had 10 speeds. My parents got a color TV after I joined the military, they bought a color tv, they told me it was since they didn't have to feed me anymore, they had enough money to buy a color TV. Also, the rich kids had AC, mostly window units, the very rich had central air, I slept my whole life at home next to a window with a box fan in it. The 1st time I slept under AC was my 1st day at Basic Training at Lackland.
We had a swamp cooler and window fans. I attribute ac to the downfall of a modern kids childhood. We had to play outside or we would have died in that hot house.
@@marilynalspachtoth5635 We had a swamp cooler for a while, worked great until the humidity got too high, or the water reserve ran out, then I had to get the garden hose out and fill it. You're right about getting out of the house, worlds of adventure, little supervision, we learned to wait until afternoon to hit the swim hole, if we came in wet for lunch, mom made us stay home.😄
My family had many of the items mentioned, as did most our friends, and we were far from rich. We were lower middle class until I was 15 when my dad went to work in the oil industry. That promoted us to plain ole regular middle class. lol
My parents weren't the best with their money and smoked liked chimneys but we generally got some fancy stuff when they could do it.
In my world, to me, wealthy was my friend whose parents owned a gas station and repair garage. They built an incredible home that had a FAMILY ROOM complete with a bar! My friend had a matching bedroom suite that included two dressers AND a canopy bed! I ranked her right up there with the Queen of England! 😅
Oh yes I always thought that girls with canopy beds were just the coolest.
The Magnavox Odyssey (released in 1972) was the world's first video game console. Atari copied it's sole game (Pong) and sold it at a lower price than Magnavox could to drive them out of home gaming.
The Magnavox Odyssey “TV Tennis” game, was not an entirely original idea. The first known computer tennis game dates back to 1958!
Atari’s PONG was far superior to the Odyssey’s version of tennis! If Atari hadn’t improved upon it, someone else would have!
Note: Ironically, Ralph Baer, inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey, took (stole) Atari’s idea, from the arcade game “Touch Me”, and created “Simon”!
It's funny how the Odyssey always gets forgotten as the first commercial home console but the real first home console was the Brown Box from 1968-69 and I don't remember the year.
I had a nice bike but that was it. We weren’t Rich at all but always had a warm supper every night.
We were certainly not rich, but we had all of this minus the pool😮😮
I really enjoy your videos. They are a memory scrapbook of much of my growing up in the 1960's and 1970's. In 1971 I received a Schwinn stingray bicycle for my birthday. You're right that they came in many colors and my 5-speed bike was the "grey ghost" model. At that time, my young self thought I was the coolest person ever on two wheels :)
My "rich" girlfriends had canopy beds-like a princess or something fancy, inground pool with a slide, and really big dollhouses and/or Barbie dreamhouses. They were so cool.
Another aspect of phones in the 70s is that they weren't plug-ins which became standard for phones but they were usually hard wired into the sockets, which usually required a professional installation from the phone company. And you had to get your phone from the phone company. They were not sold in stores.
Owning a Star Wars toy didn't make you rich, it was owning the Millennium Falcon that made you rich.
And while colour TVs were big in the 70s, you were really rich if you had a VCR.
I grew up quite poor in the 70s, and didn't have any of these things, nor did any of my friends. But we all had the big combs in our back pocket. Even us poor kids. Oh, and my rich uncle did get us the Mattel football game for Christmas. Played that thing all the time.
The in ground pool was the only thing I agree set apart the rich kids. I come from a long line of poor people, yet I had all but the pool and trash compactor growing up. Raised by a single mom taking care of 2 boys and her mother. Far from "rich". At times my mother had to work more than 1 job. I paid for my own phone line, not my mother.
My rich kid neighbors had honda mini bikes and one had a pool table. They would get brand new musical instruments for band, get to go the lake for skiing and visit the mountains for snow skiiing. Basically their parents got them anything they wanted.
In the 1970s just about all my friends and neighbors had a console color TV, we had a 19 inch black-and-white TV with an antenna. A couple of my friends had those Mattel hand held electronic games, which were awesome and one friend had a Atari 2600. Let’s say I hung there a lot back then lol.
I grew up in the 70's and i think if your family had a car with air conditioning and power windows and power seats you were rich. Now i dont think they make a car without air conditioning or power windows.
