What products that your family regularly bought growing up would you never buy today?

[opps]

I don't know if you can still get this (as in the original product), but I used to love the smell of creosote when I was a boy. Mum used to treat the garage with it, happy days!

You can still buy it but it is not legally available to DIYers. From memory, containers have to be no smaller than 25L and you are not legally allowed to use it on any wood that a child might come in to contact with.

I too love the smell, but only from a distance. I once painted about 60m of 6ft fencing with it on a hot day and felt awful the next day.

 

[securespark]

Perchance the awful feeling was as much from staying out in the heat all day as the creosote?

I had a pressurised sprayer with a shoulder strap that I used for creosote.

 

[opps]

I recall we had Birds Eye rissoles once a week. I quite liked them. Haven't seen them since the mid 80s though.

StackPath

Something else that is no longer available is the vinaigrette coleslaw by M&S (as a kid I hated mayonnaise, and it had none).

 

[Brigadier]

My dad used to mix creosote with used engine oil (acquired from my mechanic uncle).
The rain bounced off the fence

Dare say the soil is still poisoned though!

 

[opps]

Perchance the awful feeling was as much from staying out in the heat all day as the creosote?

I had a pressurised sprayer with a shoulder strap that I used for creosote.

I am a decorator, I am used to working in constant sunlight when painting exteriors.

 

[JohnD]

Wright's coal tar soap?

It's not the same product as it used to be -it used to be a see through amber colour, now it's opaque and a different formula. I buy it from Home Bargains. I use it in the bath and as soon as the dog hears me pick it up, she comes running in - she loves the taste of it. She doesn't react like that to any other soaps.

You can still get Pears Transparent Soap, which is amber. We have some here. I just checked and it is not packaged as Coal Tar. I think it might be a glycerine soap.

I'd guess the Coal Tar soap was considered to be disinfectant, or kill nits or something

 

[Brigadier]

Steamed puddings in a tin.

I had a hankering for one, so went to purchase.

After drawing a blank in aldi, tesco, Sainsbury's, I asked an assistant in Asda.

She said they had stopped selling them decades ago

They're in plastic and foil now.

 

[opps]

You can still get Pears Transparent Soap, which is amber. We have some here. I just checked and it is not packaged as Coal Tar. I think it might be a glycerine soap.

I'd guess the Coal Tar soap was considered to be disinfectant, or kill nits or something

It was deemed to be carcinogenic

Coal Tar

Coal tar is no longer legal in cosmetics. It was banned in 2005, in the process destroying two really well known brands: Vosene and Wright’s Coal Tar soap. There was evidence that coal tar …

colinsbeautypages.co.uk

 

[opps]

Steamed puddings in a tin.

I had a hankering for one, so went to purchase.

After drawing a blank in aldi, tesco, Sainsbury's, I asked an assistant in Asda.

She said they had stopped sticking them decades ago

They're in plastic and foil now.

When I was at uni, some bloke decided to move in to our flat (without asking us). One day he put a (read: my) steamed pudding tin in a sauce pan. He fell asleep and let the pan run dry. I spent much of the next day trying to remove splatters of treacle pudding off the ceiling. I had to bin the sauce pan because it was so deformed.

 

[Brigadier]

It was deemed to be carcinogenic

Coal Tar

Coal tar is no longer legal in cosmetics. It was banned in 2005, in the process destroying two really well known brands: Vosene and Wright’s Coal Tar soap. There was evidence that coal tar …

colinsbeautypages.co.uk

As is now being out all day in the sun, "playing" (remember that?), without any such thing as sun cream.........

Happy days

 

[JohnD]

I'm not convinced that coal tar soap was transparent. I recall my grandfather used it as shaving soap, and it was orange with a distinctive scent.

 

[opps]

As is now being out all day in the sun, "playing" (remember that?), without any such thing as sun cream.........

Happy days

As a kid, I loved to love standing behind a car and sniff the 5 star exhaust fumes, doesn't mean that it was good for me...

Most cases of skin cancer are identified in the older range groups. I think it reasonable to assume that exposure to UV light has a cumulative effect.

Melanoma skin cancer statistics

The latest melanoma skin cancer statistics for the UK for Health Professionals. See data for incidence, mortality, survival, risk and more.

www.cancerresearchuk.org

 

[Brigadier]

As a kid, I loved to love standing behind a car and sniff the 5 star exhaust fumes, doesn't mean that it was good for me...

Quite so but, as I said, happy days

 

[Justin Passing]

I remember tobacco stain coloured soap too. Plenty of coal tar extracts still being used, to good effect apparenly, particularly the shapoos. I had some tar unguent prescribed donkeys ago, which worked better on a dry rash than cortizones. It went and didn't come back.

Wikipedia: "For over 150 years, Wright’s Coal Tar Soap was a popular brand of household soap; its successor, Wright’s Traditional Soap, can still be bought in supermarkets and from chemists worldwide. The original product was developed by William Valentine Wright in 1860 from "liquor carbonis detergens", the liquid by-product of the distillation of coal to make coke; the liquid was made into an antiseptic soap for the treatment of skin diseases. However, Wright’s Traditional Soap contains no coal tar, this having been replaced by tea tree oil for its antibacterial properties."

One of the chemically-similar-thought-line shampoos is Capasal - coconut extracts I think. Tiny qty needed, a bottle lasts forever.

 

[Brigadier]

Smelling salts.

Gave my bottle to my sister, many years ago.

Must get another one......