The most valuable thing for a Soviet child was collecting anything and everything. Remember the cabinets plastered with turbo stickers, the huge stacks of candy wrappers and cardboard chips. And how the exchange took place is hochma. Let's plunge into childhood and remember what we saved.
Let's start with stamps.
Only the lazy did not collect stamps; surely someone still had albums with the collection.
Soviet, Polish, Cuban...
Moreover, CUBA was always and certainly read as “SIVA” and I did not have the slightest idea that it existed.
This is the album I had:
Foreign brands were valued the most. They were beautiful and unusual - with non-Russian letters:
But the most valuable ones are triangular and quicklime, i.e. without stamp.
One of my favorite episodes was this one:
And the best one is this one:
ICONS
Not to say that I passionately hoarded badges, but we still had plenty of them - in a box with buttons, on the carpet, on pennants, on our chests, under the sofa, in toys...
Among my friends, badges were not particularly valued, so a badge you liked could easily be begged for as a gift.
The USSR loved badges. They loved to make them, they loved to give them for any occasion, they loved to buy them. Parents always received badges at work. Either honorary warriors, or for social competition, or for participation in an exhibition... The motivation system was extremely primitive and cheap. If you excel, get a badge and be proud. And they were proud. They worked not for money, but for an idea. And an icon. Therefore, there were not so many icons - there were a lot of them. Different. And even funny ones:
And even these...
With the advent of the nineties, Soviet aluminum stamped badges lost their relevance. New cartoons have come to us, replacing the Wolf, Hedgehog, Hare and other heroes. Our chests and briefcases were covered with Disney characters:
We grew up, and the icons “grew and matured” with us:
“I bought myself a badge...”. What a deep thought...
COINS
Like stamps, everyone had foreign or antique coins. I won’t believe it if you say that you didn’t have GDR pfennigs, Bulgarian stotinki or Polish groschen. There were a lot of coins from the countries of the socialist camp among the people - some served, some were on vacation, some were just there. And everyone was carrying coins, which quickly went from hand to hand.
And who, having found a pre-reform “troika” or “nickel” among the coins given by their mother for bread, did not put it aside in their treasured piggy bank? These coins of the 30s-50s were somehow different from the post-reform ones. Curls, a different number of ribbons on the coat of arms, different letters, font... Remember the legendary film "The Money Changers" - it's just about these coins :)
Coins were exchanged for stamps, badges and back. They also played “chick” with coins, but this was a popular game, earning themselves money for ice cream, cigarettes, chewing gum and suckers. For some reason I buried my collection of coins in the ground, having read pirate novels... And now I regret it - there were such cool ones...
SOUVENIRS
Well, it probably won’t be so interesting for girls, but for boys.... :)
How do you feel when you see these cars? :) Same as me?
And like this?
Are you drooling? Yeah, these are great collections. I didn't have half of it. But they were the most precious thing I had. Literally and figuratively. They cost a lot. For example, I bought a Volga GAZ-2402 Aeroflot for 10 rubles:
And the Niva was not cheap either:
POSTCARDS
But now the girls can come back to us again - we remember our countless treasures :)
I don’t know if you now send postcards to your family and friends by regular mail? I think
Well, modern youth may no longer understand how and why, if there are Yandex, Mail and others services :) But we appreciated every postcard that we found in our mailbox before March 8, February 23, May 1, in the afternoon birthday and New Year. Each card was unique in its own way. Warm words, “Hello, my dears” at the beginning, “kisses” at the end... A piece of warmth, soul and heart...
They were beautiful.
Kind ones.
Cheerful.
Funny.
Serious.
And in general, there were a lot of them. So many that we hoarded them.
CALENDARS
We didn't have calendars on the iPhone, computer or phone. Therefore, we celebrated the birthdays of mom, dad, sister, brother, friend, girlfriend, doll and, finally, ours with a pen in paper calendars. There were also enough of them to start collecting them.
