20 Things All '60s Kids Remember

1 | Watching the Beatles rock out on the The Ed Sullivan Show

If you were a kid in 1964 and your parents owned a television, you saw the Beatles make their American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. They played five songs in all—“All My Loving,” “Till There Was You,” “She Loves You,” “I Saw Her Standing There,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand"—and every one felt life-changing. That's because every one was life-changing.

2 | Drinking Tang

There’s not a lot that’s appetizing about Tang. It’s an orange powder that you pour into water, where it magically becomes a neon orange drink that tastes sickeningly sweet. And not that we cared as kids, but nothing about it is vaguely healthy: The first ingredient is sugar, followed by fructose.

But when it was revealed that astronaut John Glennhad been chugging Tang while making his historic first trip around the globe in 1962, every kid knew that it had to become a dietary staple. If it was good enough for astronauts, it was good enough for us! (For the record, other astronauts aren't fans. Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the moon, has said that Tang is awful.)

3 | Playing with Barbie

Though this iconic doll was first introduced in 1959, it wasn’t until the '60s that Barbie topped every girl’s wish list. She followed the fashion cues of supermodel Twiggy, and soon she even had bendable legs. In no time, she was an unforgettable part of the culture at large.

4 | Watching American Bandstand

Hosted by “America's oldest teenager” Dick Clark, American Bandstand was must-see TV for every kid growing up in the '60s. Not only did the show help us discover new artists like Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder, Sonny and Cher, and Tina Turner, but it also taught us hot dance crazes like the Loco-Motion, the Watusi, and the Mashed Potato.

5 | Following the race to break Babe Ruth’s home run record

Baseball has never been more exciting than it was in 1961, when Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees were in a neck-and-neck race to break Babe Ruth's then-record 60 home runs in a single season. On Oct. 1st, during the last game of the regular season, Maris hit his 61st home run against the Boston Red Sox. As The New York Times reported at the time, “an ear-splitting roar went up as Maris, standing spellbound for just an instant at the plate, started his triumphant jog around the bases.”

6 | Watching TV on gargantuan televisions

The hi-tech flat screen TVs of today were inconceivable to '60s kids. For us, TVs were gigantic and stored in big wooden boxes that were bulky enough to be furniture. There was enough room on top of the standard TV for a family of four to have a Thanksgiving dinner. If you wanted to move a TV to another room—well, you didn’t, unless you had half a dozen burly guys to help you lift it.

7 | Riding around on banana bikes

With its high-rise handlebars, the banana bike looked like a chopper motorcycle, which instantly made it the coolest ride on the block. First produced by Schwinn in 1963, kids loved it because the padded seat made for a more comfortable ride, and it was big enough to carry more than one rider. Banana bikes lost their cachet when BMX and mountain bikes came into vogue, but Baby Boomers will never be convinced that any bike makes for a more idyllic childhood than this one.

8 | Wearing go-go boots

Although low-heeled, mid-calf boots first became available in 1964, it wasn’t until Nancy Sinatra’s 1966 hit "These Boots Are Made for Walkin’” that go-go boots became the must-have style item for girls everywhere. How could a woman reasonably be expected to “walk all over” her cheating ex-boyfriends without a pair of these hip boots?

9 | Having an Easy-Bake Oven

For the kid who couldn’t wait to grow up and become responsible for their own meals, there was the Easy-Bake Oven. Kenner Products released the iconic toy in 1963, complete with recipes to bake your own cookies, cakes, and other confections. According to the National Easy-Bake Oven Day website, more than 23 million Easy-Bake Ovens have been sold to date.

10 | Playing with Troll Dolls

Though these little dolls—first invented by a Danish woodworker in the late '50s—were supposed to be good luck, that’s not really why '60s kids were so drawn to them. As Life magazine once observed, their "tangled mops of unruly hair" were “strangely soothing to the touch.”

11 | Eating fluffernutters

The commercials explaining exactly how to make a fluffernutter made making sandwiches sound like endless fun. And not only were they fun to make—they also tasted amazing. What’s not to love about a sandwich filled with peanut butter and a metric ton of marshmallow fluff? As an adult, it’s not unusual to look back at these childhood meals with equal parts nostalgia and horror.

12 | Messing around with the Etch A Sketch

Invented by a French technician and originally called L'Ecran Magique, the Etch A Sketch bombed hard when it was introduced at a toy fair in Nuremberg in the '50s. But when an Ohio company bought the idea—for just $25,000—the magical drawing device, which uses a static charge to move around aluminum powder and plastic beads, became every '60s kid's favorite cure for boredom.

13 | Singing along to The Sound of Music

The '60s was a rewarding decade for cinema lovers, but few films connected with kids like this 1965 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The songs were fun to sing along with, and there was something about the von Trapps and their Austrian governess—played beautifully by Julie Andrews—that made us wish we could be adopted into the family.

14 | Making tie-dye

Tie-dying was the ultimate weekend crafting project in the '60s. You could spend all day just figuring out the perfect placement of rubber bands on a scrunched-up T-shirt to get the best psychedelic designs. The result was a fashion staple that made it look like you were part of Janis Joplin’s band.

15 | Abhorring Jell-O salads

They were standard on most dinner tables, and a culinary contradiction for most kids. On the one hand, they were Jell-O, which was great. But somewhere in that jiggly gelatin were things like fruit, marshmallow, nuts, and—gasp—even vegetables.

16 | Learning to do the Twist

From the moment Chubby Checkerdemonstrated the Twist on American Bandstand in 1960, it became an obsession. Kids across the country practiced the dance every chance they got, as if mastering the moves would unlock a world of instant popularity. Checker's version of "The Twist" was so huge that it reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart twice in two different years—the only time that’s ever happened. Imagine that in today’s over-saturated culture: The '60s were a time when a dance song could be hugely popular for two years in a row!

17 | Playing with G.I. Joe

When Hasbro's G.I. Joe action figure was introduced in 1964, it was like they’d tapped into every boy’s not-so-secret fantasies. Joe wasn’t just tough—he was full of grit and sneering attitude. This looked like the kind of toy that would save Barbie and Ken from a raging fire. We loved him for being (or at least appearing) stronger than we felt in our kid bodies.

18 | Marveling at the special effects in Mary Poppins

When Mary Poppins came out in 1964, it really did feel like special effects in film had reached their peak. Cartoon characters and live-action actors were interacting in the same celluloid frames, singing and dancing and behaving like they co-existed in the same reality. One minute Dick Van Dyke is tripping over animated bunnies, and the next he and Julie Andrews are riding on the shells of turtles.

19 | Bouncing the Super Ball

The Super Ball was built by a chemical engineer when he accidentally created a mysterious ball of plastic that wouldn’t stop bouncing. He sold the formula to Wham-O, who immediately recognized that a ball powered by the compound polymer Zectron would be perfect for children. They repackaged it as the “Super Ball” and sold more than 20 million of the toys to kids during the '60s, according to Time. They were such a hot toy that Wham-O could hardly keep up with the demand, at one point churning out 170,000 balls every day.

20 | Witnessing Neil Armstrong walk on the moon

It was a moment in history that nobody alive at the time will ever be able to forget. Astronaut Neil Armstrong called it "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." For all of us who saw it on TV, it was like seeing science fiction come to life.