Post contains affiliate links. But only for a Mr Frosty, and I’d urge you not to buy one.
Life is tough for millennials. Despite the fact that the majority of us are rapidly approaching – or have reached – 40 with kids, jobs and crippling anxiety, we are still often used as a lazy stereotype of the ‘workshy want-it-all’ generation, primarily by people who probably still think of millennials as younguns.
If we are lucky, we may have just managed to scrape on to the property ladder and are paying eyewatering mortgages stretching out into the abyss. If we aren’t, then the media would have us believe it’s down to our excessive avocado and latte consumption, rather than the fact that it is no longer possible to buy a house for £21000 like our parents did.
Either way, we spend a ludicrous portion of our income on housing and we probably don’t have adequate pensions. We’ll never be able to retire and we’re all too old to get rich on TikTok.
On top of this, our childhoods were riddled with disappointments.
For many of us, the 80s and 90s are still are a huge source of sadness and despondency to this day. And not just because all our beloved children’s TV presenters have turned out to be paedophiles.
Here are some of the biggest disappointments facing the millennial generation:
- Turkish Delight tasting like your nan’s perfume despite the Narnia books/TV show making out like it was fucking amazing.
- The Pink Panther not actually being a big pink cat and instead a largely dull film about a diamond theft. You may appreciate it now, but 7 year old you did not.
- Not one single Saturday Night did Noel Edmonds ever pop out from behind the door and surprise you.
- Despite applying, you never got Jim to Fix it for you (lucky escape to be fair).
- Or go on Fun House (ditto).
- Or Knightmare. Still sad about this one.
- Watching CBBC’s Broom Cupboard on your birthday but never getting a Happy Birthday from Andi Peters.
- Sending in your artwork to Tony Hart and never having it featured.
- Absolute lack of any quicksand related drama, even though films and TV definitely prepared you for it.
- Magic Steps shoes – either they were too expensive so your mum said no, they hurt your feet, or they singularly failed to whisk you off to a magical fairy land as promised. It was just a sodding plastic key, encased in rubber.
- Not getting a Mr Frosty for Christmas.
- Getting one, and finding out it was absolutely shit. (NB you can still buy them. But don’t)
- In fact, this goes for most toys of the 80s. Advertisers would not be able to get away with the stuff they pulled then that led us to believe that ponies would fly, babies would ACTUALLY cry, and toys would generally be a lot more fun than they were.
- Excitedly opening a tin of Quality Street to find your mum’s sewing kit.
- Going through the channel tunnel and not being able to see the fish.
- Not marrying Adam Rickitt or Paul Nicholls.
- Sun-In.
- The game Mousetrap, which was absolutely nowhere near as fun as expected and never actually worked.
- Starting high school and realising it was absolutely nothing like Grange Hill had led you to believe.
- Finding out that very rarely do people actually offer you free drugs so your word-perfect rendition of Just Say No was a bit of a waste.
- Never finding a tenner in a packet of crisps.
- Easter eggs being hollow – especially Cadbury’s Creme Eggs ones – and not the gloriously calorific treat you were expecting.
- The fact that despite Tomorrow’s World promising it, we still don’t have flying cars.
- Wondering what you could do with the part of your brain that pointlessly remembers 0181 811 8181.
- Realising now that your chance to gunge someone has probably long gone.
- Becoming an adult and realising that the entire thing is vastly overrated and tedious, and you really have no idea what you’re doing.
Image credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/haikumania CC license
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As soon as I realised what that phone number was I sang the jingle in my head as I read it!
I always wanted to be on Why Don’t You, but the theme tune confused me, did they want me to watch the program or switch off the TV & go out & do something less boring instead? Which also implies the program was boring. Some may agree, but I don’t. I loved it!
I never won a Blue Peter badge, despite entering every art comp, every collectathon, I organised bring and buy sales….
To this day I consider it my greatest failure in life…
My son has one, it must be a lot easier now because I never did!
I think, provided your age is in single figures, it’s always been underwhelmingly easy to get one. I have one, and I still see the disappointment in people’s faces when they ask me how I got it, and I have to tell them it wasn’t for raising any money for charity or saving a drowning kitten, but because I sent in a shoddy drawing of the Blue Peter studio when I was about 7…
R.e the gunging – I actually made it on to a stage version of Double Dare actually hosted by Peter Simon (before he sold crap on QVC) while I was on holiday in Butlins when I was 7. Won a huge haul of prizes and was absolutely covered in the slimy gunk (no jokes please).
That is all well funny. The BBC did reply to my request for more episodes of Thunderbirds so that was a big moment. Never won any of those colouring competitions on the back of Corn Flakes packets tho – ” your own unaided work” – oh yeah?
– suffice to say my felt tips didn’t measure up to the bastard cheats who had subcontracted theirs to Banksy or whoever….
My parents bought a three bedroom semi in a smart area of town for just over £1000! Then again I’m a cusp boomer/Gen X so probably near enough your parents’ age. I think I paid £54,000 for my first house.