I remember supermarkets were like 1/3 the size they are today, and there were way fewer choices of everything. It still seemed like plenty.

The idea of a supermarket with entire aisles devoted to nothing but cereals, or salad dressings, or different brands of bottled water, would have been laughable. There were like 2 brands of jarred pasta sauce, Ragu and Prego.

Yeah, there were 2 choices of a whole bunch of stuff... ketchup, Heinz or Hunt's (yuck)... mustard, French's or Guldens'... when Grey Poupon came out, the choices became overhelming!

Now there must be 50 of each in a typical large chain supermarket.

No squeeze bottle anything. Nothing was safety sealed. No bottled water.

No.

I'm still shocked that this is a thing. In fact, I think even most marketers were shocked this was pulled of. The going thought in the early to mid 90s was "Americans won't pay for something they essentially get for free." Yeah, just tell a whole **** ton of lies about water safety, get the conspiracy theorists on board and say Hitler created fluoride to keep people docile (totally disregarding that was far from a docile era), and boom, we have bottled water.

At one store I worked at before all this came about, we would sell gallon bottles of distilled or spring water. I think they were 25c each.

A quote I heard over a decade ago still rings true: "**** got expensive when they figured out people would actually pay $12 / gallon for water."

My parents used to let me outside on my own at a very young age, sometimes quite late at night. Like, go outside on the streets and don't come back till dinnertime at the age of eight; probably even younger. Something happened in between then and now, and I'm not sure what it was.

The Information Age is what happened.

It used to be that people watched the local news and rarely heard about world events unless it was something major.

Now you can hear or read about everything from everywhere at anytime.

Good point, I guess.

Parents must naturally be weak tight, then, because if you don't encounter paedophiles, being outside on your own at a young age is good for you.

I don't think so. During the mid nineties, you started seeing kids on leashes, kids on bicycles with so much padding they couldn't ride on it without tipping over, and a general air of over-protective parenting. This is before the internet became huge huge.

I think the world just wasn't so scary at some point. The Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War was over. The crack epidemic sort of petered off. Aids wasn't a mysterious threat. The only thing left to fear was ourselves.

An argument can be made that cable tv was a kick start to what most people consider the Information Age.

In the early 90's there were several 24hr cable news channels reporting anything and everything. CNN even had a guy reporting under a table during the Gulf War.

I believe it was three guys in a Baghdad hotel and they were reporting as serious US bombing was occurring. One of them was the venerable CNN news anchor Bernard Shaw. I believe he was CNN's first ever prime time news anchor.

I think there is a new mentality going on as well:

http://qz.com/273255/how-american-pa...ican-marriage/

To understand the frightening power of the parenthood religion, one need look no further than the 2005 essay in The New York Times by Ayelet Waldman, where the author explained that she loved her husband more than her four children. On “Oprah Where Are They Now,” the author recently reaffirmed the sentiments reflected in her New York Times article, and she added that her outlook has had a positive impact on her children by giving them a sense of security in their parents’ relationship. Following the publication of her essay, Waldman was not only shouted down by America for being a bad mother; strangers threatened her physically and told her that they would report her to child protective services.

Would be true even 20 years ago?

edit to add: I meet a lot of people who straight-up hate their family and parents. Was this common back in those days? I met people from England who found this shocking.

I think it was a combination of a whole bunch of things that could fall under the rubric of "nothing bad should ever happen to anyone, ever."

When I was younger, bad stuff happened to people all the time. You just kinda shrugged it off. There were more important things to worry about than the slings and arrows of childhood. When half your family was dead by age 55, and all your stuff was always breaking, and you didn't have money to pay the bills, you didn't worry too much if your kid skipped school one day a week. Hell, I used to write my own absence notes. My Mom just didn't give a ****. The school didn't give a ****.

The subtle upside is that you could DO stuff that would be forbidden today. Some days you kicked ass (metaphorically or literally), some days you got your ass kicked. I don't know if it was better or not, but it was certainly different.

I'm not sure what all that is about, but the fact that anybody gives a **** whether you love your children or spouse more shows that we all have too much time on our hands.

Damn, I want to be a kid again.

I remember being excited to wake up at 7am on a Saturday in the 90s because of the plethora of awesome cartoons. Now with a 4yo son I only see there is **** on tv imo. Also remember being able to go to the local schools after hours or on weekends to play with friends but now it seems every campus is a 'closed' campus with 7ft wrought iron fencing surrounding it. Wtf is that about?

Im trying to remember what we had. Bugs bunny, johnny quest. Anyone remember the banana splits?

I remember back in the day, if you wanted to play basketball, you just went to the closest school. Now, you can't get close to a hoop at a school.

In the summer they would open up the gyms at the local elementary schools along with stuff like balls and box hockey (remember that?). Although it was supervised there wasnt really an itinerary so the kids could play whatever they wanted. I spent most of my days there.

Chocolate cigarettes for kids, LOL.

Loved Johnny Quest, was always my favorite cartoon. And, Yes, certainly remember the Banana Splits. Watched that goofy thing all the time.

I remember liking the theme song.

Especially if your naked! What has happened to society

And "Super Chicken."

The Warner Bros. cartoons (Bugs, Porky, Daffy etc.) and Rocky and Bullwinkle were the gold standard when I was a kid. Heckle and Jeckle, Might Mouse and Woody Woodpecker were okay but then there was the crap like Dudley Doright, Magilla Gorilla, Mr. Peabody, Quick Draw McGraw and all of that Huckleberry Hound type of crap.

Then as I got a little older the most awesome Saturday morning show ever popped up.