From the mid-2000s until around the mid-2010s, I really enjoyed this board a lot for understanding the various pop cultural offerings of the present, my upbringing, and even before my time. Nowadays, I seem to have more enjoyment out of the various articles posted by Buzzfeed. That said, if you take a look at this article and see the title "24 Household Items That Were Super Popular Before 1980", you can clearly name at least half of them that were still very common well into the 1990s, and in a few cases like the View-Master, intercom systems, and TV Guide, even longer, as well as some like Caller IDs boxes, which didn't really start to take off until the early 1990s and clearly has RadioShack's 1995 logo visible. Item #5, a giant projection TV, looks very similar to the same model I visited at a friend's house across the street where I grew up, complete with the big blue/green/red circles, and most notably since it was this type of TV where I first played Super Mario World. Still, that yellow phone cord reel looks interesting and I finally know the mystery behind those lightbulb-shaped power outlets, but I don't know why old vacuum cleaners really needed a special outlet to function.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/rossyoder/popular-household-items-before-1980

I'd take those Buzzfeed lists with a grain of salt. They seem like click bait to me and are written by Millennials who wouldn't know real (or accurate) journalism if it bit them. Notice the article we are discussing was written by the food editor.

A comment on a few of the items as a Boomer who lived through the 60s, 70s and the dreaded 80s:

2. "The mechanical address book."

My grandmother always had one of these. They parts bent easily and they frequently broke, rendering the whole thing useless. My parents (and eventually me, when I had enough numbers to need a phone book) just used the regular type that was like a notebook for addresses and  phone numbers.

4. "Phone lines that you share with a few neighbors. It was called a party line."

I only remember these in my life up until about 1965 or so. Even then they were fading away. You could pay a little extra on your phone bill to have a private line.

5. "Those GIANT projection TVs the size of a closet that only looked good if you sat in the EXACT right spot in front of it. That one kid whose parents let him hook up his Nintendo to it was king."

Never saw one of these in my life.

14. "Ashtrays being EVERYWHERE. On the tables of every restaurant and in your car; if it was a fancy car, it had multiple in the front and back. Little metal ones, big ceramic ones...shoot, kids made them in scouts and at school to give as gifts to parents and grandparents!"

The ashtray pictured is a very pretty one. Yes, ashtrays would often be presented as objets d'art. They would be defiled by filthy, disgusting cigarettes and ashes. People would spit gum into them too. Blech!

7. "Reader's Digest Condensed books."

A ridiculous thing. Read the whole book for heaven's sake.

22. "Central vacuum."

I had no idea what this was, but it seemed vaguely familiar. I looked it up and apparently they are still common.

www.thinkvacuums.com/central-vacuums/installation-materials/wall-inlets.html