History PopularityPolynomial / Other

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* Creator/AdamWest. In the late 1960s, he was a primetime TV star and the actor charged with bringing Series/Batman1966 back to life after being crippled by UsefulNotes/TheComicsCode. Head to the '80s and the return of the [[UsefulNotes/TheDarkAgeOfComicBooks Dark Knight]], and West is a ''persona non grata'', firmly stuck as a reminder of the DorkAge Batman. This is lampshaded in an episode of ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'', in which a character based on and voiced by West is portrayed as a washed-up has-been matinee idol remembered only by hardcore fans. But toward the end of his life, he was a staple voice actor in comedies such as ''WesternAnimation/FamilyGuy'' [[AdamWesting precisely because of his history as Batman]] and trademark [[LargeHam overdramatic voice]]. Adam West's particular incarnation of Batman has enjoyed repopularization via the light-hearted ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheBraveAndTheBold'' and the comic book ''ComicBook/Batman66'', as well as a general reappraisal of the 60s series itself, with it being appreciated for the AffectionateParody that it is. All this led to West's death in 2017 causing much more public sadness than it likely would have a decade previously.
* For some reasons, many of a given decade's iconic elements will invariably return to the forefront about 30 years later: As an example, the raccoon coats of TheRoaringTwenties returned big time in TheFifties, whose unique car styling got an enormous boost in TheEighties. And the pop music of the 1980s has become very influential over the music artists of the 2010s.
* TheSeventies. Throughout the '80s and '90s, this decade was seen as America's DorkAge. Since the late '90s, it's seen as a more innocent time. Elements from the '70s which have made comebacks since then include:
** Bell-bottom jeans.
** The afro.
*** The medium-length bowl cut with the fringe.
** Rollerskating thanks to Rollerblade pushing inline skates.
** [[TheStoner Stoners]] on TV.
** Disco. A great deal of popular music for the past two decades (especially between 2005 and 2011-12) has been essentially "Disco that Dared Not Speak Its Name". However, the ''word'' still has a ways to go. Thanks to bands like Music/DaftPunk and Music/LCDSoundsystem, it's on its way back.
** {{Blaxploitation}} also makes a comeback every few years, although this is mainly so that people can [[BlaxploitationParody have a]] [[AffectionateParody giggle]] at the loud fashions and overuse of JiveTurkey, rather than recall the genre's roots as a supplement of the UsefulNotes/CivilRightsMovement.
*** Blaxploitation music is very well regarded by [=DJs=], and record collectors. It was also sampled by a lot of rappers. Even if the fashion is cliched, the music is still cool as ever.
* TheEighties. In the '90s and even the '00s, ''this'' was seen as America's DorkAge. However, many of the fashions and styles of that decade have made a comeback, with the returning popularity of everything from ''Franchise/{{Transformers}}'' to leg warmers. Yes, ''leg warmers''.
** [[ZettaiRyouiki Leg warmers + skirts]] = [[{{Fanservice}} awesome.]] The inverted version (leggings under skirts) seems to have made a comeback in the mid [[TurnOfTheMillennium '00s]] after being absent for ten years. Here, it has some justification -- the revived trend started with teenage girls, who used the style to [[LoopholeAbuse exploit a loophole]] in many high school {{dress code}}s that established a minimum length for skirts. If you were wearing leggings underneath, you could wear as short a skirt as you wanted, since you were technically also wearing pants. Eventually, the fad expanded and they have become commonplace.
** Canvas sneakers: One of the icons of the decade, but also a target of serious hate during the 90s, to the point that Converse was hit much worse by the early-90s backlash than even ''Ray-Ban'', even constantly slipping into bankruptcy. Nike bought the company in 2003, a time when the 80s revival was brewing, and this was approached to relaunch the model which is still extremely popular these days.
** In the 90s, {{Synthpop}} used to be the prime example for people to explain why the 80s sucked so much. About twenty years later and thanks to the rise of ElectronicMusic, synthesizers are mandatory if you want to hit it big in the music industry.
*** Hair Metal, the ''other'' example of why the 80's were so lame, also saw a small but noticeable resurgence in popularity in the mid-00s.
** Smooth jazz, mocked throughout the 90s as "yuppie music", came back with a vengeance during the 2000s.
** Conspicuous consumption, at least until 2005, then became unthinkable of after 2007. It resurfaced again in the mid-2010s as the economy began to recover, then the Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent economic collapse made it fall out of favor again.
** Fear of nuclear war became widespread again with U.S. President Creator/DonaldTrump and North Korean dictator Kim-Jong Un exchanging threats throughout 2017, although this has mostly cooled off after both leaders' summit in 2018.
* While TheNineties never had the cultural backlash the 70's or the 80's had, some trends from that decade are starting to come back, such as plaid flannel shirts and hi-top fades.
* The Yo-Yo. More like Popularity Sinusoid. It really ''does'' come around that regularly.
** [[FridgeBrilliance Which is fitting, when you think about it]].
** At one point, this was because the Coca Cola Company gave yo-yos a marketing push about every three years or so.
* Skateboarding has similarly fluctuated in and out of popularity so much that nobody seems to care whether or not it's "in", least of all the skaters themselves. Skateboarding was big in the mid-to-late Seventies, largely on the back of the popularity of surfing at that time. It died away in the early Eighties, until, of all things, ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' mainstreamed it again.
* Ventriloquism was once considered the deadest of all show business horses, since every new act would be [[ToughActToFollow inevitably compared to]] Edgar Bergen (or at least to [[PoorMansSubstitute Paul Winchell]]). Then all of a sudden Jeff Dunham came along, and earned his own TV special after several sold-out performances. Terry Fator also has his own Las Vegas show.
* Modern social dance has undergone a huge revival, starting in the '90s, this after about fifty years of dormancy. Latin clubs sprung up across the U.S., ballroom dancing got a big boost with ''Series/DancingWithTheStars'', and swing dancing was resurrected by college students across the US and Europe.
* Eyewear (both CoolShades and NerdGlasses) has varied greatly through the years: Beginning in TheRoaringTwenties, and thanks to Creator/HaroldLloyd, glasses became a fashionable element[[note]]Prior to that, if you wore glasses, it was because you were an intellectual, a clergyman, an older person or UsefulNotes/TheodoreRoosevelt[[/note]]. These were initially made of tortoiseshell, which by TheGreatDepression and through UsefulNotes/WorldWarII had been displaced by the more cost-efficient metal rims. Sunglasses also originated during the Jazz Age, first used by movie stars around 1922 and publicly introduced in 1929.
** Post-WWII spectacles were made of tortoiseshell, and later plastic[[note]]Shuron Ronsirs/Ray-Ban Browlines were introduced in 1947, Ray-Ban Wayfarers appeared in 1952[[/note]], which by the end of TheSixties were seen as too conformist. Then metallic frames took over[[note]]While first made in 1937, it wasn't until about '68 when Ray-Ban Aviators were used outside military circles[[/note]] during TheSeventies, but by the end of the decade, plastics returned big time[[note]]Wayfarers were boosted primarily by the film ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'' and by the NewWaveMusic movement[[/note]] to dominate TheEighties. TheNineties and UsefulNotes/The2000s brought back metals[[note]]''Series/{{Jackass}}'' contributed to the Aviators' newborn popularity[[/note]] aside from sporty wraparounds, while TheNewTens did the same with plastic[[note]]80s nostalgia, {{Hipster}}s and ''Series/MadMen'' were instrumental for a return to Wayframes[[/note]].
* Facial hair in the West has gone in and out of style in a cyclical fashion for centuries among the elite following the same basic pattern as anything else: the ruling class has facial hair, everyone else has facial hair, the ruling class doesn't want to look like the lower class, the ruling class no longer has facial hair, and so on. The last time it was "in" in the West (i.e. you would expect your average CEO/congressman/stockbroker to have facial hair) was during the first several decades of the 20th century -- the last US president, for example, to have facial hair was UsefulNotes/WilliamHowardTaft, who was President from 1909-1913.
