Mental Floss

RETRO









Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon’s 'Double Dare', which ran from 1986 to 1993 and taped more than 500 episodes, gave its kid contestants bicycles or boom boxes in exchange for fetching giant balls of snot from oversized noses.

Jake Rossen








Peter Parks, AFP/Getty Images

Although it doesn’t have quite the same archaeological provenance as hieroglyphs or dinosaur bones, historians believe there’s ample evidence to suggest that the mullet has been around for centuries. And it's gaining popularity once again.

Jake Rossen
iStock

In the fall of 1923, street vendors in Santa Barbara, California received an unexpected bit of attention regarding one of their more popular wares: 'The San Francisco Chronicle' wrote about the sellers' “freakish little brown seeds” that “cavorted about t

Jake Rossen








Dan Kitwood, Getty Images

One sure sign of a toy craze is annoyed toy store owners, and in 1976, there were plenty of them. The reason? The Kenner Company had introduced a novel 10-inch latex doll that never remained on shelves for more than a few minutes at a time.

Jake Rossen