Boomers Tokens of Appreciation—Giving Thanks for All the Things That Made the Baby Boom So Great

We’d like to give a few Baby Boomers tokens of appreciation and say “hats off” to all the things that made the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s such a great time to grow up.

Truth is, coming up with the questions (more than 2,200 of them!) for our pop culture trivia game Boom Again made us realize just how special the Baby Boom era was. From the games we played to the foods we ate to the way our parents raised us—it was a time like no other. No wonder we had so much fun looking back at those years!

So, you may ask, what is it about the Baby Boom that we now have a whole new appreciation for…?

Lots and Lots of Kids to Pal Around With

They didn’t call it a Baby Boom for nothing. The 1950s actually holds the record for most babies born per year—around 4 million on average.  All those kids meant that you usually had someone to play with. Siblings. A gaggle of cousins. The kids on the block. The cousins of the kids on the block.

If you were bored, all you had to do was walk outside, look for the pile of bikes in front of a house, and head on over.

We Can’t Hand Out Boomers Tokens of Appreciation Without Mentioning the Great Outdoors

Baby Boomers weren’t hanging around on the couch all day playing video games. Instead, our parents chucked us out the door in the morning and expected us to make our own fun. And we did.

Whether it was climbing trees, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk, or getting together a neighborhood game of tag or Red Rover, outside was the place to be.

Not Everything Was Disposable

Milk was delivered to your porch in glass bottles that were then rinsed out and picked back up. Diapers were cloth. You ate off real plates and drank water from a glass, not a plastic bottle.

As Boomers, we recycled and reused before we knew recycling and reusing was cool.

Jell-O Made Everything a Little More Fun… and Wiggly

There was always room for Jell-o—and it was a dessert staple for Baby Boom kids. Oddly enough, you’d could also find a Jell-o mold stuffed with veggies as your salad course. Or—sometimes alarmingly—with shrimp or hot dog slices or some unidentifiable protein suspended inside and served up as the main dish.

Not every Jell-o recipe was a hit with the kids, but one can argue they were always an adventure!

TV Wasn’t Available 24/7

We’re including this in our Boomers tokens of appreciation because there’s something to be said for stepping away from the boob tube—even if it’s only because the TV went to bed for the night. Do you remember how at midnight, the National Anthem would play on the three or so channels available? Then it was static until the morning.

If you woke up in the night, instead of reaching for the remote (partly because there was no remote) you might instead read a book. Or, even better, you’d roll over and go back to sleep.

You Could Watch a Movie in Your Car

The Baby Boom was the hey-day of the drive-in movie. People could sit in their cars. They could smoke. They could bring snacks from home without having to smuggle them in. Nobody cared if the baby was crying.

Plus, there was something about watching a movie under the stars that made it so much more fun than a theater.

We Were There for the Birth of the Space Program

It’s hard to believe that NASA hasn’t been around forever, but it was actually created in 1958. Baby Boomers were the first generation to witness rockets heading into space, then circling the Earth, then—and we were all glued to our TVs for this one—man’s first steps on the moon.

No wonder so many Boomer kids listed “astronaut” as their career goal.

Silly Putty Still Worked

This may be the tiniest of Boomer tokens of appreciation, but they say it’s the small things that count. We’re talking about Silly Putty. Remember how you could squash it against the Sunday funnies and it would pick up the image of the comics?

Well, it’s a good thing we enjoyed it while we could, because that trick doesn’t work anymore. It’s not Silly Putty’s fault, though. It’s advances in newspaper printing that mean ink doesn’t as easily rub off.

Nobody Expected You to Know Everything

Back in the Boom era, there was no Google. No Siri. If you wanted to know something, you had to exercise your brain to remember it. Or call a friend to give their brain a workout. Or look it up in an Encyclopedia. Or, and this may seem impossible for today’s kids to understand, just not know.

By the way, that’s part of the fun of our Boom Again trivia game—you get to team up with friends to recall the answers to questions about pop culture in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. And if you don’t remember?

Answers are right on the back of the game card!

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