** Possession of a moustache ''will'' lead to jokes about you being a creepy possible pedophile with an addiction to disco music (if you're older than 30) or an insufferable hipster (if you're younger than 30).
** Facial hair seems to be making a ''very'' gradual comeback, or depending on how you look at it, it already has, with the most popular style being the PermaStubble. It can go back to clean shaven or full on beards from here. A quick perusal of Pinterest's Men's Fashion section will show the many variety of beards worn by fashion models and actors, both current and former Silver Screen Studs. In 2015, Paul Ryan became the first Speaker of the House to sport a beard in nearly 100 years, though it is closer to the aforementioned "stubble" look than the epic beards of the 19th century. Nevertheless, this may represent a sort of turning point, as male politicians have generally been advised against sporting beards for most of the last few decades.
** Mustaches were ''very'' common for men between about 1850 and 1915, then slowly started to disappear -- partly for hygienic reasons during WWI (for instance, gas helmets required wearers to be clean shaven) and partly as a reaction against Victorian values by the RoaringTwenties. Since then only older or working-class men tended to have any facial hair other than pencil-thin mustaches, and things remained that way until about 1960, when beatniks, and after 1967, the hippie counterculture went mainstream. Thus began another golden age for the mustache, which lasted until about 1990 (by which point the Baby Boomers were seen as unhip). It's yet to return in full force, although it's still quite common among certain ethnic groups (Blacks and [[MagnificentMoustachesOfMexico Latinos]], to give two obvious examples) and in Eastern European, Mediterranean and Arab countries where facial hair is still considered manly and/or sophisticated.
* Like facial hair, long hair on men cycles in and out of fashion. It was historically very common but it became a taboo in the west during the First World War as the military mandated "short back and sides" to prevent the spread of lice and it extended to civilians after the war as a backlash against Victorian values in the 1920s. Hair length got even shorter during the Great Depression and the Second World War which saw the popularization of buzz cuts, crew cuts and flat tops among civilians. Long hair remained a taboo until the TheSixties, when Music/TheBeatles and the counterculture repopularized it. In TheSeventies, long hair was ''de rigeur''. Even a middle-aged businessman's haircut would frequently [[SeventiesHair extend below the ears]]. The PunkRock and NewWaveMusic subcultures heralded a return to shorter hairstyles through TheEighties, though longer styles remained popular. HairMetal brought long hair back, albeit heavily styled. Unadorned long hair came back into fashion in TheNineties with the rise of {{Grunge}}, but short hairstyles were popular as well. UsefulNotes/The2000s continued the trend, taken to extreme levels by Black and Latino cultures in terms of short hair while the {{Emo}} subculture popularized the much-derided style of the [[PeekABangs bangs covering the eyes]]. Music/JustinBieber and Music/OneDirection popularized slightly longer hairstyles for teenage males into the early 2010s. The pendulum swung back towards shorter, "Teddy Boy"-styled hair afterwards then in the late 2010s longer haircuts became popular again after the undercut gained popularity amongst the alt-right.
* Men's underpants seem to go through this cycle. The Coopers (now “Jockey”) underwear company introduced briefs for men in the 1930s -- which caused a sensation, as they were skimpier than most women's underpants at the time. This gradually brought about a change in men's intimate and leisurely fashions, with short underpants replacing the boxer shorts and long johns previously popular and male swimmers, bodybuilders and surfers wearing skimpy trunks instead of the one-piece swimsuits from the 1920s. By the 1970s and even the early '80s, wearing midthigh-length shorts as underwear was thought to be hopelessly old-fashioned, with only older men daring to be caught in them. Then the pendulum swung back: in the late 1980s and TheNineties, [[WildMassGuessing perhaps as a backlash against the burgeoning gay culture or maybe due to inspiration from the ultra-manly, proletarian fashion sense of Seattle grunge rock]], boxer shorts (especially plaid ones) became cool again, and during the 90s and 2000s, wearing briefs was often thought of as effeminate or immature. Eventually, though, with the rise of "slim-fit" in the 2010s, the two sides met in the middle, so that now in most department stores you can easily find [[FusionDance "boxer briefs"]], which have legbands and are form-fitting just like briefs but have leg sections (of varying lengths) like boxer shorts. Additionally, men wearing the classic brief has seen a resurgence as well. When it comes to ProfessionalWrestling, however, [[UnderwearOfPower this trope has always been inoperative]].
* Two-piece swimsuits have balanced between conservative high-waisted models and skimpy bikinis: The former ones were the predominant ones between TheRoaringTwenties and TheFifties (thus being retroactively known as "pin-ups"). Bikinis took over during TheSixties and TheSeventies[[note]]They have been around since the 40s, but in the English-speaking world it only became prominent in the mid-to-late 60s[[/note]], showing more and more skin as time passed. "Pin-ups" returned with a vengeance in TheEighties, while the pendulum swung back towards bikinis and thongs in TheNineties and UsefulNotes/The2000s. TheNewTens' "conservative revolution" however, brought a trend of showing as little skin as possible, leading to a resurgence of the high-waisted "pin-up". One-pieced swimsuits tend to vary their front cleavage influenced by how much skin two-piece suits show.
* Heavy cosmetics for women, such as lipstick and eyeshadow, have faded in and out of popularity over the course of the century, literally altering the face of Western womanhood. It became standard for women in TheRoaringTwenties and continued throughout TheGreatDepression, TheForties and TheFifties, until it reached the point at which pictures of women from the mid-20th century can sometimes [[UncannyValleyMakeup look clownish]]. A more barefaced look was popularized by female folk singers (Music/JoanBaez, most famously) beginning in TheSixties, and then ''that'' has become the standard. Heavy makeup returned with a vengeance late in TheSeventies and TheEighties. [[UnkemptBeauty Barefaced]] and [[ButNotTooWhite tanned]] looks returned to popularity in TheNineties and UsefulNotes/The2000s, while TheNewTens have gradually reverted to heavy makeup once again. In spite of all this though, [[ZigZaggingTrope the line has not been a completely straight one]] and there are always exceptions.
* Suntanning, while made fashionable by Chanel in the '20s, didn't become mainstream until TheSixties. It has been most popular in moments when make-up is more out than in and vice versa.
* Women's hairstyles have also varied in many forms since TheRoaringTwenties, when the TwentiesBobHaircut broke with the centuries-old standard of long hair, but also sparked a trend for more elaborate hairstyles, coming to a head in TheFifties with the "beehive". In the late 60s and for most of the '70s, however, long and unadorned hair became the norm, but the feathered haircut led to the [[EightiesHair overproduced hairstyles of]] TheEighties, before reverting to simpler hair in the 90s and most of the 00s. As of TheNewTens, '80s-inspired hairstyles have made a return.
* Supermodel culture: It first surfaced in 60s-era Swinging London, embodying the aesthetics of the era, although it fell out of favor by the early 1970s. It then came back during the 1980s, hitting a peak around 1990, with the release of Music/GeorgeMichael's ''Freedom! '90''. However a move towards a more casual and frugal lifestyle during the decade made supermodels and fashion designers AcceptableProfessionalTargets exploited by films like ''Film/{{Zoolander}}''. During the 2000s reality shows like ''Series/AmericasNextTopModel'' restored their mainstream acceptance and by the 2010s, supermodels were everywhere again, with the so-called "Instagram generation" becoming role models (dubious or not) for young women.
* {{Revolvers|AreJustBetter}} experienced this in TheNineties, at least in the American civilian market. TheEighties saw the rise of so-called "[[CoolGuns Wonder Nines]]," 9 millimeter handguns that held [[MoreDakka 15 rounds or more]], vastly outstripping the six-round capacity of most revolvers. Police forces switched over immediately, and civilians took to the new guns almost as quickly. In 1994, however, [[UsefulNotes/AmericanGunPolitics the Assault Weapons Ban]] was passed, heavily restricting, among other things, the sale of guns with magazines that held more than ten rounds. This stripped the Wonder Nines of [[MoreDakka their chief advantage]], allowing revolvers to retake market share. Even after the ban expired in 2004, this remained in effect in those states that still had their own laws on the books -- revolvers are noticeably more popular in, say, New York than they are in Florida. Note that this doesn't apply to police departments -- their weapons choices weren't affected by the ban, and [[EagleLand the greater magazine capacity is incredibly useful for their work.]]