For my neighbors no one had a Trash compactor. Anyone with an In ground pool did donate money as did belongings to the Country Club and taking 7-10 day family vacations. You felt pretty stylish and like you were doing well. My waterbed in 1980 was $1,000! More than 1 phone in the house or more than more than 1 TV was upscale. Going to a non fast food restaurant was upscale. As a girl, going to a salon for the 1st time after years of Mom’s always cutting kids hair!
Grew up in a small town (now a big city) in Central Ohio.. no one I knew as a kid or teenager ever had an in-ground pool in their backyard. Certainly several of us had ABOVE ground pools but not in-ground.
Dayton, Ohio, here, and thanks for the memories about the above-ground pool that nearly took up our whole backyard. It was a big deal for us, lol.
Depends of your definition of what 'rich" meant.
1) No. many of us middle and lower-class kids had chopper-type bikes with the hi handlebars and the high, or what we called "sissy" bars.
2) anybody had those colored Goody combs.
Everyone I knew had some of these things, but no one had all of them. It didn't mean they were rich, I certainly wasn't. We had a TV with a pong game built in. I remember my parents buying it in the late 70's. We had an in ground hot tub and an electric organ. All of those things might make some people think I was "rich". But, I didn't have a phone or TV in my room, my parents kept their cars until they wouldn't run any more, and they didn't buy Jiffy Pop because it was too expensive.
Oh, and I never heard of moon boots.
I've never seen moon boots either. 🤔
You kind of melt the 60s and 70s together
I grew up lower- to middle-middle class in a neighborhood of much the same, but the town had some upper middle class families that we befriended at school, etc. As mentioned, they had two-story houses, a bedroom for each kid, possibly trash compactors (?) or at least fancier kitchens and decor, and sometimes an inground pool. They also had more namebrand, trendy clothing, and went skiing with their families and later joined the ski club in high school. I do feel like most of the rest of us had most of the things mentioned, though maybe not as soon and maybe we had to pick and choose or buy from our own money we earned with odd jobs or something. We generally only got gifts for our birthday and Christmas, so we had to wait for special things. The families who we considered to be on the poor side had less nice clothing, got fewer or home haircuts, beat up-looking hand me down bikes, etc. (One set of my cousins, actually.) We all kind of knew where we fit in the hierarchy, but no one was truly rich in our world that I can think of.
Tiger Beat was the ‘70s teen magazine. In the 1960s, it was 16 magazine, and in the ‘80s, it was Star Hits, linked with the British magazine Smash Hits. Each magazine was well suited to its decade.
16 was around in the 1970s too, I had a subscription in jr high/high school (graduated 1975)
Also Teen Beat was popular too.
I believe in the 70's air conditioning in cars was still considered an option....probably that only rich kids parents could afford.
The water bed was horrible. I couldn't get out of the damn thing when I was in my last trimester of pregnancy.
You left out the part where it's great because that's how lots of women got pregnant back then in the first place. 😄
@@3Storms Not so great when you're getting seasick in the process :)
@@3Storms I didn't leave that part out because it would cause seasickness.
I had a chopper made from a 26 inch bike. Triple forks, banana seat, and a steering wheel! Hard to master riding, but awesome fun!
Ya, I was a poor kid, and I remember dreaming my room had a color TV. I was so lucky when my Grandmother gave me her old portable B/W TV for my room; I thought I was styling! I had a friend who had a pool in her backyard and hated it because her chore was cleaning it, but hanging out there was nice on a hot summer day. I could never understand, as a poor kid how some kids always seemed to have the latest and greatest. I was so hard on my parents then. Now I understand how hard a dollar is to come by and respect all they did for me. My dad would make it so special for me by bringing home a Teen Beat or Tiger Beat sometimes on a payday; he kept it a secret between just us as I was his only daughter. To this day, I love him for doing that; really made an awkward young teen feel better about fitting in.
That is so nice of your father!
You really had a great dad. 😊
My neighbors dad was a home builder they had a nice Split level house with huge basement. I thought they were rich kids cause they had a huge collection of teen beat magazines and posters up everywhere , big yellow kitchen with bar. wall speakers in every room. Barbie dream house and Cher doll house all sorts of toys. The first TV I ever saw with a remote control and large console TV. This was back in 1979. I was amazed with their house and belongings. my parents had a nice home just did not buy all the fancy things to save money.
