Slight (as in complete) RP
When I was a nipper I had a favourite toy which was this walking robot. It stood a tall 10 inches and had a light display in it's chest. When it was powered up by some batteries it would march forward, stop, then do this light display and repeat the process. Twas not gifted with great variety, but it made alot of noise and looked cool.

One day the batteries run out. Robot noise becomes quiet plastic statue to the 4 year old. Obviously the 4 year old wants this resolved so I bring this to the attention of my father. This was my fatal mistake.

He has a look around the house for some batteries but he can't find any so instead he decided to test out something else. He opened up the battery compartment and connected a spare CAR BATTERY to the +/- points in the battery bay with some jumpleads and some wire. All is ready then dad flicks the "on" switch....

Robot noise went beserk. STAMP STAMP STAMP LIGHTS STAMP SMOKE STAMP STAMP LIGHTS STAMP FLAMES STAMP LIGHTS LIGHTS FLAMES FLAMES FLAMES....
Dad disconnected the car battery but it was too late. The robot had run straight into a wall and was currently burning itself to the skirting. He runs out to the bathroom, grabs a cup of water and soaks the melting circuit person drying it to the wall, a lump of disfigured toy with the smell of plastic death emanating from it.

"Oops....errr...sorry son." says dad, who promptly legs it. Mt mum comes upstairs to find me sitting blank-eyed looking at a black stinking skirting board pizza mess saying "Daddy broke it".
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 21:23, 2 replies)

Transformers.
When I was but a nipper, I used to love Transformers, both the toys and the cartoon.
Obviously, the cartoon was shit, but kids don't notice that sort of thing, so there no point moaning that a glorified advert wasn't really very good television. The toys, on the other hand, well, the toys were good in that they were plastic crap that could be either a car or a robot, had laser guns, and could be stood up (or leant against a book) to form mighty battle scenes. Shitty, but kid pleasingly so.
That was the toys of my youth - easy to transform, and basically indestructible. The new toys, on the other hand, are absolute toss. Why oh why oh why, does a child's toy require a whole A4 of illustrated, yet incomprehensible, instructions? When I was little, Transformers didn't have knees, elbows, or wrists, and that was a good thing, because then their legs didn't fall of mid-transformation, and they folded neatly back into a car. Not any .
Pah! I don't know who to blame, but I'd like to slap them. My eldest was given a box of cast off, recent generation Transformers, and I was overjoyed, right up until the moment he brought one before me and asked me to turn it into a car. It's basically just a box of severed limbs, now.

EDIT: I've just realised that this is the opposite of the question being asked. Fuck it.
( monster munch person, man, woman... camera... TV?, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 20:29, 11 replies)

Baldmonkey was a prick.

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 20:09, 6 replies)

From time to time, I hear it said, almost mournfully, that you never see white dog shite any more
Well so what? Who wants to see decaying canine faeces lying around anyway, hosting all manner of nasty microbes etc.

Personally I prefer being able to walk around without having to watch my feet in case I stand in any kind of dog crap, white or otherwise.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 18:37, 10 replies)

Mine was not a well off family...
...so in the 70's and 80's when the summer holidays rolled around, that invariably meant a holiday in England. Which usually invariably meant Cornwall to us. Being from oop north, this always entailed loading the family into the knackered old car my father possessed on a Friday evening and driving south throughout the night.

Naturally expecting two young lads to sit on the backseat for hours without fighting or trying to wind each other up is wishful thinking on the part of parents everywhere, so dad would bollock us with all the colourful invective he recalled from his army days as a tank driver. So we'd sit sulking in silence. Or not silence. Because the radio had Johnny Mathis, or ELO or ABBA. To liven up the proceedings occasionally I'd vomit.

And because the first vehicle dad learned to drive was a tank, he drove everything like it was a tank, which often meant the car would break down somewhere along the line, usually because dad thought the car would go through or over things. Though we often broke down in some spectacularly pretty places, so there was that.

Cornwall has some pretty stunning beaches. But if, like me, you don't like beaches because the sun turns your milk white skin into a seething angry red torment from hell, then having to remain fully-clothed on the beach because sun lotion wasn't good enough in those days, kind of defeated the point.