** Part of this popularity is that revolvers offer criminals an advantage; by not expelling casings automatically, they leave behind less forensic evidence. Less, not none, of course.
* At the dawn of TheNineties, most observers in the computer world had given up UsefulNotes/{{Unix}} for dead, due to the fragmentation among vendors and the GNU Project's [[DevelopmentHell slowness in developing a free replacement]]. Then a Finnish grad student by the name of Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel to the Internet. It was rapidly adopted by GNU and various Linux distributions (though Richard Stallman [[InsistentTerminology prefers you call it "GNU/Linux", thank you very much]]), have provided a viable alternative to Windows and Mac operating systems. Open source systems based on BSD also popped up in the early '90s (Mac OS X is based in part on [=FreeBSD=].) They're most successful as servers and in high-powered applications such as animation rendering and supercomputers.
* The programming language Lisp had been considered dead ever since the "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Winter AI Winter]]" caused all the funds for artificial intelligence research (which was the field most Lisp programmers worked in) to dry up. The language has seen a revival of interest, however, in The TurnOfTheMillennium and TheNewTens largely thanks to Paul Graham.
* Baby names. There are some names that never go out of style, but others run in 60- to 100-year cycles - in TheThirties "Shirley" was a little girl and "Zack" was a grizzled old prospector. Today Shirley's collecting Social Security and Zack's a young man in his teens or twenties. Such "time capsule names" tend to be popular for about 20 years and then become indelibly linked to the generation born when they were popular, until they're rediscovered a few decades after that generation dies off and then they become indelibly linked to the new one. One major reason for this is the tendency to name children after grandparents and great-grandparents. This is something for fiction writers to watch out for - one of the easiest ways to provoke outrage over sloppy research is to have an entire cast of 20- and 30-somethings with names that are popular baby names ''now'' but weren't between the '30s and '80s; or to have a period-set story where characters' names are typical of the generations that are that age today rather than the cohort the characters are supposed to belong to. An outlier or two is fine, but [[http://www.babynamewizard.com/archives/2009/3/sorry-what-was-that-i-couldnt-hear-you-over-your-name too many can be overwhelming.]]
* After [[TheGreatPoliticsMessUp the fall of the Iron Curtain]], socialism was considered as good as dead in the United States. After the 2007-08 financial crisis, people started to think that perhaps equitable distribution of resources might be a good idea. As seen in the Occupy movement, socialism is coming back as a viable political theory (although the word remains a taboo in mainstream US politics). Socialism hasn't had a chance in U.S. electoral politics at anything beyond the state level (and for that matter only in the smaller states, most notably Vermont) since the 1920s and 30s, partly because of the "first red scare" that followed WWI and that the New Deal was thought to turn socialism obsolete. But it was the early 1950s' RedScare that killed off American socialism, especially once the "Red hunters" were able to (ironically) stir up working-class resentment against "left-wing intellectuals", giving us the current BourgeoisBohemian trope. Liberalism has since made a comeback, of course, but it is a bourgeois, ''cultural'' liberalism that most old-school socialists find obscene. Of course this all came to head in the 2016 Democratic primary when Bernie Sanders, an openly-declared socialist from Vermont did way better than expected, and in 2018 the also openly socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez surprisingly won a Democratic primary in New York and got elected to the House of Representatives. However, socialism has not been as strong among mainstream Democrats, who generally favor politically moderate candidates such as UsefulNotes/BarackObama, UsefulNotes/HillaryClinton, and UsefulNotes/JoeBiden.
** Meanwhile in the UK, socialism never became much of a dirty word, as British socialism was vehemently anti-Marxist (being closer to "utopian socialism" than to "scientific socialism"), however by the second half of the 20th century it declined as a powerful political force, "arthritically limping into the computer age", increasingly stuck in the industrial era. The Labour Party, originally a full-blown socialist party, had moved to the right under UsefulNotes/TonyBlair's leadership during the 1990s as socialism had become something of a joke, the domain of old lefties stuck in the 1970s, the days of Tony (Wedgwood) Benn, Michael Foot or Neil Kinnock. After major defeats at the 2010 and 2015 general elections, the party leadership election was won by one of those 'old lefties', long-time socialist campaigner UsefulNotes/JeremyCorbyn. While hugely popular amongst the party membership, the party's Members of Parliament looked on in horror, convinced it meant electoral oblivion. Their vote of no-confidence and leadership challenge failed to remove Corbyn, and meanwhile the British press carried daily attacks on him [[note]]Ranging from 'he's a terrorist sympathiser' to [[NotMakingThisUpDisclaimer 'he didn't bow the exact number of degrees necessary to show respect at a Remembrance event']][[/note]] to a level unprecedented even for the British Tabloids, and when Prime Minister UsefulNotes/TheresaMay called a snap election in Spring 2017, many predicted, or were even certain of, a Conservative landslide. Some even questioned whether the Labour Party could survive as a political force. In an unprecedented turnaround, however, Corbyn's socialist policies, including re-nationalisation (something that had been off the table for decades), proved remarkably popular after years of Conservative-led austerity and the fallout from Brexit, especially amongst younger voters. Although the Conservatives remained the largest party in the subsequent election, they lost their majority in parliament and Labour made substantial gains [[note]]Including seats such as Canterbury and even Kensington, places that have never been anything other than Conservative[[/note]] and received their best result in years[[note]]Even taking a brief lead in the polls after the election[[/note]]. For the time being, at least, old-school socialism is enjoying a come-back.
*** In the interest of posterity, it is only fair to note that in the subsequent general election (2019), Labour ended up getting the result that pundits had ''expected'' them to get in 2017, suffering their worst result since the 1930s, with even some constituencies that had only ever had Labour MPs since their inception electing Conservative candidates. One lesson which commentators have remarked upon is that ''policy'' tends to be more appealing than ''ideology'' and while Labour had a large raft of individual policies which were popular by themselves, voters had a hard time figuring out what their ''priorities'' were, while the Conservative campaign linking everything to the very direct "Get Brexit Done" slogan left much less room for doubt.
* The use of "Frisco" by natives of UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco, as explained in [[http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Frisco-that-once-verboten-term-for-the-city-by-2582886.php this]] ''Chronicle'' article.
* TV antennas have made a comeback with "cord cutters," people who watch online video using services like {{Creator/Netflix}} exclusively without signing up for cable and satellite services. When they do want to watch live TV, antennas work just fine. Since all terrestrial TV broadcasting in the U.S. is digital, there's none of the snow or ghosting associated with traditional TV antennas.
* Mime. Yes, mime. It was considered a great source of entertainment about a century ago, when it contributed so much of the humor in vaudeville, the circus, and (of course) silent movies. Then "talkies" came along in the late 1920s, and suddenly mime comedy was a joke (as depicted in ''Film/SinginInTheRain'' and elsewhere). There were a few holdouts, of course - Creator/CharlieChaplin, [[Creator/MarxBrothers Harpo Marx]], cartoon characters like WesternAnimation/{{Pluto|ThePup}} who couldn't talk - but they were the exception, as most people in the 1930s and '40s preferred to be entertained by characters who said funny things rather than acting out funny things. Then Marcel Marceau came along in the 1950s and breathed new life into the art form, even elevating it to the level of high culture...which unfortunately ultimately backfired, as Marceau inspired [[FollowTheLeader a glut of amateurish imitators]] in the decades immediately following who once again cheapened the image of mime, even giving us the current EveryoneHatesMimes trope. Yet mime has never truly died: Countless performers who are not even often thought of as mimes, such as Creator/RowanAtkinson (as ''Series/MrBean''), John Belushi, and Creator/JimCarrey, have proudly carried the tradition into the late twentieth century and beyond. Circus companies such as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey and the Big Apple Circus also have given miming and clowning more attention in the following decades (in part a side effect of wild animal-based acts falling out of favor with modern audiences), and Creator/CirqueDuSoleil and other "contemporary circus" companies pivot upon performers who can engage audiences with few or no words at all.
