10 things you forgot existed (and honestly, so did we)
Back in the day, these things existed. We all just forgot… until now!
Is it just us, or does it feel like the world moved on without telling us?
One minute we’re queuing outside Musica to buy the new Blaque CD, and the next minute kids are walking around with AirPods asking what a DVD is.
This morning on East Coast Breakfast, we were talking about all those things that quietly disappeared from our lives.
No dramatic farewell. No moment of silence. They just… ghosted us.
So, for the sake of nostalgia (and mild emotional damage), here’s a list of things you probably forgot even existed.
Public Phone
Remember when you’d be stranded in town with no airtime, no WhatsApp and no Google Maps. Just R2 and a phone booth?
You’d squeeze yourself in, pray it worked, and call home to say, “Mom, please tell uncle John to come fetch me” Now? Try explaining that to a Gen Z.
The Yellow Pages
It’s practically the original Google. This chunky, yellow book had every plumber, hairdresser, and dodgy takeaway joint you could think of.
If your mom said “Check in the Yellow Pages”, you knew you were about to spend the next three hours flipping through a directory thicker than a bible.
DVD’s
It was once the pinnacle of home entertainment. You weren’t a serious family unless you had The Lion King, Titanic, and a bootleg DVD with “New Release” written in koki.
Now they’re all stuck in an old CD bag somewhere. Bet you can’t find it…
Listening to music at Musica
Ask Darren - there was nothing better than walking into Musica, putting those giant headphones over your ears, and sampling the latest tracks before buying the CD.
Kids today just hit "Play" on Spotify and call it a day.
The holy book of cheat codes
Gamers, assemble. If you didn’t have a book filled with ‘GTA: San Andreas’ cheats scribbled in the back of your Maths book, were you even a real gamer?
R1, R2, L1, X, Left, Down, Right, Up… unlimited ammo, baby! You gotta be fast though, otherwise he just jumps around randomly…
ALSO READ: The SA youth that’s taking over the world
Airtime scratch cards
Remember these? You’d scratch it with a 50c coin (or a hairpin if you were desperate), punch in that 16-digit code like you were hacking NASA, and finally get R12 airtime.
That R12 lasted you for days, if not weeks! You didn’t even need data back then - just vibes!
1 cent coins
Somewhere in a house in Durban, there’s a glass Coca-Cola bottle filled with these.
Worth absolutely nothing, but we all kept them. For what reason? Nobody knows..
TVs with built-in VHS players
This was a beast of a machine. One TV, one VHS slot, and a rewind button that you had to hold down like your life depended on it.
‘Be kind, rewind’ wasn’t just a suggestion. It was a law.
RCA Cables
Before HDMI made things easy, setting up a PlayStation or PC needed a whole engineering degree.
Those red, white, and yellow RCA cables were the bane of every kid’s Saturday morning cartoons.
Landlines
Last but not least - landline phones. It was the original way to block calls from people you didn’t like.
It was the time you memorised your friend’s house number and their granny’s number.
Now if you lost your phone, you probably wouldn’t even know your own mom’s number.
Life really came at us fast, hey?
Things that felt so normal have completely disappeared, and we barely even noticed.
What else do you remember that vanished from our lives?
Let’s mourn these forgotten relics together.
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