A teenager during the 70's was hard when you were lower middle class - especially when the town you grew up in was definitely class oriented (the have's & the have not's). But I now have realized that I learned a lot of life lessons to make life definitely better in today's economy (and seeing pictures of my classmates, they aged badly!)
Same thing goes for the the 20s. 30s 40;s 50s 60s 80s 90s 2000s 2010s 2020s.
You didn't have to be a rich kid to have some of these things, you only had to have parents that would work overtime or have extra jobs to make money to buy them.
Nailed it. Chopper bikes and any kind of real Schwinn bikes. Rich Dads had LawnBoy mowers. Our whole town only had only one family with an in-ground pool. Yes, they were rich. I remember my best friend's mom got an Amana microwave oven that was like $450 bucks. I don't remember how long it took us to get any kind of a microwave oven, but it was many years later.
Back when it was a thrill watching the NBC Peacock on a neighbor's color tv.
The "rich kids" on my block always had a well-built, furnished tree house, a mini bike, G.I. Joe sets, video games and a split-level house with a clean attached garage and a convertible with a car cover on it. They also were a little fatter than the rest of the kids on the block.
I had a chopper. It was lovely on downhills. Unfortunately my town appeared to have been made with only uphills. That thing weighed a ton and a half.I pushed it more than I rode it 😂😂😂😂
The Mattel football game and the Coleco Electronic football games were incredible!
I had to laugh when the video mentioned having multiple telephones.
My family's house had (and still has... even though my dad is a widower)... the main phone in the kitchen. And another four phone extensions throughout the house, and an extension in the barn.
So a total of six phones.
My family wasn't "rich".
And my folks worked damn hard...at their "town jobs", and on our farm, to be able to provide themselves and us kids with a decent life.
“First sign of a failed marriage is a TV in the bedroom”, my ex.
lol my ex wouldn't let there be a tv in the bedroom. We still divorced. Ironically, he and the one he is with now have 2 big tvs (flat screen) - guess what - one of them is in the bedroom. lol.
Moonboots? Never heard of 'em. LOL!!
We used to laugh at kids who wore them 😂
I was never envious of my friends who had pools because I don't like swimming and I don't like lakes or pools or anything like that even to this day.😊
Families "gathered together" at the _trash compacter?_ I'm glad we weren't rich.
I wasn't one of the rich kids and this video just made it more clear to me. The only things I had from this video were the Goody comb and the pong game.
My friend across the street was the first on the block to have a color tv. His dad owned a business. Needless to say we wound up over there a lot to watch the amazing color tv.
They enjoyed more simple things than we do today for sure.
Everybody had what we used to call “Stingray” bikes, not just rich kids. No one called them “chopper” bikes either.
I think Raleigh's version was called a "chopper". It had the long saddle with the angular bend in the video as opposed to the banana seat we were used to in the US. Schwinn Stingrays have a lot of collector value these days. Schwinn Varsity's - not so much.
We spent the 70s being poor for some of the time, and rich for some of the time. I remember one time when we weren't doing so well at all, and someone anonymously left a couple bags of groceries for us on our front stoop. During the times when were doing pretty well, my dad always got me and my brother the latest electronics. We had the Atari 2600 (but never Pong). We had 4 different Mattell Electronics handhelds, we had expensive Texas Instruments calculators, etc. Oh yeah, when we were young, my brother and I got chopper-style Sears bikes for Christmas one year. They were dark green with 3-speed shift and a banana seat of course, but no sissy bar. But much later, when I was 13, I got a 10-speed for my birthday. We got a pool sometime during the 70s, but not in-ground. My brother and I got a TV to share, because we spent much of the 70s in the same bedroom. But the TV in our room was black and white. I remember it had a tinted plastic screen over it. I'm not sure what the purpose of that was.
On a different note, I never even saw a trash compactor in my life till we all moved in 1985, and the house came with one. Then my parents added onto that house in 1988, and they put a compactor in the kitchen in that new addition too. That compactor looked almost the same as the one in this video at 4:00. I also never saw a microwave in my life (except on TV) till we moved in 1985, and my dad bought one for the new house.
I'm super curious about the bags of food. My husband and I always pick out one family at Christmastime that we know are struggling and we anonymously gift them with a variety of things, including bags of food and gift cards. We've always wondered if it truly makes a positive impact on the family or if it might actually make them feel uncomfortable.