Calendars, like badges, were issued for any occasion. They also featured cartoon characters:
And cute cats and dogs:
And social advertising, like “Matches are not a toy for children.” Or “In case of fire, call 01.”
There were types of cities:
And other stuff...
But the coolest ones are stereo...
We called them “iridescent”. Turn it at one angle - one scene, at another - another. Like mini comics.
TRANSLATION STICKERS
Another fashionable hobby was collecting and pasting pictures, called “translations”, wherever possible:
The technology for gluing them was not easy and required skill:
I often “messed up” part of the picture, because... the film was extremely thin and delicate. But this did not at all darken the joy of seeing a new picture...
...on the kitchen wall...
...on the nightstand in the hallway....
...on the bathroom tiles...
...on the bread bin...
Translators with the faces of different women were very popular:
The girls pasted them on the covers of their diaries :)
And I liked cartoon characters. First the Soviets:
Then Disney ones:
MATCH LABELS AND COLORED MATCHES
I also saved labels from matchboxes. And they didn’t even need to be torn off at all - collecting these small pictures in the USSR was completely “legal” - you could easily buy a set of labels at Soyuzpechat.
Of course, the sets quickly became boring and it was “not sporty,” so peeling the labels off the boxes was a more interesting way to accumulate.
I also liked collecting colored matches. They were very rare, because besides the brown ones, we saw practically no others.
BOTTLE CAP
They were always standard - dirty golden. Be it beer or lemonade - a tin, and under it a white rubber band, with which they took a photograph, pressing it tightly to the image in the newspaper. Therefore, the extremely rare colored corks that came across on the street were worth their weight in gold.
CIGARETTE PACKS
Do you feel like we are getting closer to the main thing? :) Let's talk about packs:
Has your chest sank? Names of the 90s: "PallMall", "Magna", "Sovereign", "Fine 120", "Lucky Strike", "Sea" :)
Anyone who started smoking at what time, admit it :) I did at 13. I quit that same year. Forever. The first cigarettes I bought were “Rodopi” (“smoke, girls, Rodopi, so that your tits don’t grow on your butt,” “smoke, boys, PalMal, so that something doesn’t fall off”). And before that, I’m ashamed to admit, they collected bulls, crushed the remains into newspaper and tarred them under the balcony.
It was lucky to find one with menthol... Damn, let's shoot up - did you do that? Or were we the only such beggars? 8-0 It’s a shame to even remember...
But here there are some pretty cool packs - few people had them:
By the way, somewhere in the collection there is half a pack of Camel. I specially preserved it: I put silica gel inside and sealed it with polyethylene. For some reason, there was a belief that cigarettes only got stronger and more valuable over time... Should I check?...
JARS!
Jars! Jars!
One could sincerely envy such a “wall”!
But among my friends, no one had that much. It was something like this:
Jars have always been given the most honorable place in the room. A kind of red corner. So that all visiting friends can immediately see the collection.
Many jars were picked up on the street. They even took heavily wrinkled and flattened ones - everything was easily straightened, just give time and a pencil. It was not a pity to spend an evening on a crumpled rare jar - straightened it was valued no less. The jars were divided according to shape: “house”, “straight”, “long” (0.5). "Domikom" is the most common and common form. “Straight” ones were rare - they did not have a narrowing at the top and bottom (a smooth cylinder).
WRAPPERS AND WRAPPERS
The girls often collected candy wrappers. First these:
We made “secrets” in the ground from multi-colored gold flakes, which we boys proudly destroyed like mines. And even the girl’s tears didn’t touch us...
Friends, who remembers the famous chocolate bars "Boniface's Vacation"??? I have been looking for any information about these bars for a long time. Are they being released now? Does anyone have a photo of them?
They were a heavenly delight! They were brought only from Moscow and given out at home strictly in portions :) As I remember now: inside there was white, delicate nougat, a thin fruit lozenge and a thick, thick layer of chocolate. And a beautiful candy wrapper with different scenes from the cartoon:
Muscovites, maybe someone has some lying around? - Scan, please!