Still, there were always the amusement arcades, if you'll excuse the exaggeration. Oh the thrill of putting your 1 and 2p pieces into the machine holding thousands of them and watching the shelves slide back and forth and not push any of that copper into the dispensing slot for you to collect. For a similar thrill you could always throw your money down a street grate. The best video game at the time was space invaders. Okay at the time but looking back now, Christ.

So the highlight of the trip was always going to the cinema in Newquay, which we did when it rained, which was every year. Something I could easily have done at home.

I vividly remember the first foreign holiday we had. We went to Scotland! Scotland!! It was almost exotic. We stayed on a caravan on a farm so every day smelled of cowshit. There were so many horseflies I was covered in itchy bites including, puzzlingly, on my nutsack. I had to bathe in calamine lotion so looked like Mr Blobby. A Mr Blobby whose yellow spots itched and oozed and weeped and looked like a vivid warning poster against the perils of unprotected sex.

Seriously, fuck Scotland.

As a remedy for venturing to the foreign hell which was Scotland, the next year we went to Skegness. In the days before blue flags and standards, the sewage outflow pipe from Skegness came out about twenty yards from the seas edge on the beach, which we discovered when my brother emerged from the sea like the Monster From the Black Lagoon covered in shit on day one. So we spent the entire week not going in the sea. We got really good at Swingball.

Such were our holidays I used to long for the simple pleasures of staying home and watching "Why Don't You?".

Getting my own passport and job showed me you could actually have fun on a holiday.

tl;dr - The English don't do holiday resorts well. The Scottish are worse still.
(Dildo Bugger destroyed a ring on, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 17:49, 25 replies)

Well
I grew up in the West Midlands in the 1980s. My parents drove a brown Mini Metro which was starting to rust. We went on holidays to caravan parks in the UK, including one in Scotland where the outdoor pool was so cold I cried.

Once a year or so we'd have enough money to go on holiday abroad, and we'd go to the Costa Del Sol for a week, where we'd get horribly sunburnt in the day and spend the evenings in bars called things like 'Bonkers Bar' run by dodgy looking blokes called Les from Essex who'd make horrible blue cocktails in an effort to chat up underage girls (which was generally considered alright back then).

On the first non-school uniform day at big school, I wore a shell suit jacket and got punched. Other things I got in fights for during my school years included being posh (we were penniless but I didn't have strong Brummie accent because my parents weren't from there), having a Mum who was a lezza (she had short hair), and being clever (I once read a book that I didn't have to).

On a weekend, we often took a trip into Birmingham to go shopping. This was before the modern redevelopment, and it was a bit like if Hieronymous Bosch had done set design for Blade Runner. In the 1960s. With concrete as the only medium.

The highlight of a week was on a Thursday night, when we'd have takeaway curry and watch a marathon of VHS recorded episodes of the Bill.

Am I doing this right? It was genuinely a bit shit, though...
(SnowyTheWereRabbit the Leporid from Hell, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 17:48, 4 replies)

Hip hop
No question, bar a very few exceptions it's fucking dismal these days and I'd be hard pressed to come home with a single record if I went out to buy some - but it's a huge mistake to think it was all brilliant back in the 80s. For every old skool classic there were 5 bollocks records, I should know - I bought them all. Yes, 'Whistle, 'Just Buggin' I'm looking at you, and all your rubbish mates.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 16:05, 85 replies)

Sex
I can't remember what the fuss was about.
(the other guy not the one that gave you coochie warts, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 15:58, 5 replies)

The Past was a bit shit because.....
"In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us
modern men and women. The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of
moldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlors
stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma
of chamber pots. The stench of sulfur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the
tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood. People stank of sweat and
unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions,
and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour
milk and tumorous disease. The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank
beneath the bridges and in the palaces.The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his
master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion,
and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter. For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to
hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or
destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life that was not accompanied by stench."
(Patrick Suskind)
(CADmonkey rollllllllled another one, just like the other one, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 15:58, 4 replies)

Old people's hearing, sight and mobility is not as good as it used to be.

