(Working Mother, March 1980 source)
(Working Mother, July 1988 source)
Service Merchandise salespaper, February 3, 1989 (source)
I got a vintage Cuisinart food processor for Christmas, and that’s what inspired this post.
I don’t think the prices have changed that much. Kitchen Aid mixers and Cuisinarts are still crazy expensive. I remember QVC used to sell those roasters all the time.
I’ve never mentioned that when I was 8, I was obsessed with watching QVC every afternoon after school, and on the weekends. I liked watching the kitchen stuff, and of course the toys, but NOT when Bob Boringsox was on selling things.
Molly McButter, which is this salt-like seasoning that’s supposed to taste like butter, for people who can’t have butter due to health reasons, but yet its totally ok for them to dump Maltodextrin, Salt, Butter Flavor and Butter, Cornstarch, Buttermilk Solids, Tricalcium Phosphate, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean Oil*, and Extract of Annatto (Color) on food. Over 10,000 people on Facebook like Molly McButter.
“You’ve got Molly now” amuses me due to the word “Molly” taking a whole other meaning this decade.
(source)
Juice boxes hit the shelves in the United States in the early 1980s.
(Working Mother, March 1980 source)
At least 2 in 5 grandmas had Centrum or their prescription vitamins on the windowsill above the sink in their kitchen.
(Working Mother, 1988 source)
Make n shake salad dressing. I remember growing up always seeing the Good Seasonings bottles at the thrift store.
(Working Mother, July 1988 source)
Food in Zip-Pak packaging, with Hot Dogs being the first packaged. Now everything is packaged like this, and sometimes impossible to close.
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THE RUBBERMAID COOLER DIVISION! TOO COOL. (source)
Your mom had everything Rubbermaid.
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Softsoap at the sink, with either the cow or the goose on the bottle. Liquid hand soap was a luxury my house didn’t have until the late 90s. We always just used the small widdled down pieces from the bathtub to wash our hands with in the bathroom. I guess we used dishsoap in the kitchen?
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Corningware Visions cookware. Theres always this speculation online that the Visions cookware can explode in times of extreme conditions if the glassware was scratched. Snopes can’t even give a real clear answer, just some common sense tips on how to prevent breakage with glass cookware.
The Vermont Country Store is selling it now.
(source)
Black & Decker Spacemaker appliances So futuristic.
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A little TV. Did anybody in real life have a small TV in their kitchen? I always saw them on sitcoms and in commercials, but never knew anybody who actually had a TV in their kitchen.
I noticed on Bob’s Burgers, the Belchers have a TV in their kitchen, and that’s what reminded me to bring it up here.
A Wok. Either the Great Wok of China (2), or the one from the infomercial where the guy plugs Kikkoman soy sauce the whole time (which I can’t find on YouTube). If you wanted to throw authenticity totally out the door, you could have an electric wok. For that one tme you tried sir fry. Everybody was stir frying in the early 90s it seems. I think we thought it was healthier, right?
Did anybody ever use that bamboo cleaning brush? Seems like it would get .. smelly real easily. I forgot the bamboo cleaning brush existed until I watched that commercial on YouTube.
“Convenient ‘Start’ button”
(source)
Without a doubt, the hottest appliance in the kitchen in the 1980s and early 1990s was the Microwave. Of course, of course, we flew too close to the sun back then and we thought we could cook whole chickens and the Thanksgiving turkey in the Microwave (more on that later).
Or in Gilbert Gottfried’s case in the .gif above, chicken nuggets that were not soggy.
saleintothe90s 