Category: nostalgia

Once I thought about fountains in malls yesterday, I had to try to find pictures of them. There aren’t a lot of high-quality images out there, but they’re out there (the r/deadmalls Reddit forum is a good one).

Reddit came through and gave me a photo of the fanciest mall of my youth, Crossroads, with a fountain AND a skylight AND four stories of escalators (and a Cinnabon on the lowest level when I worked there):

The r/nostalgia thread turned up a few more, including the smoking area by the mall fountain:

My search also turned up the book Meet Me by the Fountain (best title), which “chornicles postwar architects’ and merchants’ invention of the mall, revealing how the design of these marketplaces played an integral role in their cultural ascent.” Guess I’ll have to read that!

I went down a rabbit hole of 80s toy images the other day. Looking at the toy lines as an adult, you can see how it was all just a big money grab for the companies–“Oh, they love the ponies? How about WINGED ponies? And BABY ponies? And SEA ponies? And a special version of each with different accessories??”–but I detoured into packaging and ephemera and wow, core memories. I remember just gazing at all of these, reading the words over and over, getting lost in the art.

I’m pretty sure this wrapping paper was the foundation of my entire adult aesthetic:

I clearly remember this being my first exposure to the word “pizzazz.” (Also PONY ROLLER SKATES.)

The 80s meets Art Nouveau (also that car was the coolest; thank you, coked-out toy designer for saying, “This doll needs…a Hispanio-Suiza, but if it were a rose! With a rumble seat!!”).

A deep cut but the art style of that fruit has stayed with me for forty years:

This is absolutely where I got my love of involved backstories about any item from. (And I am still perplexed how the jeans fit into the botanicals.)

And the OG, the art from the Sanrio paper bags of the early 80s. I know going to a Sanrio store and smelling the plastic and buying some erasers to surreptitiously gnaw on later and getting it all put in a bag like this would fix everything in my life.