History's Dumpster = GLORIOUS trash! Kitsch, music, fashion, food, history, ephemera, and other memorable and forgotten, famous and infamous pop culture junk and oddities of yesterday and today. Saved from the landfill of time...
In 1983, the generic brand craze had extended into the record business. And CBS Records test marketed a new type of no-frills single in the Seattle area.
They sold for 69¢, in a plain, no-frills stock sleeve. They still played at 45 RPM, but the spindle hole was the same as a standard LP. And there was no B-Side. Just a stamped CBS logo imprint in the vinyl.
They're extremely rare and VERY collectible today.......
If you grew up in the Pacific Northwest from the '60s to the '80s, you no doubt remember this sign:
Pay 'n Save's ubiquitous blue/green block letter signs were everywhere in strip malls, REAL malls and shopping centers all over the Pacific Northwest, well into California and as far east as Montana and Wyoming.
The Seattle based drug store chain's blue/green colour scheme did not end at just their signs. Their stores interiors and their house brand of products all had it too.
....and their bags.....
I worked at a Pay n' Save. And at the end of the day, after I came home and I took my blue vest, blue pants and green work shirt off. I immediately took a shower to make absolutely sure I got ALL this blue/green crap off of me. Just to make sure.....
You quickly begin to HATE corporate colour schemes in a few weeks.
Some old timers I remember still got away with this shirt
Pay 'n Save grew to be force to be reckoned with. QUICKLY. (Even at their ORIGINAL location at 4th & Pike Street in Seattle, which - KUDOS for them, was STILL in business. until the day Pay 'n Save went officially bankrupt.)
They also had a hydroplane, the popular Miss Pay 'n Save.
It acquired Fred Ernst's hardware chain and Malmo Nurseries in 1959. And the snazziest department store this side of Frederick & Nelson, Rhodes in 1968....
The Rhodes department store chain became Lamont's in 1970.
The Pay 'n Save Empire had grown to also include Schuck's Auto Supply, Yard Birds and Bi-Mart. But like many regional retail chains, over expansion in the '70s, various ownerships and increased competition from national chains in the '80s led to the once giant retailer's demise in the late '80s. Pay 'n Save was sold to competitor Payless Drug in 1989 and Payless was absorbed by the national Rite-Aid chain in 1996.
Generic products (not to be confused with store or house brand named products, although they are identical in quality) were a fad of the early 1980s. With stark packaging, listing little more than the product name, ingredients, nutritional information, manufacturer and UPC bar code.
The idea behind them was by eliminating the cost for logos, descriptive copy, and photos/illustrations on the packaging, the savings could be passed on to consumers. Even though much of these were stock images anyway and in reality bore little extra cost in the actual manufacturing process.
It's been said generic products were factory seconds and had little to no taste or nutritional value. That was pretty much false as generic products were often manufactured at the same processing plants as name brand items (even on the same lines!) and in any blindfolded test it was hard to tell the difference between say, a generic can of corn and a name brand one. And some even thought the generic packaged products tasted better.
First appearing in 1981, they reached their peak in 1983 and 1984. However, as I mentioned, the savings from printing on the labels was very small overall and many retail chains began repackaging their generic products under house/store brand names. They completely disappeared by 1988
They were often in uniform aisles in the store, where every item was generic.
They looked like this.....
....but felt like this.
The rock group Public Image Ltd. famously spoofed the generic craze on their 1985 album, simply titled Album (for vinyl releases) Cassette (for cassette releases of Album) and Compact Disc (for CD releases of Album)
It was once EVERYWHERE. But IMPOSSIBLE to find at virtually every supermarket today. And it is a question I get asked a lot. And as an authority on forgotten junk, I've had a hard time trying to answer this one (especially with a straight face.) But here goes:
Whatever happened to the coloured toilet paper of the '60s and '70s?
Well, the simplest answer would be look at the most common colours of toilet paper back then themselves. Pink, Green and Powder Blue.
Northern and Scott were ubiquitous in EVERY home with coloured bathrooms
In the '50s and '60s, many new homes were manufactured with bathroom sinks, tubs and toilets in matching colours of - of course, Pink, Green and Powder Blue. Women of that day expected a perfectly matching colour scheme in the bathroom.
Another place was the kitchen. Where appliances, countertops/cabinetry and fixtures also had to PERFECTLY match (Avocado Green anyone?)
But by the late '70s, fewer homes were made with such creepy colour matches. What looked good for one time rarely looked good in another and "colour neutral" became the trend in the '80s and '90s. And what could be more colour neutral than no colour at all?
A second answer is the environment. Although coloured and printed toilet paper began disappearing in the late '80s, it's long been said the dyes and perfumes used in coloured toilet paper then were harmful to the environment. But not a single iota of actual PROOF of this has ever been established.
In reality, the first answer is the most logical one. Times and popular taste had simply changed. Many of these old homes from the '50s and '60s underwent massive remodeling in the '80s to today and one of the first things to go was the old bathroom and kitchen fixtures.
But ironically, coloured bathroom and kitchen fixtures are making a comeback. In wilder colours than ever. And, in spite of all environmental claims about it, there's even a demand for matching coloured toilet paper again.
Scotch Buy was a house brand of the Safeway supermarket chain in the 1980s. It covered many products ranging from canned food to paper towels to beer and cigarettes.