* American cars:
** Those from TheFifties are beloved today, with their huge tailfins and large amounts of chrome. However, when they went out of style in TheSixties, they went out ''hard''. Back then, few people who could afford it would be caught dead driving around in a '57 Bel Air. It didn't help that a lot of that stylish chrome decoration had a tendency to fall off after a few years due to rust. It was only with the rise of 50s-era nostalgia in general in TheSeventies and especially TheEighties that cars from that decade started to be more appreciated.
** The 1980s themselves have been considered to be the last era of "true car design" in both the US and Europe as oil was no longer a concern and automakers now focused on innovative designs, leading to the spacecraft-like cars of the late 80s such as the Ford Taurus and the Citroen XM. However, TheNineties brought a focus on environmentalism and [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad "blander" designs]] (as a result of the consolidation between American and European companies) that in the long run stripped cars from their personality. These claims became really popular by the second half of the 2000s (with the oil crisis and the car industry downturn) as these became relics of a better time for automobiles..
** The lifecycle of a car design has stretched considerably since the 1990s as well: Until 1990-92, companies changed their ''entire'' lineup every 2 or 3 years (overhauling everything every 4 or 5 years) before the First Gulf War and the 1989-93 depression shook things up. Today, a new car can be exhibited at major shows almost a year before it hits the market; then comes a 5-7 year production cycle and upwards of a 20-year period before examples of a discontinued model that was popular when new are rare enough not to be an everyday sight. Expect at least another ten or even 15 years after ''that'' for them to start showing up at classic-car events.
* The trend towards environmentalism and energy efficiency in the cultural consciousness has done this for a lot of seemingly "outdated" technologies and vehicles:
** The post-war American car market has constantly cycled between demand for larger, roomier, more powerful automobiles and smaller, more efficient ones. In TheFifties and TheSixties, the trend was toward "bigger is better" with land-yachts and muscle cars to show off the newfound wealth of America's middle class. Then, the Arab oil embargo caused demand to shift towards compact and midsize cars and, later, minivans for most of TheSeventies and the first half of TheEighties. As a new generation came of age with little memory of the energy crises, large vehicles came back into style in the late 80s and 90s (except for a brief period around 1991 with the Gulf War) and up to UsefulNotes/The2000s, this time in the form of [[HummerDinger large SUVs]]. Now, thanks to the spikes in gas prices of 2005 (post-Hurricane Katrina) and 2008, compounded with the economic recession in-between, [=SUVs=] were out (With falling oil prices during the mid-2010s, larger cars became popular again), and crossovers, hybrids and compacts were in, as well as...
** Minivans. As mentioned, they were huge in TheEighties as a fuel-efficient alternative to land-yacht station wagons (the fuel crises of TheSeventies still fresh in everyone's mind), but faded away in the late '90s, thanks to [=SUVs=], the perception that the average minivan owner was a boring "soccer mom" suburbanite, and the fact that the styling was getting blander -- compare, say, the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1994-1996_Chevrolet_Lumina_APV.jpg Chevy Lumina]] and the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1996-2000_Toyota_Tarago_(TCR10R)_GLi_van_02.jpg Toyota Previa]] to the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2004-2007_Ford_Freestar.jpg Ford Freestar]]. While they didn't entirely dispose of their uncool reputation, minivans saw a small resurgence after the decline of the [=SUV=] market, due to their similar capacity and greater fuel efficiency.
** Small "econo-box" autos and hatchbacks. During the height of the last "Bigger is Better" craze during late in TheNineties and early in the TurnOfTheMillennium, it seemed as though the only choices for new car owners were [[FateWorseThanDeath four-door sedans and body-on-frame SUVs]]. After 2005, though, vehicles like the new Mini Cooper and various hybrids began selling so fast that it took years before the automakers could meet demand, and older models such as the Geo Metro and Volkswagen Beetle can sell for up to triple their Blue Book value on the used car market on the basis of fuel economy alone. The American automakers even started importing some of their compact European models to meet this new demand, ending decades of NoExportForYou -- to such success that it has been cited as one of the reasons for the revitalization of Detroit's "Big Three" after decades of seemingly interminable decline.
** In the 1970s, the oil crisis led to calls for more efficient cars, as well for alternative fuel sources. This led to the development of the electric car (actually the concept is as old as cars themselves), which by the 1990s attracted public attention as well as federal support. In the 2000s government subsidies were cut, and automakers developed "hybrid" motors that used both electricity and gasoline. Rising oil prices in the late 2000s and early 2010s as well as higher environmental consciousness led to an increased popularity of hybrids and fully electric cars.
** Up until TheSeventies, bicycles were seen primarily as transportation, and were built with full fenders and used either single speed or 3-speed internal gear hubs. Once the health craze launched a cycling boom in the early 80s, many people started switching to racing bikes, which strove to add more gears and lighter materials. Older cruisers, "English" 3-speeds, and even the steel 10-speeds made at the start of the biking boom came to be seen as extremely dorky. But later a shift back to the use of bikes for transportation led to the return of internal gear hubs, single speeds, and even fixed-gear bikes, with specialty makers building custom steel frames instead of aluminum or carbon fiber. The racing bikes, by contrast, are now the ones that are seen as dorky, while the once-cool lycra riding uniforms associated with them are now viewed as symbols of the nadir of [[TheEighties '80s]] fashion.
** Motor scooters: The Vespa was all the rage in TheFifties and TheSixties, becoming a symbol of the "mod" and "beat" subcultures and an emblem of the Swinging London era. After falling off the radar in TheSeventies (the decade when a relatively huge Harley would be considered ''tiny''), there were minor revivals across TheEighties (the "New Wave" era) and, to a lesser extent, in the second half of TheNineties (when metro areas began repopulating with younger people influenced by the "Cool Britannia" spirit). After UsefulNotes/The2000s' fascination with chopper-building realities, TheNewTens came with another scooter craze.
** City centers. After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, when the G.I. Bill[[note]]Short version -- a law passed near the end of the war that gave veterans access to higher education, as well as loans to buy homes and to start businesses.[[/note]], cheap gas, cheap land, the new Interstate Highway System, and the postwar baby boom created an enormous demand for housing that couldn't be met by the cities alone. As a result, this led to a massive boom in {{Suburbia}} and cities began to expand outward rather than upward leading to a phenomenon known as "white flight" in which middle-class white families moved out to the suburbs fleeing the late 1960s race riots, taking their tax dollars with them and leaving the cities behind to decay ''hard''. However, since as early as TheNineties, city centers have seen a resurgence in popularity especially among younger folk due to factors such as better public transit and walkability, proximity to work and cultural attractions, and frustration with suburban life and automobile gridlock. The 2005 oil crisis and economic downturn and the 2008 housing collapse left many "Sun Belt" cities almost empty.
** Subverted by the fact many "Sun Belt" towns have re-engineered themselves into more "urban" places akin to European metro areas, leading to a fast recovery of the area, also bolstered by the fact the Northeast ends up facing hurricanes almost every September-October.
** Averted with metropolitan UsefulNotes/LosAngeles. During the '70s and '80s, the city had a relatively peaceful image thanks to its fair balance between the city and suburbs, specially compared with the [[WretchedHive "Rust Belt" Northeast]], where places such as UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} [[TheBigRottenApple had hair-raising crime rates]] while UsefulNotes/WashingtonDC was noted for its screwed-up council (one mayor was caught smoking crack [[ControversyProofImage but got re-elected anyway]]). However, the underlying tension (especially in racial terms) suddenly exploded with the Rodney King riots in 1992, which resulted in LA becoming what it had avoided in the past decades (or, depending on where you sit, revealing that it had always been like that under its clean surface). This helped many ailing Atlantic cities (especially the Giuliani-era New York) as businesses left L.A.
