It’s hard to believe, but YES, 3 months from today we’ll be unwrapping our holiday gifts! Here at BAHOUKAS ANTIQUE MALL we’ll be sharing a variety of gift ideas over the coming months. From toys and games to record players and trains, we have ideas for you!
Are you old enough to remember eating on tv trays back in the 1950s! We have several collectible kids’ tv trays and metal wastebaskets.
Do you wonder about the history of the TV tray? Check this out:
In 1954, C.A. Swanson & Sons in Omaha, Nebraska, introduced the frozen TV dinner, marketing it as an easy-to-prepare, fun-to-eat meal, with a disposable tray that reduced clean-up time. The portable TV dinner tapped into Americans’ excitement over television, allowing families to eat in front of their new sets. By 1960, nearly 90 percent of American homes had a television.
From National Museum of american History
Here’s another tidbit that highlights the 1950s and brings us into today’s lifestyle. Did you realize that even presidents enjoyed eating on TV trays? Interesting, wouldn’t you say?
TV tray tables often came in a set of four—you’d take them off of their storage rack and unfold them to use them. No one knows for sure who invented them, but they captured the zeitgeist of a new generation. While nowadays TV trays are often the stuff of garage sales and flea markets, these compact tables cashed in on Americans’ growing excitement over television in the 1950s. According to the National Museum of American History, nearly 90 percent of American homes had a television by 1960, and everyone from cultural icons to ordinary families used TV tray tables. Ike and Mamie Eisenhower often ate their supper on matching tray tables in their Pennsylvania home with the news on, and some thirty years later, the Reagans famously ate their dinner in the White House on TV trays instead of in more formal dining rooms.
from apartment therapy
. . .
Eating in front of the TV was an exciting change of pace back in the 1950s, and we’ve always liked a good distraction. Households had lap tray sets for armchairs as early as the 1930s, which allowed people to kick back in their living rooms and listen to radio shows as they ate dinner together. With its moving pictures and (eventually) vibrant colors, television—and the TV tray table—only made this trend more compelling, convenient, and ultimately pervasive. And truthfully, dining on TV tray tables continued well into the ’80s and ’90s and still exists today. What’s changed? The motifs, materials, and colors of TV tray tables are certainly more modern on the whole. And these days, many of us are simply eating at the coffee table (hello, small spaces!) and binging Netflix instead of “I Love Lucy”. Seems we’ve been slowly migrating to the living room for dinner all along.
Interesting to think that even back in the 1930s, families often ate in the living room while sitting around the radio.
In any case, stop in and start your search for the perfect holiday gift (or add to your own collection)! You know we’re here … and we’re watchin’ for ya!
