The best part: These facts about baby boomers are equal parts silly and surprising, so we promise you a good laugh while you’re brushing up on your baby boomer trivia knowledge. So without further ado, here’s a nostalgic look back at 47 of the coolest baby boomer facts about the Baby Boom era and the 80 million Boomers who grew up in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.

Baby Boomer Facts About Food

  1. Dairy Queen was one of the first food chains to start franchising in 1955 and had everyone screaming for ice cream with their Dilly Bars and Mr. Misty.
  2. Eating in front of the TV got a lot better when TV dinners were introduced.There were only original four main courses sold by Swanson: meatloaf, fried chicken, turkey and Salisbury steak.
  3. Impressionable Boomers started ‘smoking’ bubble gum cigarettes that would puff out powdered sugar as smoke.
  4. One of the most popular side dishes in the 60s was Rice-a-Roni, known as “The San Francisco Treat.”Its commercials all started with the distinct cable car bell ringing.
  5. Hopalong Cassidy, a TV Western hero, was the first image ever put onto a lunch box. It was a runaway hit, selling more than 600,000 at $2.39 each in its first year.
  6. Howard Johnsons sold ice cream and had reasonably priced motel rooms for parents traveling with Boomer kids.

Baby Boomer Facts About Fashion

  1. At the height of its 1950s fad, more than 5000 Davy Crockett coonskin hats sold each day, showing the power of television on commerce—the popularity of the Davy Crockett show drove sales through the roof.
  2.  Bell Bottoms was a favorite “hippie” style during the late ‘60s and into the ‘70s.  It was based on the classic “bell-bottoms” worn by sailors and was later refined into what were known as “flares”–jeans with a wide flare at the bottom, but less than a “bell.”

Baby Boomer Facts About Music

  1. Think it was just the famous Beatles on the front of the Abbey Road cover? Astute Boomers also noticed that a VW Beetle was in the photo on this record that featured the lead single “Something/”Come Together”.
  2. “Shake, Shake, Shake, Shake Shake, Shake Shake Your Booty” holds the record for being the only number-one song title with a word repeated more than three times in it.“Shake” is said seven times before “your booty” in the K.C. and the Sunshine Band’s popular song.
  3. Ricky Nelson was second only to Elvis as the most popular rock ‘n’ roll artist from 1957 to 1962.
  4. Turned out Jimi Hendrix was patriotic. He started the last day of Woodstock with an unforgettable rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner.
  5. Three of the songs from the Broadway musical Hair were hits on the radio –“Hair,” “Good Morning, Star Shine,” and “Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In.”
  6. Elizabeth may have been 25 when she became a queen in 1953, but Freddie Mercury was a young 24 when he started fronting the British rock group Queen in 1970.
  7. “Sweet Georgia Brown” was whistled as the theme song at the Harlem Globetrotters games.
  8. “Up, Up, and Away!” In 1967 this pop song from Jimmy Webb soared up the charts and won both “Song of the Year” and “Record of the Year.”

Baby Boomer Facts About Toys & Games

  1. The game Twister, which once got Johnny Carson and Eva Gabor in tangles on The Tonight Show, got its beginnings as a game of tic-tac-toe to be played with your feet.
  2. The reason yo-yos became so iconic? The launch of the Butterfly yoyo by Duncan in the ’50s made it easier for Boomers to do tricks and stunts with their yo-yos, which helped fuel the craze.
  3. How low can you go? That was the question Boomers asked during this popular 60s party game of Limbo, where they could test their flexibility and laugh at friends who failed at this pole dance.
  4. With the launch of the popular toy LiteBrite, Boomers captivated for hours as they punched small colored plastic pegs into black paper to create designs.
  5. “Barbie was the ultimate doll—but Baby Boomers experienced everything from Betsy Wetsy who had problems “holding it” to Growing Up Skipper who got taller and grew breasts if you turned the knob.
  6. One of the most iconic toys from the Baby Boomer era? Stretch Armstrong—a musclebound action figure that had the physical ability to be stretched almost five feet.
  7. It’s all so EGG-citing! Two products from the Boom Era came packaged in plastic eggs–Silly Putty and L’eggs Pantyhose.