** Streetcars (or Trams for the British). After UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, a combination of cheap gas and the growing popularity of buses (and, according to {{conspiracy theorist}}s, some [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_American_streetcar_scandal underhanded tactics]] by the auto industry) led to many streetcar lines falling out of use and eventually being dismantled. The few surviving ones in the West (in East Germany and most other Warsaw Pact nations this was not the case for complex reasons, among them the [[TheAllegedCar Trabbi]].), such as those in UsefulNotes/SanFrancisco and UsefulNotes/NewOrleans, persisted more for their historical and tourism value than anything else. When cities ''did'' invest in mass transit, it would often be in the form of buses and subways that wouldn't threaten the flow of automobile traffic on the streets. In TheNineties and the TurnOfTheMillennium, however, the green movement and later on fears over rising gas prices led several cities to build or expand tram lines or "light rail" systems, which are essentially streetcars with decades worth of new technology, but also their alleged "flaws" have become their biggest assets, including bigger vehicles compared to buses (making for more capacity), their above ground running (eliminating some of the problems of dark muggy subway stations), their stable fixed routes (leading to measurably higher investment along routes/stations than bus service) and their overhead electric traction, more efficient than gas or third rails (all the rage in the era of renewable energy).
** First class rail travel. Yes, you heard that correctly. You see, back in the days when rail travel was invented, there were (at least) three classes. [[ValuesDissonance Just like in society]]. However, beginning in TheRoaringTwenties, rich people started having alternatives to rail travel, namely planes and automobiles. By the 1950s the European railways (now state-owned) decided to gut first class as a cost-saving measure. But of course having a second and third class but no first would not sell well. So in a clever bit of marketing they simply uptitled the existing lower two classes while doing some cosmetic fixes to third class (e.g. getting rid of the wooden seats with no padding in third class). The only exception to this was Britain, where some law said there always had to be third class (though there [[LoopholeAbuse wasn't anything keeping anybody from abolishing ''second'' class]]). In the 1970s, rising prices of gas as well as the introduction of UsefulNotes/HighSpeedRail in the 1980s once more expanded the market for rail travel and suddenly new "premium" services for UsefulNotes/HighSpeedRail started being offered. The rail market also grew in UsefulNotes/The2000s due to [[OverreactingAirportSecurity post-9/11 airport security hassles]]. Nowadays, you can get "business" class, "club" class, "preferente" or whatever the marketing department comes up with. On the Acela Express (Boston - New York - Washington), you can chose between Business and First -- no Coach Class for you (also something that last happened on a large scale in the 1950s).[[note]]You can however travel in coach on the "Northeast Regional" which travels the same route at lower speeds and with more intermediate stops[[/note]] So in essence, First Class rail travel was abolished and second class was retitled first class, only for "real" first class to make a comeback half a century later.
** In the 2000s "carpooling" was seen to be an attitude of the 90s that no one wanted to remember (and something only gen-Xers would admit to do). However, the increasing difficulty of driving downtown has led to the rise of "share-ride" services like Uber and Cabify, now touted as the new face of public transportation. This has also led to fewer 20- and 30-somethings (even 40-somethings) looking for cars of their own.
* Art deco was seen as groundbreaking in TheRoaringTwenties as it embraced technology rather than nature, but by TheGreatDepression and UsefulNotes/WorldWarII it became regarded as "expensive nonsense". However, since TheFifties, this style has been practically the most influential over modern architecture.
* "Googie" architecture went out of style soon after the 1950's but discovered a resurgence in the 80's that continues to this day thanks to its nostalgic style emblematic of the decade. The rocket-like tailfins, starbursts, and odd geometric shapes are still a staple of bowling alleys, hamburger restaurants, auto repair shops, and other businesses popular in the 50's, as well as signs for cities that became popular in that decade, most notably Las Vegas. There exist societies dedicated to preserving Googie buildings that escaped the mass demolitions in the 60's and 70's due to their perceived old-fashionedness during then.
* Gentrification is essentially this with regards to both architectural styles and parts of a city. Take Berlin-Kreuzberg for instance: Back when most of the houses there were built (the latter half of the 19th century, aka the ''Gründerzeit'') they were obviously deemed modern and aesthetically pleasing and the area was reasonably popular being close to the city center. After the wall was built and encircled Kreuzberg (which was in West-Berlin) on three sides, it became an undesirable location due to said encirclement. Furthermore the architectural style was seen as bad and most apartments were in dire need of renovation and lacked such conveniences as central heating or warm water. Of course the newly built housing units made of prefabricated slabs (known by the charming word ''Plattenbau'' in German, which roughly means slab building) had those conveniences and thus were widely more popular. The only people who would voluntarily live in old houses in areas like Kreuzberg were immigrants, notorious malcontents and cheapskates like students, leftists and [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs leftist students]]. Many of those houses were also planned to be torn down, so there were issues with squatters. Once the wall came down, Kreuzberg suddenly found itself in the center of Berlin's attention once more and the students and "alternative" people had started their own clubs, bars and other venues and suddenly Kreuzberg became ''the'' place to live in. The ''Plattenbauten'' meanwhile have suffered greatly both in perception and in technical state (being forty or fifty years old does not help), but - you guessed it - in some cities even they show signs of being gentrified.
* In Germany, train stations in major cities and the area surrounding them are this. Back in the 19th century when most cities were first connected to rail lines, train stations were impressive and expensive buildings in the center of town or the best neighborhoods. However, with the decline of rail travel, they entered a serious DorkAge and became associated with drug dealers, the homeless, urban blight and just general decay. Part of the reason for that also was that the state owned railway company did not care enough and/or lacked the resources to do something about that. But eventually, major train stations (e.g. Leipzig, Berlin, Hamburg) have once again become places where people spend a lot of time because they ''want'' to, not because they have to. Train stations now contain a lot of shops (which, due to some quirks in the law can open on Sundays which normal stores usually can't) and they are actually a huge money source for UsefulNotes/DeutscheBahn. One of the cities where the neighborhood around the train station is undergoing serious gentrification is Frankfurt. Once upon a time Frankfurt Bahnhofsviertel was synonymous with drugs, prostitution and crime. Now, it is one of the fastest gentrifying places in Germany. The prostitution still isn't gone however. Many young people don't even remember that train stations used to have a negative image. However, the situation for marginal stations in the countryside and minor cities is still dire and many have been replaced by nothing more than shacks.
* Franchise/{{Lego}}, popular plastic building blocks created in 1949. The toys have always been relatively popular, but in the late '90s/early 2000s, the Lego Company decided to start licensing popular franchises such as ''Franchise/StarWars''. Lego suddenly boomed in popularity with video games, fan-made stop motion videos, and in 2014 a [[WesternAnimation/TheLegoMovie highly successful movie]].
** The LEGO fandom has a term specifically for individual fans going through their own popularity polynomial; they love the bricks as a kid, but lose interest in their teens in the "dark ages" before eventually rekindling their interest, sometimes more strongly than before.
* {{Pinball}} has seen its ups and downs in popularity. It was the dominant type of arcade game until the 1970's, when video games became inexpensive enough to manufacture for arcade owners, and intensified through the first half of the 80's with hits like ''VideoGame/PacMan'' and ''VideoGame/DonkeyKong''. Pinball then became popular again with ''Pinball/SpaceShuttle'' leading the charge, which featured an accurate scale model of a space shuttle inside, an impression no video game at the time could replicate. With nothing like it to follow up, however, pinball soon lost ground to video games again in the late 80's as video game technology became more advanced, allowing for more diverse gameplay and visuals where pinball, by nature, is stuck with a static image. This changed with ''Pinball/TheAddamsFamily'' in 1992, whose many modes and deep theme integration allowed pinball to once again compete on even terms with video games at arcades. By the end of the 90's, however, arcades in North America were becoming unpopular as console and computer video gaming allowed people to play within their homes as much as they wanted, combined with the increasing complexity and length of games as a whole. For nearly the entirety of [[TurnOfTheMillennium the 2000s]], pinball seemed to be practically dead, with Creator/{{Stern}} being the only major manufacturer left. This changed around 2012, when multiple developments combined to create an upsurge in popularity. Simulator games like ''VideoGame/ThePinballArcade'' helped spark new interest in the medium, prompting people to either find machines in public to play to see how they're like in person (or, if one could afford it, buy them for home use). In addition, Creator/JerseyJackPinball was founded and put out ''Pinball/TheWizardOfOz'' in 2013; its many features and innovations, particularly the use of a screen instead of a dot-matrix display, gave Stern a true competitor and opened the floodgates for several more upstart companies to try their hand in the field over the course of TheNewTens. Pinball has also been riding on the back of the RetroGaming craze, with many newer arcades hosting both video games and pinball machines. This renewed popularity can be seen in Stern's sales increasing ''300%'' between 2012 and 2014.