In the 90s, when the Mars-Snickers-Stimorol invasion began, I myself began collecting bright, polymer packaging for chocolates and cookies. Let's remember what we enjoyed:
Well, a magical Milky-Way chest with LEGO elements. Remember? :)
PHOTOS OF Jocks AND KARATEKISTS
I'll start with this photo found on the Internet:
YES, right?
These are our idols. We were ready to pay hard-earned money for them in video stores. Their photos have always been with us.
Do you remember how you practiced the double strike on the wooden sculptures in the yard? They were imitated. Wushu and kickboxing sections grew like mushrooms - demand created supply.
Beloved Bruce Lee never smiled in photographs - he always had stripes on his stomach and cheekbones.
The rocking chairs were simply overcrowded. There was a reason:
"Conan the Barbarian", "Red Sonja" - cult films of the 90s.
Didn't smile from photographs and "Rambo":
Photos were re-photographed, sold, bought, changed. In addition to them, successful drawings from photographs were also in use:
These were our idols. Strong, honest, fair.
Not like now - some motherfuckers from “House-2”...
My older brother and sister were also “driven” by the photos. According to these:
But this one hung in our house for a long time:
There was also some lady in leopard pants - someone terribly popular in the 70s-80s.
NUMBERS FROM CHEESE
Yes, I'm with
I took them too :)
KINDER SURPRISE
No comments:
We saved everything.
Well, we have come to the final section of the collections. Perhaps the gathering of these ... was of a massive epidemic nature. Boys, girls. Well, that's just it.
INSERT
Among Soviet chewing gums, of course, there was not such variety as appeared with the advent of the 90s. However, they were there. I think no one will find it difficult to remember Rotfront’s “Coffee Aroma”, “Mint”, “Orange”, “Strawberry”:
Soviet chewing gum wrappers were boring and of no collectible interest. Another thing, "Pedro":
You could buy or win it at visiting amusement parks. As a rule, there were no inserts there. Yes, we didn’t know anything about them yet. They will come later, in the 90s. Among the “foreign” chewing gums brought by friends from abroad, the following were common:
"Lelik and Bolek":
This is Polish chewing gum. Also a package with five records, however, with more interesting pictures. We called them "mixies." They talked about the adventures of the heroes of the then popular Polish cartoon of the same name. My older brother had a lot of these, but his friends didn't. Apparently, this chewing gum was common in the 70s and early 80s.
I really liked these stories. My brother always jokingly called me Lyolik-bolek, so I thought that it was me in the pictures :)
My brother’s collection also included these wrappers:
And, of course, "Tutti-frutti"!
I didn’t chew any of this chewing gum. All I could do was smell the inheritance I had received :) And then I didn’t even suspect what awaited me in 5-7 years...
However, I have never seen it on sale here. Again, the wrappers came from those who traveled to the GDR.
By the way, I don’t remember at what time this Georgian Armenian chewing gum was sold:
It depicted the heroes of a Soviet cartoon about a furrier cat.
Who needed it like this when we already knew chewing gum with... INSERTS!
Here I’ll pull myself together a little and won’t describe each one individually. The Internet is full of resources where you can find a complete description of all chewing gum with inserts, download scans of complete collections, etc. I do not set such a task. I'll go over the topic superficially.
Let me start by saying that I remember the excitement in the yard when someone said that new chewing gum was being sold in our store. It was a sensational effect. Everyone immediately ran to this store and stood near the counter for an hour, looking at this miracle... The next day I begged my mother for money and ran to the treasured place...
As a result, my first chosen chewing gum was... the golimy "Bubblegum":
Then "Donald" was purchased:
His inserts were highly prized. After "Turbo", of course :)
They also received the name “mixies” or “cartoons”.
I have accumulated a whole stack of “Donalds”. Some were won from friends, some were bought, some were begged at the entrance to the store. Everyone remembers how they played, right? They dropped the inserts, placed them face down in a stack and slammed their palms so that the turbulent flow caused the inserts to fly up. Those that were placed face up were taken by the participant in the game.
