No Bye/No Aloha

Mr Fix observed at the weekend that “fashion just goes in one big circle”*. He is certainly correct. Some things I had happily judged fads DO seem to be coming back in a way that is very confronting. I saw some one wearing a scrunchy on the weekend. And there are certainly more people wearing ‘Choose Life’ t-shirts than is probably advisable.

Of course because I will blog about anything, that got me thinking about some things which seem to have gone missing, things like.....

Clag

I was starting a post on things that have gone the way of the dodo, and found to my amazement that, despite the clear superiority of the glue-stick, Clag is still available. I’m yet to run out and buy some, but what a relief to know that if I wanted some only half-effective, wet and lumpy paste, it would be available at a store near me.

What you can’t get any more is coloured glue sticks. I had a purple one which was used often in my Year 7 class to scrawl things like “BROS”** all over my friends’ photocopied sheets as they were affixed to loose leaf paper. Goodness – is there even loose leaf paper anymore? Yes. It’s okay. Loose leaf paper still exists….if only the book orders of our public school system.


Stirrup pants

I’ve been personally advocating for stirrup pants to stay well and truly in the fashion closet. But they’re out there….on eBay, where some enterprising sods are selling them as “vintage”.

Those heartless bastards.

Poor young ‘uns of today have no idea that once they team an enormous t-shirt with the ankle-obscuring stirrup pants they will have all the fashion allure of a balloon animal. Say no to stirrup pants, kids. You’ll be glad you did.


Lifesavers – Musk and Thirst flavours

I can’t find Thirst lifesavers anywhere, although it appears that you can still get Musk. I was amused to read a few years ago*** in Paul Lukas’ ‘Inconspicuous Consumption’ that “musk” as a notion, although one of the food groups in Australia, did not have the same presence in other markets.

I did find out that Nestle have removed all the GE ingredients from their supply chain, in a pro-active way that only marginally reduces my hatred for them. You can get more information about that at True Food, who have helpfully done all the thinking for you when it comes to reducing your GM intake.


Bum-bags, aka “fanny packs”

I don’t care what you call them. They were seven kinds of wrong. Of course, you can still get these on the internet too – high fashion if you’re on some over-60s tour, apparently. My favourite google search response on this particular query included the phrase “bum bags for survival”. Which is either a secret organisation for crazed Appalachian bum-bags, or implies that they have some kind of life-saving property of which I’m unaware.


Caramel Tracks Paddle Pops

I’m still not entirely sure why they stopped making these. My friends MW and Buddy were OBSESSED with them, to the point of buying out a whole milkbar’s supply in outback Victoria when they discovered them six months after Melbourne stores stopped stocking them. Meanwhile they’re still peddling the sick-making “rainbow” flavour. What I need is some kind of lobbying tool. Perhaps GetUp might like to be involved?





* You have NO IDEA how hard it was not to make a joke at his expense just now.

** As regular readers will have figured out, it was not ME scrawling BROS all over things....I was too busy mooning over Christian Slater.

*** whoops – make that TEN years ago.