( MEATSNAKE Richard Hammond, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 15:55, Reply)

It used to be
that if a growing boy wanted to see norks he had to find an old jizz mag somewhere, most likely one found under a bush in a park or something similar, and wank to weather-beaten photos that might well have someone's muck on them besides. (Or worse.)

Now a quick Google image search will turn up anything that your Rule 34 twisted little minds can imagine, and the only muck you have to worry about coming into contact with is that of whoever else uses that computer. (Protip- don't use your parents' computer. Just don't.)

EDIT: in case I wasn't clear enough, don't make your parents' keyboards sticky, and also don't send them to their graves with the images of what you've been Googling for when they happen to look at the History, you grotty little sex pests.
( Wanderer, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:49, 3 replies)

Cartoons
Cartoons just don't age well. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dangermouse, Biker Mice from Mars, Sonic the Hedghehog, Transformers, Thundercats, these shows used to rock my Saturday mornings after my overly sugary cereal fix. Watch them today though and the cracks start to show, the ideals are fuzzy, the voice acting completely ludicrous and the animation completely laughable.
Of course there are a few examples that still work somehow, like Duckula, Batman the Animated Series, tonnes of old anime shows, Johnny Bravo and most of the Cartoon Network releases, they're old as shit these days but still as watchable as they were back then.
( Dazz - In Your Base, Killing Your Dudes since, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:37, 38 replies)

That thing about "nobody has said b3ta yet" was never that funny.

( Zuowan, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:35, Reply)

Does B3ta count?
i'm surprised it hasn't yet been said.
( rjmrjm, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:32, Reply)

I remember when QOTW used to take longer to recycle old questions.
b3ta.com/questions/goneoff/
( Amorous Badger NAKED BEA ARTHUR PHOTOS 4U, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:31, 9 replies)

People say that B3ta has gone to shit.
It used to be worse when Legless and SpankyHanky used to post.
( Fucking hell Jeff I am not a robot, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 14:03, 12 replies)

Nostalgia's not what it used to be,

(Set your faces to Stunned Bigly, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:51, 2 replies)

FUCK THE PAST AND FUCK THE PRESENT
I LIKED THIS SONG BACK IN 68 AND IT STILL ROCKS, BUT IT WAS THE WHOLE PACKAGE, NOT JUST THE GUITAR LICK. BUT IN 2013, FUCK SHITPANTS NUGENT. HE IS ALL TOUGH, BUT WHEN IT WAS HIS TIME T5O HAVE BULLE4TS WIZ BY HIS HEAD, HE SHIT HIMSELF HERE AT HOME. FUCK HIM AND FUCK HIS DENIALS. EVEN IF IT ISN'T TRUE, IF YOU ARE STUPID ENOUGH TO TELL THAT STORY, NOW YOU OWN IT SHITPANTS. NO GETTING AWAY FROM IT.
( Naked Ape call me Caitlyn, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:46, 17 replies)

Bollocks.
I was young, thin, could still get it up after a skinful AND go to work the next day feeling OK. Now I'm a gibbering fat twat that can only cum with a Carte Noire coffee jar rammed up my arse.
AND coffee tasted better back then.
(SigourneysBeaver took off and nuked the entire site from orbit on, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:39, 4 replies)

has anybody said b3ta yet?

(alright alright, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:29, Reply)

I'm just waiting for someone to say b3ta

(AWESOMEB0T meddling prick, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:23, Reply)

Sigh
I remember when the first post to this QOTW was new.
(racetraitor has an alibi for, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:22, Reply)

Waiter! This fettuccine isn't al dente!

( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:21, 2 replies)

i remember when chinless orphans used to create multiple sock puppet accounts to vote their soporific tales of mediocrity onto the popular page
sad times indeed
(alright alright, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:20, 3 replies)

WOOP WOOP! HERE COMES A WEEK OF WHINY TRAUMA OVERSHARING!

( BraynDedd Natasha Kaplinsky's labia majora, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:15, 6 replies)

4th

(betty swollocks, Thu 29 Aug 2013, 13:10, Reply)