Seven Coolest School Supplies From "Back In The Day"

Hi there!


Another Back To School post!  Herc is back for round two to tell you all about his favorite school supplies!  


He has always enjoyed school supplies and back to school shopping, so he is pretty much an expert on all things school supply.

Let the man preach, ya'll!

7 Coolest School Supplies From "Back In The Day"

(cough*”mid to late Seventies”*cough)

These are Herc’s - put yours in your locker the comments.

Trapper Keeper

At the time these came out, they were the hottest thing going.  Kids did anything their parents asked them to just to get one of these revolutionary binders that, well, kept your Trappers.  Trappers were essentially pocket folders but rather than have horizontal pockets, they had vertical pockets so it was virtually impossible to lose your papers.  Herc saw a Trapper Keeper on sale at the store the other day for $20 - not  a vintage one but a brand new one.  Uncool.

Erasermates

These were some of the first erasable ink pens on the market.  They were cool because now all of your #2 pencils could be used in “pencil wars” where you took turns trying to break each other’s pencils by whacking them.  They didn’t work so well and some times the ink kind of clumped out and smudged and they weren’t completely erasable but as the years went on, the technology was perfected.  Herc missed out on erasable markers and erasable crayons but is ever so grateful for spellcheck.

Texas Instruments TI-30

This was the first calculator Herc ever owned and it was about the size of a really thick paperback book.  Red LED display instead of the later, sleeker black LCD.  Not to brag but he didn’t need it for math but it was fun learning math tricks (123456789 + 987654321) and spelling tricks (“7734” and “58008”).

glue sticks

Don’t know why they started kids off with paste when they were younger and then weened them onto glue, sweet Elmer’s glue.  Glue Sticks must have been invented by a teacher/mom to eliminate sticky messes.  Gluing was never as fun after they came along although daring kids to apply it like lip stick to their own lips sure was fun.  Hercyesneverhediddidthis.

jumbo crayons

Crayons, particularly Crayola Crayons, have always been a passion for Herc.  He did whatever it took to get the biggest box, the one with the most colors and the sharpener.  It all started with those jumbo crayons you get in kindergarten. 4-5-6-8 to a box.   You could color for hours with just one crayon, applying a thin layer of wax over the whole piece of paper and then scratching it off to reveal other colors underneath.  

Big Chief tablets

The originals were mighty fine but then the Son Of Big Chief tablets came out with the cooler, hipp(i)er Indian head on the cover and it was game, set and match.  Now that schools are doing away with teaching kids how to write cursive, soon there will be no need for paper in schools at all.  Good?  Bad?  Sad?  Remember getting a page fresh off the mimeograph back then and smelling it?  Herc does.

Evel Knievel Lunch Box

Some kids brought their lunches to school in brown paper bags.  Some kids got lunch free from school because they were “less fortunate”.   The rest of us rocked a decorated metal lunch box, a kiddied up version of that working man staple, the lunch pail.  With a matching Thermos, no less.  If you took care of your lunch box and never played “kick it” or attacked a classmate using it as a weapon, you could maybe make it last two years.  Most of Herc’s lunch boxes never made it through one year.  He’d accidentally leave something in it over Christmas break and then he’d have to throw it out because the stink wouldn’t wash out of it or it would fail to survive an ill-advised game of “kick it” on the way home from school.  (“Mom, my lunch box is broken!”  “What happened?”  “I dropped it.”)  The two coolest ones I ever owned were plastered with images of Hot Wheels and Evel Knievel, the Tiger Woods of the Seventies.  Once plastic lunch boxes showed up, the thrill was gone.