@@meedwards5 All I remember is that it was in the early to mid-70s, and we never knew who gave it to us. I vaguely remember some of the food items being different brands than what we normally bought, or maybe the food items themselves were a little different than what we were used to. But I never forgot that it happened.
At a certain point, home video games became very common because General Instrument had introduced the AY-3-8500 IC chip which made it very easy for any company to build the pong-type games. I saw one report that as many as 70 companies were building those games.
By the late 70's, all the guys in my town just had to have 10-speed bikes. The chopper bikes had faded as a trend.
As for the handheld electronic games, they weren't horribly expensive; the year after they came out, EVERYONE in my Boy Scout troop had one.
When Pong first came out, I could easily beat everybody. I think the reason was my experience as an electronics technician using oscilloscopes a lot. Part of that is adjusting the "Y axis" up and down with a knob. Pong requires the same eye-hand coordination, and it was ingrained in me. It didn't take long for others to quickly develop the same knack, so my "superiority" was very short lived.
We had all this. We weren't rich. There was a large middle class back then. My dad had a electronics shop & showroom. I was popular in highschool because he sold and installed 8 track tape decks in cars. Lol. It was a beautiful time growing up back then.
In my hood in the 70's a remote control TV meant you were rich. 2 tv's meant you were rich. If your family had a car you were rich. If you had any toys that appeared on tv you were rich. Notice it's all connected to tv? Divorced single mothers weren't very attentive when the tv could do the babysitting for you.
You could add Converse All-star sneakers to the list. I grew up poor in a small town in South Carolina and my mother could never afford to buy me a pair. They cost close to 40$ in the mid 70s.
Gen X from '72 here.
My parents & grandparents who helped raised were working class than "rich" but spoiled me as best they could...the grandparents mostly. Toys for Xmas each year & I was allowed to pick 1 myself at least as I was capable of doing so. Electronic games, cassette players, cassettes, records, record players & various entertainment electronics were my fave toys, along with transistor radios. Electronic games...Woo-Hoo 🥳.
Remote control was rare & mostly grownups had access to that.
I owned a Red-White-Blue big wheel at my grandparents house in DC, no doubt for the 1976 Bicentennial, worth it. Rode it around the block solo & everything, in my single digits, 😳Can you believe THAT?
The 70's:
You had to be there 😏.
My parents had one of those electronic handheld games, a baseball one I think, and as a kid in the 80s I was OBSESSED with it. This was way before Gameboy, so even as simple & basic as it was, it was crazy high tech to me.
After Katrina, my childhood home had an indoor pool for about 3 weeks till the floodwaters finally drained away 😢😂🤷♀️
I always thought someone was rich if they had a refrigerator that had ice and water on the door, wall ovens, and formal livingrooms and dining rooms. I couldn't understand why no one could use these rooms.
I remember that handheld football 🏈 game. I played it nonstop & it was glorious ❤
During the late 70’s, we were considered an elite family, in our neighborhood! All because we owned 2 TV’s! A Curtis Mathis, that resembled a piece of furniture, in our living room, and a 13” black and white, in my parents bedroom!!
I remember the pong game including several options such as breakout and shooting a "bird" which was just a square on the screen that disappeared when you shot it and gave you a point. What was more fun was shooting the "puck" in regular pong. It would become invisible but was still there as far as the game was concerned, so if its projected path went by the paddle, the other player would still score a point, and it would reappear the next round. You could also send it invisibly back to the opponent if you were lucky and you would score instead. I remember a record of five hits on the invisible puck once.
We got our first VCR with corded remote in 1981, you could sit next to the tv and not have to get up to turn the channel. This was a couple years before wireless remotes really got common. I thought we were rich!
I remember that too.
🎉 retro greetings from coastal Mississippi. Colour tv, colour toilet paper, waterbeds, and Tiger Beat . I remember and had alot of these. Push button phones was so futuristic. Ah the 70's....thanks for the groovy memories ❤😂🎉
I grew up without AC or a dishwasher. In the summer we had window fans to (sort of) keep us cool. We built our own choppers by adding forks from old bikes onto our current bikes, and then buy a small tire for the front axle at a junk yard. Jumping ramps with our bikes like Evel Knievel was a big deal. Almost everyone had an electronic football game, so that wasn’t much of a status symbol. Kids that went on driving vacations out of state were considered rich and lucky. Also having a bike with a 3-speed or 5-speed shifter was a status symbol.