Baby Boomer Facts About TV, Books & Movies

  1. The price of the average movie ticket in 1975 was $2.
  2. The first show to ever be broadcast in color on ABC-TV was The Jetsons which debuted in 1962 and had Boomers dreaming of walking their dog on a treadmill in space just like George walked Astro.
  3. High school was the primary subject of a number of television shows that were hit with Baby Boomers including Our Miss Brooks, Mr. Novak and Room 222.
  4. “This is the big one, Elizabeth! I’m coming to join ya, honey.” was a constant refrain in the 70’s hit Sanford & Son, where Fred. G. Sanford was played by Redd Foxx.
  5. The gag of a character in a yellow rain slicker riding on a tricycle at the end of Laugh-In started when an executive producer sent a crew to shoot sight gags with a bunch of toys and told them to take a raincoat along since the forecast called for showers. The crew member on the tricycle tipped over and the long-lived joke was born.
  6. Bob Keeshan was a Boomer favorite in three different decades as Captain Kangaroo.  He was also the original Clarabell the clown on The Howdy Doody Show in the 1950s.
  7. Definitely not suitable for today’s roads but in 1969’s Easy Rider, Peter Fonda sported a “Captain America” red, white, and blue helmet, while Jack Nicholson donned a gold American football helmet. Another baby boomer fact: This cult classic was one of the first to use pre-recorded music for a soundtrack.
  8. In the early 70s, Alex Comfort wrote “The Joy of Sex”, a steamy ‘how to’ manual that spent 70 weeks on the bestseller list.
  9. Alfred Hitchcock Presents is well known for its opening credits with a camera fade in on a line-drawing caricature of Hitchcock’s profile, the theme music of “Funeral March of a Marionette” and Hitchcock’s walk to the center of the screen and his trademark “Good evening.”
  10. Young love bloomed with the movie star set in the 50s and 60s, with Mia Farrow marrying Frank Sinatra when she was 21 and Elizabeth Taylor marrying Nicky Hilton when she was only 18 years old.

Baby Boomer Facts About News & Politics

  1. Every day, baby boomers recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the start of their school day.
  2. During Vietnam over five million Americans wore bracelets with a POW’s name, rank and loss date in support of our troops.
  3. All number of iconic Baby Boomer celebrities wound up going into politics including Love Boat’s Fred Grandy (Congress) Sonny Bono (Palm Springs Mayor and Congressman,) and Clint Eastwood (Mayor of Carmel, CA).
  4. Baby Boomers lined up for the Polio Vaccine in the 1950s and helped eradicate that dreaded disease.
  5. Baby Boomers’ first experience with recycling was the semi-annual paper drives used by schools to bring in old newspapers.
  6. In 1970 the war in Vietnam extended into Cambodia.  The “Cambodian Incursion” resulted in massive protests on college campuses throughout the country including on the campus of Kent State which ended in the tragic shooting of students.
  7. Now an app, Boomers needed to go to their local Post Office and Police Stations to see the actual FBI’s Most Wanted list if they wanted to identify criminals.
  8. Both sides of the Vietnam War era used their car bumpers to expose their political opinions. Bumper stickers of that time included messages like, “Make Love, Not War”  “America: Love It or Leave It,” “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine Whirled Peas.”
  9. In 1967 Timothy Leary encouraged 30,000 hippies at Golden Gate Park to “Turn On, Tune in, Drop Out.”

Baby Boomer Facts About Culture

  1. During the Boom years, high school boys liked to give their girlfriends something personal to wear. The favorite item of the time was a class ring, ID bracelet or letterman jacket or sweater.
  2. A common fad in the 1950s was a type of rhyming jive talk that even made its way into songs, like when Bill Haley took a hip expression “See Yu Later Alligator” and followed it up with “after a while crocodile”.
  3. Introduced in 1974, Meow Mix debuted a commercial where Meow was the only word used and it featured an English translation of ‘meow’ for pet owners.
  4. Want the sound of a hot rod but only own a two-seater bicycle? Boomers had a low-tech trick of putting cards in the spokes of their wheels to imitate a motor’s rumble.
  5. Menthol was first added to cigarettes in the ’20s and ’30s but became very popular in the 50s and 60s with the top two-selling menthol brand cigarettes being Salem and Kool. Check out…125 History Facts101 Fun Facts75 Did You Know Facts

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