FISH pedicures were everywhere, until they vanished so thoroughly you feel crazy for insisting they existed. Along with these former commonplaces:
Car anti-static strips
In the late 80s and early 90s, Britain was very conscious of the dangers of static build-up. We’d all seen neighbours launched 15ft into the air from the static charge of a Ford Granada. So we all affixed short trailing strips to the back of our cars to earth them. And, at some unspecified point, each of us individually realised this was bollocks.
Fish pedicures
Those years when fish would eat dead skin off your feet in a shopping mall feel like an intrusion from another reality. You wouldn’t have believed it beforehand and you don’t believe it happened now. And it turns out disgusting warm tubs of fish in a former Dolcis aren’t that safe and you could get hep C.
iPads
Tech experts were sceptical when the iPad was launched. ‘What’s the point?’ they said, as we bought them and loved them in our tens of millions. We never admitted the experts were right. We just quietly never replaced them or gave them to kids.
Pulled pork
Just a few years ago we insisted our pork was pulled. Nobody would go near unpulled pork. Did the pandemic kill it? Will it come up at the Covid inquiry? Nowadays we don’t give a shit, a great relief for those who never knew what pulling pork involved and it was too late to ask.
In-flight entertainment
Describing a crap Drew Barrymore romcom as ‘the kind of film you watch on a plane’ still makes sense, just about, even though all those tiny seatback screens vanished, unnoticed and unmourned, about a decade or so ago. Along with ten million pairs of crappy airplane headphones that we’ve thoughtfully buried in landfill for future generations.
School Discos
Not the actual thing for actual kids, but men and women dressing as schoolchildren, getting pissed and snogging each other, which is so psychologically transparent the 00s phenomenon presumably died of shame. Were you unpopular at school? Are you trying to make up for it? Is this a distinctly noncey concept for a night out?