* Creator/CartoonNetwork was a revered channel for WesternAnimation in the late '90s, but suffered ''massive'' NetworkDecay in the mid 2000s, culminating in an overdose of Canadian imports and ''live-action shows''. Luckily, the success of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'' and ''WesternAnimation/RegularShow'' has returned Cartoon Network to its former place.
* With the growth of social media and instant messaging, Internet Relay Chat looked poised to go the way of Website/{{Usenet}} in the '00s, a place for pirates and Website/FourChan trolls to hang out in. Instead, nearly every open source project has an IRC channel (typically on Freenode), as well as many [[Website/{{Reddit}} subreddits]].
* Netbooks, small low-powered laptops designed for web surfing, were popular in the late '00s, but died off after Apple introduced the [=iPad=]. Chromebooks, powered by Google's Chrome OS, have become popular, particularly in schools, for their ease of use and low maintenance.
* The sinking of the UsefulNotes/RMSTitanic was one of the biggest and most well-known disasters of the early 20th century and was the source of multiple book and film adaptations about passengers on board. By the 70's and 80's people had more than enough of those stories (in the issue 4 of ''Les Aventures Extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec'', part of the excitement is seeing whether or not she would get on board of the Titanic -- and die due to being unable to escape). No one would have expected that a movie adaptation in 1997 would end up becoming the second-highest grossing film of all time (not adjusted for inflation).
* {{Steampunk}} culture in the United States: In the 1990s, it was seen as the next big thing with its blending of science fiction and retro aesthetics becoming a surprise success. After 9/11 however, American SpeculativeFiction fans turned to DieselPunk and AtomPunk, which had a stronger EagleLand feel. By the 2010s, the millennial generation's [[ForeignCultureFetish fascination for everything British]] has translated into a resurgence of the culture.
* French culture in the U.S. was highly popular for generations, whether for its art, its love of jazz, and its films among other things. By the early/mid-2000s however, France's opposition to UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror led to a [[CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys backlash on the right towards anything that sported a French accent]][[note]]The backlash in Britain was itself a revival of the old English national sport[[/note]], to the point ''French fries''[[note]]Chips for those preferring British English[[/note]] among other things, were renamed as "Freedom fries"[[note]]The same had previously happened during WWI, this time with the Germans--sauerkraut became known as "liberty cabbage"[[/note]]. By the following decade, the backlash against said war and general Europhilia in America led to a renewed popularity of France, the terrorist attacks that have hit the country during the mid-2010s and the election of Emmanuel Macron[[note]]Especially considering that the prospect of a President Marine Le Pen kept many worried[[/note]]only boosting said sentiment.
* Americans were huge consumers of tea until the [[UsefulNotes/TheAmericanRevolution Boston Tea Party]], when coffee became the beverage of choice and tea became synonymous with "sissified" Brits. During the 2010s however, tea became increasingly popular in North America, mostly because of the craze over British culture during the early years of the decade and growing aversion to caffeine, especially among younger demographics (which has meant a shift in coffee consumption towards more "gourmet" experiences like Starbucks and Nespresso; its place as the quintessential pick-me-up taken over by energy drinks and some varieties of tea). At the same time, green tea became popular as a health food, particularly among women. As a result, better quality teas became more readily available and big box stores began stocking electric kettles (though generally less powerful than the average U.K. models) in their kitchen appliance sections.
* With the rise of coffeehouse culture in the U.S. in UsefulNotes/TheNineties, drip coffee was seen as something for old people or the terminally clueless by serious coffee aficionados. ''Real'' coffee came from espresso machines or a French press. But with the rise of "third wave" coffee culture, coffee lovers have rediscovered manual pour-over drip coffee makers. Ironically, it tends to be popular in the Pacific Northwest, the region responsible for popularizing espresso in the U.S.
* The attitude towards recreational drugs has undergone several cycles of both prohibition and legalization as well as more or less regulation being more popular politically and with the population at large:
** Perhaps the most dramatic is the story of alcohol prohibition, which was tried out in several countries, primarily in the first third of the 20th century, most notably in the United States between 1920 and 1933[[note]]on a nationwide basis--several states and counties had prohibition before 1920 (the Volstead Act was pretty much just an enforcement of this) and well after 1933[[/note]]. It backfired horribly however (while consumption ''did'' decrease opposed to popular knowledge, this was offset by increasing crime rates), and after its repeal alcohol gradually became more popular. The profile of the average beer and bourbon drinker since the 1990s has returned however to be the rowdy blue-collar layabout that became the focus of the temperance movement of the 19th century (this however does ''not'' apply to more upscale drinks such as vodka or wine, [[WineIsClassy still regarded as highbrow]]. Even beer has gotten in on the act with the rise of craft breweries).
** Smoking is nowadays associated with the poor and uneducated in much of the West and is banned in most indoor (and several outdoor) places -- a stark contrast to days past when it was considered to be tasteful and stylish, and even UsefulNotes/TheHindenburg had a dedicated smoking room, despite being [[MadeOfExplodium filled with hydrogen]]. Not that it was always that way, before WWI, tobacco was associated with cowboys and others. While vaporizers (better known as "vapes") have gained popularity, these are considered to be more of a "premium" product rather than for everyday use much like cigars (which have thrived since the 1990s with the rise of "cigar bars"). On the other hand, electronic cigarettes were intended for daily usage, but they never caught on for certain reasons, one of them being their propensity to explode. Like their non-electric counterparts, they've also quickly become associated with "white trash".
** Attitudes towards hemp as a plant and its use as a drug have also varied greatly. UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington grew it on his farm[[note]]There is no record of him ''smoking'' the stuff, but he ''did'' leave records of separating the male and female plants, a practice whose only (known) purpose is to grow higher-quality female plants to be smoked by ''somebody''[[/note]] and the Declaration of Independence was written on hemp paper. In the 20th century an anti-drug scare campaign led to the {{Unfortunate Implication|s}} of renaming it as "marijuana" to make it sound like a [[ValuesDissonance "Mexican" drug]] -- succeeded in getting it banned and for a long time only TheStoner and hopeless left-wing radicals ever argued in favor of legalizing the plant. Even the non-drug cultivation of hemp became increasingly difficult and was entirely impeded by bureaucratic red tape in many places. However, after UsefulNotes/BillClinton stated that he "Did not inhale" weed, its acceptance began to rise once more and even people on the political right started to argue in favor of legalization with libertarian "get the government out of people's lives" arguments. By TheNewTens UsefulNotes/BarackObama was able to gleefully admit that "Of course I inhaled, that was sort of the point" and several states have passed ballot measures or laws to legalize medicinal or recreational use with a lot of LoopholeAbuse going on with the former in some states. In fact [[Series/RealTimeWithBillMaher Bill Maher]] is able to more or less openly declare his "medical" marijuana he takes under California law has more to do with getting high than with any actual medical condition.
