Pampers4Ever said:
If you were born in the early 80’s you had the chance to wear the best diapers ever made. Even the off / store brands had it dialed in for diaper greatness.
None of that thin fabric backed stuff we have today. There was no hiding what was under your shorts. It was a super thick white plastic backed diaper.
All brands looked the same nothing to identify it was a Pampers, Huggies, Luvs or off brand. They all looked the same.
I was born in the mid-70’s so I was brought up in the fan fold days. I’ve seen a photo or two of me at the age of two or three in possibly the first version of Luvs or Huggies. Not sure what brand it was. Later on I was in Pampers for bed wetting and long car rides that I may fall asleep during. Had the box in my closet for a while and was replaced every few weeks with a new box.
Did you get a chance to wear during the golden days of the disposable diaper? Maybe you were born in 81 and diapered in those diapers and put back into them for bedtime for bed wetting. This before pull-ups so a diaper was the only choice.
Oh, definitely, I remember. I was also born in the mid 1970s too. I also wore Pampers diapers till I was 4 1/2 to 5 years old. I was actually potty trained at 3 1/2 years old, which is somewhat surprising, because I also have Autism and ADHD, and a lot of kids with Autism like me take a while longer to be potty trained. I wore diapers after I was potty trained, but not because I really needed them. My dad had (and still has) OCD and so he never liked me using public restrooms because he felt and still feels they are "dirty" - and honestly they probably are. Although nowadays, when I'm not around my dad, like at a restaurant, if I need to go to the bathroom I will. If you need to go, you need to go. Same thing with my brother who is not Autistic and has 2 children of his own.
I actually remember my mom taping my diaper around my sides of my waist. I am guessing I was 3 or even 4 years old. My brother wore diapers too till he was about 4 also. I was 8 1/2 years old when he was 4. He wore more of the Huggies and Luvs brand of diapers. I wore solely Pampers in the late 1970s / early 1980s. I remember the TV commercials for Luvs in the early 1980s - and yes, I watched TV when I was 4 1/2 years old. I watched a lot of game shows then (Tic Tac Dough, Card Sharks, Las Vegas Gambit, Match Game, Jokers Wild, etc.), and I understood how to play. I also watched soap operas sometimes like All My Children and The Young And Restless, though I don't think I comprehended very much of that. I also watched Sesame Street. Sesame Street is likely where I learned how to speak in English. I've heard of other Autistic people too who learned to speak from Sesame Street.
I'm not technically an adult baby and I do not wear diapers and to be honest, never did past the age of 4 1/2 or 5. I have Autism and I like a lot of childhood things, but that's because of my Autism. I like the music I listened to in my childhood years still - which was mostly oldies and soft rock music. A lot of people change their music preferences over time, but I never really did. I like some children's songs too. I slept in a crib till I was 4 1/2, when my newborn baby brother evicted me out of my crib. He turned out to be a wonderful brother though and I wouldn't trade him for anything, as nowadays, he actually helps me out quite a bit (he's in his early 40s now).
The thing I miss the most about the late 1970s to mid 1980s are some of the children's clothing and shoes. After I went to kindergarten and continued on, I had several classmates (some of whom are still friends of mine on even Facebook) that were girls who wore T strap shoes or Mary Janes. The children's strap shoes in the 1980s were made so well back then. I wanted to wear that too as well, but because I only saw little girls (I'm from the West Coast) wearing them. So I thought they were a girls' shoe only. I did have some cards at age 6 showing nursery rhymes and there was one that said "one, two, buckle my shoe" and it showed a caricature of a little boy wearing a Mary Jane shoe. I wanted to actually ask my mom why I didn't have a shoe like that. Some of the overalls and long-alls back in the 1980s were very cute too. A lot of kids wore overalls, like Oshkosh B'Gosh when I was young. I didn't see many kids at all wearing long-alls or jon jons, because that was something mostly you saw little boys wearing in the Deep South, like Alabama and South Carolina. Nowadays though, it's unusual to even see any little boys in my area wearing overalls. I saw little girls wearing T strap shoes up till a little bit past 3rd grade. My female cousin my age wore T strap shoes till she was 9 years old in 4th grade. Some of her T strap shoes were made by Jumping Jacks (a well known children's shoe brand back then in the early to mid 1980s, similar in quality to Stride Rite, Buster Brown, and many other higher quality children's leather shoe manufacturers). I know they were made by Jumping Jacks because I remember she showed me and my brother (who was 3 1/2 then) this light black T strap shoe she had one time when I was 8 years old, when I was visiting her. I know many of the children's shoe brands that existed back then, but some of the T strap shoes I saw some of my classmates wear, I haven't seen since the 1980s and haven't seen it in photos or being sold on Ebay. I'm guessing maybe even some of them were from high end department stores (like Nordstrom). One thing I never realized till a long time later was that little boys could wear T strap shoes too. It's actually still fairly common in some parts of the Deep South, usually going along with little boys wearing long-alls, jon jons or bubbles. Seen more often at church on Sunday, but some boys wear them to nursery school / preschool too as well. There's nothing more adorable than a little boy wearing long-alls with T strap shoes!!
Also, back in the 1980s, some of the T strap shoes had unique leather colors, like tan. The tan leather color, back then though, looked more like what I would call "burnt orange". Very retro, even somewhat trippy.
It's sad that I didn't discover until I was in my mid 20s that little boys could wear T strap shoes. I first realized when I looked at old parenting books and magazines and saw photos (often in black and white) of little boys wearing overalls and T strap Mary Janes from the 1970s or even early 1980s. I've seen lots of photos of boys from that time period (1970s, 1980s) on the Internet over the past 20 years. Then over time, from buying T strap shoes on Ebay and going to children's clothing resale groups on FB, I've met many parents who still dress their boys that way, mostly in the Deep South, like in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina. I didn't realize how common it really was or the extent or practice of little boys wearing T strap shoes in the South until maybe 8 to 10 years ago and I'm in my mid late 40s. It's too bad I didn't know this when I was a child, or even when I was 18 years old.....if I knew then what I know now.....of course some little boys also wear saddle shoes rather than T strap shoes with their jon jons or long-alls.
The T strap shoe has gone the way of the dodo though in most places in the USA though outside of the South. There are quite a few children's shoe companies in Spain making these kinds of shoes still. Some Spanish children shoes are imported into the USA by some children's shoe stores and clothing stores here, particularly by some children's shoe stores / children's clothing stores in the Deep South, and also some Jewish children's shoe stores as shabbos (shabbos means sabbath, which is on Saturday with Jewish people in synagogue) children's shoes, mostly in New Jersey and New York. They are great stores. Unfortunately I wear a size 42 European shoe and most of the companies stop making T strap shoes at size 38 European. There are people on here who could wear a size 38 in shoes but most are probably shorter like 5 feet 6 inches tall versus me being nearly 6 feet tall. A real bummer, although if I wave a bit of money under some people's noses in the Spanish children's shoe company industry, you never know what might happen, I might be able to get something made. Money talks.
- longallsboy