There were other “Donalds” - giant ones:
These are inserts of German chewing gum, which was not sold here. They were extremely rare and incredibly expensive! As a rule, they were already pretty tattered, as they passed from hand to hand like a relic.
Another “top” chewing gum is “Final90, 92...”:
Turkish, on the inserts - football players and teams:
Large, bright inserts.
Its analogue is apricot "CinCin":
[img]https://cn12.nevsedoma.com.ua/photo/121
/3/perestuJ.jpg[/img]
Its inserts mostly depicted scenes from games.
The inserts were numbered - this made them easier to identify when collecting.
"BomBibom" - chewing gum with automotive-themed inserts. Perhaps my favorite, after "Turbo":
And it wasn’t difficult to put together a complete collection, unlike “Turbo”.
"Bombibom" was produced at different times in different forms and with different types of inserts. I know at least 4:
But the first episode was the coolest! Yellow chewing gum with melon flavor, square, large inserts, real cars with characteristics. Collected everything.
"TURBO" - the king of chewing gum:
Peach flavor combined with large liners, some of which you can’t get enough of...
Are you aware that the first 50 issues did not exist at all? :) And we chased after them, searched for them, made up stories that we saw them with so-and-so... :)
Personally, my collection started with this:
Exchanged it for a handful of foreign coins... Worn out, but still smelling.
And the series from 1-50 looked like this:
We have never seen such cars on the streets... Remember what you did first when you met a parked foreign car ? We walked up to the driver's window and looked at the speedometer - "how much is she pushing?" :) The numbers “200”, “240” made my eyes pop out. This is after our Volga and Zhiguli with their 120, 140.
The Turbo chewing gum survived everything - a series of its inserts replaced one another... At some stage, I simply stopped collecting them - so many of them multiplied...
Laser chewing gum had inserts with military equipment. Using them, we studied the technical equipment of foreign armies. From them I learned the order of speed of tanks, missiles, airplanes, helicopters and warships.
The same Turkish company "KENT" that produced "Turbo" also made this:
The same comics as “Donald”, only about a stupid big-nosed dude in a hat:
With incomprehensible sayings in Turkish.
But the meaning was not difficult to understand.
Another chewing gum with an insert about a moron:
Well, and the legendary “Love is...”, still on sale today:
Oddly enough, they gathered not only girls, but also boys... Apparently, they learned to treat each other :)
The translation was sometimes dull, though.
There were many other "junk" gum inserts of Pakistani and Chinese origin:
There were Cola gum inserts on which a picture was developed using a pencil.
Cool chewing gum "Guinness Records":
But I didn’t really like these ones - the heroic epic of the Asian people, damn it:
Chewing gum with lottery insert and prediction:
You could even win - I won 25 rubles, the cost of chewing gum. I bought it and lost it :)
Chewing gum "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" with insert cards:
Tattoo insert:
And chewing gum that didn’t have an insert:
This one was just super!
Then the first "Terminator" was just shown in our cinema on the big screen :) Stickers with movie episodes - mmmmm! Just awesome!
Then they showed Jurassic Park on TV and away we go...
"Dinosaur Planet" is my favorite hit!
In those years, my mother began to shuttle to Moscow and at first brought chewing gum and chocolates. Damn, people, she brought a whole block of Dinosa
vrov"!!! But not for me... :( But I was allowed to choose one or two. I lifted the edge of the wrapper and determined from a piece of the picture whether there was one or not :) That was cool! In general, I collected everything. I pasted on tracing paper, although it seemed like the album could be ordered somewhere. This album had to be sent to the address and you would receive some kind of garbage (a Dino figurine, it seems). But what kind of fool would do that? :)
Girls had their own sticker theme:
Their beloved Barbies and Kens :)
The girls glued them into an album and sent them off :) They are stupid :) Exchange the collection of inserts for a doll :))