* President UsefulNotes/UlyssesSGrant. When he left office, he was a well-liked president and much lauded as a general, credited with winning the Civil War for the Union. However, the scandals, as well as the economic downturn, that marred his second term quickly began to take their toll on his reputation. For a long time, even his military record was re-evaluated as nothing special, with Grant being credited more for being in the right place at the right time for good things to happen rather than any genuine military greatness on his own part. In the following decades, Grant's reputation has begun to recover, with modern Grant supporters pointing out that he had easily the best civil rights record of the Reconstruction presidents; Grant supported black Southerners (including undertaking a massive government crackdown on UsefulNotes/TheKlan that left them crippled for four decades) and made numerous, albeit largely unsuccessful, efforts to keep the peace between whites and Native Americans in the West. Though Grant is still generally ranked as a below-average president in scholarly sources, his reputation is steadily climbing, while that of traditionally lauded presidents with ''bad'' civil rights records (such as UsefulNotes/AndrewJackson and UsefulNotes/WoodrowWilson) has headed in the other direction.
* [[TheMall Shopping malls]], of all things, have been going through this since about TheEighties. Overly optimistic development resulted in a massive surplus of retail space across the US, causing older generations of malls to start dying off as newer, larger complexes replaced them. This, combined with rampant demographic shifts in urban areas, helped create the first generations of "dead malls" in the US (the UrExample being Dixie Square Mall in the Chicago suburb of Harvey, which closed in 1978 and, after being repurposed for a famous scene in ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'', was left to decay until it was finally torn down in the mid 2010s.) Malls continued to decline throughout TheNineties as rampant competition in the retail market did a number on a large number of clothing stores and department stores, causing many to severely retrench or go out of business entirely (including older department stores such as Montgomery Ward and Woolworth). And then by the end of the decade, the rise of "big box" stores and e-commerce took further pieces out of the retail pie, as did a myriad of department store mergers. It was in this climate that a huge number of malls began to die off entirely, most commonly aging and unremodeled centers that had failed to keep up with the times. What few malls were being built by the TurnOfTheMillennium were typically "lifestyle centers" in more affluent areas, boasting upscale shops and restaurants in a streetscape setting, or "power centers", largely composed of the aforementioned big-box stores -- both of which were also starting to become common redevelopment tactics for struggling indoor malls. Not a single enclosed mall was built in the US between 2006 and 2014. The mid 2000s-early 2010s economic crisis certainly didn't help, as seen by General Growth Properties, one of the largest mall companies in the U.S., filing for bankruptcy...\\\
Then came TheNewTens, when many malls began to go on [[http://commercialconstructionblog.com/retail-construction-trends-shopping-center-construction-enters-renaissance-with-renovation-work/ massive renovation sprees]] that are bringing in plenty of new stores. Also, two new malls finally opened in the U.S. in 2014 (one in Sarasota, Florida, the other in The Bronx), and a struggling mall in suburban Washington, D.C. was gutted and rebuilt... as a new ''enclosed'' mall. While "dead malls" are still prominent, the suburban malls that are not dying are keeping themselves relevant by adopting the more main street-like style of the "lifestyle centers" (a driving force in the trend to put the "urban" in "suburban"), luring in new and noteworthy tenants to make up for retrenching retailers (particularly "fast fashion" clothing stores such as [=H&M=] and Forever 21, trendy restaurants, fitness centers, etc.) and undergoing eye-catching renovations to keep the concept of "going to the mall" relevant to a newer generation...\\\
Then came the "retail apocalypse" of 2016-19, where a disproportionately large number of popular mall stores went through large amounts of closings or gone out of business entirely, including major department store chain The Bon-Ton. Combined with frequent store closings from the three major department store chains (J.C. Penney, Macy's, and Sears), creating further holes to be filled in malls countrywide (although discount-oriented department stores, such as Kohl's, Burlington, and Marshalls/TJ Maxx, have thrived). Despite these closures, many malls have worked around this by introducing more big-box stores; entertainment complexes (high-end theaters, bowling alleys, large-format arcades such as Dave & Buster's); unconventional tenants such as libraries, storefront churches, playplaces, or secondhand shops; or even non-retail use (one notable example being Fairlane Town Center in Dearborn, Michigan, which replaced a long-vacant department store with Ford offices). Even as the retail scene shifts, it appears that the American mall still has some life left in it.
* The DriveInTheater has seen a resurgence as of the 21st century. Throughout TheFifties and into TheSeventies, the concept flourished, giving that generation a venue to view popular movies in a more intimate, semi-private environment than offered by a regular theater. However, the concept was dealt massive blows in the end of TheSeventies and TheEighties, with many of the culprits being the oil crisis, hikes in property taxes that made such spacious properties hard to maintain (particularly as formerly rural areas became encroached by suburbia), and the emergence of both home video and larger multiplexes with wider varieties. There was also the fact that, unlike regular theaters, drive-ins were at the mercy of weather; those in the northern states typically closed in the winter, thus giving them much less time to generate profits, while many others saw costly damage due to high winds or tornadoes. By this point, many had come to mainly showing exploitation movies and/or porn to draw wider audiences, which worked in the short-term but often drew the ire of MoralGuardians and especially irked neighbors. The number of drive-ins nationwide plummeted in these decades, with countless ones being taken for other purposes (many became flea markets or golf driving ranges; others were demolished for new development; and still others have been left completely abandoned for upwards of 20-30 years). However, a brave few drive-ins soldiered on, trading mainly on Baby Boomer nostalgia. But it was that same nostalgia that led not only to interest in patronizing and preserving the few that were still open, but also even opening a few new ones. The concept has also been modernized for contemporary moviegoers, as many drive-ins now feature digital projection, stereo sound, and multiple screens. The drive-in theater got another boost during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, as moviegoers could enjoy films outside of the home while staying relatively safe in their cars.
* Bill Gates became famous for the BASIC programming language, and Microsoft's [[UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} operating]] [[UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows systems]]. Then he became the world's richest man, and Microsoft was a MegaCorp with questionable business practices and unreliable software such as certain UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows versions, and thus [[ScapegoatCreator the general public thought of Gates as a]] CorruptCorporateExecutive. Then in 2000 two things happened that along the years improved Gates' reputation, his NumberTwo [[LargeHam Steve Ballmer]] become Microsoft CEO and thus face of the company, and the estabilishment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's wealthiest charity organization. The high profile philantrophy ended the {{Demonization}}, as it was clear Gates wasn't an UpperClassTwit, but wanted to make the world better.
* The undercut hairstyle, buzzed on the sides and back but long and parted on the top, has cycled in and out of popularity as a men's haircut for over a century. It emerged in TheEdwardianEra with working-class men, and despite its association with [[LowerClassLout street gangs]] (short hair was harder to grab in a fight), it eventually became mainstream during the Jazz Age in the 1920s and '30s. The rise of the '60s counterculture saw new hairstyles take its place, but it enjoyed a revival in the 2010s thanks to celebrities like Creator/RyanGosling, Creator/BradPitt, Music/{{Macklemore}}, and David Beckham, as well as TV characters like ''Series/MadMen''[='=]s Don Draper and ''Series/BoardwalkEmpire''[='=]s Jimmy Darmody, leading to its rise in {{hipster}} culture. Unfortunately, it [[https://www.yahoo.com/style/why-women-swiping-left-america-203000196.html also became popular]] among members of the [[ANaziByAnyOtherName alt-right]], who adopted it as a less threatening alternative to the [[BaldOfEvil skinhead/buzzcut look]] while also hearkening back to the Hitler Youth, causing the style to earn the pejorative nickname "fashy" around 2016 and start falling out of favor again.
* Up until 250 or so million years ago, the dominant land animals were the therapsids. Then, global climate changes forced the archosaurs on top, with them evolving in relatively short order into a huge group called the dinosaurs. These ruled Earth for 150 million years before being wiped out by some asteroid... cue some poor surviving branch of the therapsids deciding it's now their time to step in as the top dog... and whale... and tiger... and elephant... and ape...
* Watches are an odd case of this--originally they were vanity items that most people couldn't afford, but over time they became cheaper to produce until they became ubiquitous, and uninteresting. When smartphones became equally universal, watches disappeared due to the redundancy of carrying an additional device that only tells time... or so you would think, but instead their status as a hot vanity item returned, with well-off people wearing glitzed-up old-fashioned watches, or "smart watches" to go with their smartphones.
* Back in the 1990s and 2000s Nokia were the leading manufacturer of cellphones, chances are that if you owned a cellphone back then there's a high chance that it would have been a Nokia. But in 2007, Apple launched the iPhone which triggered the smartphone revolution. Nokia were late to the smartphone game and decided to use Windows Mobile as opposed to Android which decimated their reputation. In 2014 their mobile division was sold to Microsoft and was pretty much dead. But in 2016 HMD Global (publicly trading as Nokia Mobile) was founded after several former Nokia employees bought out Microsoft Mobile, this time Nokias would run on Android. Sales grew rather quickly, with many praising its price-quality scale, they even repopularised the "dumb phone" which has sold well with the growing wave of 1990s-2000s nostalgia.
* Likewise, the traditional cellphone, also known as the "dumbphone" or the feature phone, has made a comeback recently. They fell out of fashion after the rise of the smartphone but as of late they're now making quite the comeback due to the backlash against smartphones and social media as well as nostalgia for the 1990s and 2000s.
* Glass bottles. Up until the 1980s, milk and other drinks were always found in glass bottles but beginning in the 1970s, plastic became the norm... until the 2010s when the environmental effects of plastic became well-known. By the second half of the decade, glass bottles saw a resurgence. In many countries the introduction of (sometimes intentionally onerous) deposits for plastic bottles, the increasing refusal of recycling plants to handle plastic and even a "sin tax" helped repopularize glass bottles. Despite appearances even "durable" PET bottles last less cycles of being used, emptied and refilled than glass bottles.
* Similarly, by the 1990s, paper bags had been replaced by cheaper-to-make plastic bags. However, in the late 2010s many retailers began phasing out plastic bags (with many countries banning them entirely or taxing them, including a 2010s EU law to that effect) in favor of paper bags and reusable shopping bags.
* Television in general. Beginning in the 1950s, it was ''the'' form of entertainment for families everywhere, but by the 1990s it fell into a rut due to two main factors: one being the internet and newer media such as video games becoming popular, especially among the youth, but most importantly, many networks began turning towards the lowest common denominator and forced "hipness", leading to serious cases of NetworkDecay--which more often than not, meant flooding channels with RealityTelevision by the early 2000s, while the better-regarded shows generally [[ScrewedByTheNetwork got mediocre ratings and often were axed before long]]... unless the show was on premium cable, which gave viewers movie-quality production values for the first time on the "tube" in a weekly basis. However, during the mid/late-00s these shows ended without any worthy replacements, and as a result, people all over were cancelling their cable ''en masse'' and the phrase "who watches TV anymore?" was practically ubiquitous as internet became the medium of choice for audiovisual entertainment. Ironically, it was the web which allowed a renaissance for television in the 2010s, with streaming services, namely Creator/{{Netflix}}, providing a chance for watching whatever one wants anytime they like. The opportunities brought upon by stable revenue and a lack of ''enforced'' censorship led to the making of shows featuring themes and production values that would be unfeasible on traditional TV, often resulting in massive hits. Even shows that were unceremoniously booted by the networks gained a second life on streaming services. By the mid/late-2010s, roughly ''one-third'' of all Internet traffic in the US during certain hours was streaming. The success of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video not only led about everyone else to try their hand themselves, creating original content in some cases, but also contributed to the popular appreciation of high-concept series which have contributed to a resurgence of premium cable.
* TV's predecessor, radio, has also gotten a boost in the digital era due to the growth of podcasting, smart speakers and internet/satellite radio. Podcasting has made audio content for news, comedy and dramas popular again after they were overtaken by TV in the '50s. Internet and satellite radio have also allowed for greater variety in music programming and lack of censorship instead of the narrow formats of terrestrial radio. Listeners have embraced public radio as an alternative to the sensationalism of cable news. A major reason is that audio offers a relief from the visual overload from the revival of TV mentioned above.
* The {{Fantasy}} genre hit a low point in the early-mid '10s where many movies of the fantasy kind were {{Box Office Bomb}}s, and it lost significant ground in overall popularity to the {{Superhero}} genre. There were exceptions, such as ''Franchise/HarryPotter'' due to its longstanding popularity and ''Series/GameOfThrones'' for being such a mature take on it, but overall the fear of failure was what kept many properties from being greenlit. In the late '10s, things changed. The rise of streaming (see above) has led to these concepts being perfect adaptations for the format, with their rich lore, LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters, detailed worlds, and possibilities for stories actually being ''ideal'' -- an interesting reversal in what kept these stories from succeeding to begin with. ''Literature/TheWheelOfTime'', ''Literature/TheChroniclesOfNarnia'', ''Franchise/TheWitcher'', and ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'', just to name a few, are examples of stories that were announced as major selling points for their services.
* The original UsefulNotes/{{Dada}} movement of 1916 - which was based on violating conventions and depended on [[{{Troll}} confusing and upsetting audiences]] - [[ItsPopularNowItSucks died]] when [[MisaimedFandom people began enjoying it]], thus [[SpringtimeForHitler defeating its purpose]]. However, its influence can still be seen to this day: it contributed to the rise of {{postmodernism}}, and {{Spiritual Successor}}s such as WebAnimation/YouTubePoop follow Dadaist ideology to a T.
* Back in the 18th century, the ballet was a very popular form of court entertainment, particularly in France, where royalty codified it through such standards as the five positions of the arms and feet, around which the whole art form revolves, and it was also used as a measure of human strength, itself still true to an extent today. Then the French Revolution happened, and suddenly ballet found itself out of fashion to the point where it was a common subject of mockery directed towards the excesses of the then-recently-deposed ruling class. Only in the Romantic period did ballet experience a GenreRelaunch, and only after the [[{{Pun}} rise]] of pointework, spearheaded by the great Marie Camargo, and the creation of ballets with fantasy elements such as ''Theatre/LaSylphide'' and ''Theatre/{{Giselle}}''.
* Typewriters were mostly replaced by word processing software on personal computers starting in the 1980s, but some writers have rediscovered typewriters, citing the distraction-free writing environment and claiming the need to think about what they're typing improves their writing. Creator/TomHanks is a notable typewriter fan, collecting old machines and even writing a book of short stories that involves a typewriter in some way.
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* Television in general. Beginning in the 1950s, it was ''the'' form of entertainment for families everywhere, but by the 1990s it fell into a rut due to two main factors: one being the internet and newer media such as video games becoming popular, especially among the youth, but most importantly, many networks began turning towards the lowest common denominator and forced "hipness", leading to serious cases of NetworkDecay--which more often than not, meant flooding channels with RealityTelevision by the early 2000s, while the better-regarded shows generally [[ScrewedByTheNetwork got mediocre ratings and often were axed before long]]... unless the show was on premium cable, which gave viewers movie-quality production values for the first time on the "tube" in a weekly basis. However, during the mid/late-00s these shows ended without any worthy replacements, and as a result, people all over were cancelling their cable ''en masse'' and the phrase "who watches TV anymore?" was practically ubiquitous as internet became the medium of choice for audiovisual entertainment. Ironically, it was the web which allowed a renaissance for television in the 2010s, with streaming services, namely Creator/{{Netflix}}, providing a chance for watching whatever one wants anytime they like. The opportunities brought upon by stable revenue and a lack of ''enforced'' censorship led to the making of shows featuring themes and production values that would be unfeasible on traditional TV, often resulting in massive hits. Even shows that were unceremoniously booted by the networks gained a second life. By the mid/late-2010s, roughly ''one-third'' of all Internet traffic in the US during certain hours was streaming. The success of Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Video not only led about everyone else to try their hand themselves, creating original content in some cases, but also contributed to the popular appreciation of high-concept series which have contributed to a resurgence of premium cable.

* Men's underpants seem to go through this cycle. The Coopers (now “Jockey”) underwear company introduced briefs for men in the 1930s -- which caused a sensation, as they were skimpier than most women's panties at the time. This gradually brought about a change in men's intimate and leisurely fashions, with short underpants replacing the boxer shorts and long johns previously popular and male swimmers, bodybuilders and surfers wearing skimpy trunks instead of the one-piece swimsuits from the 1920s. By the 1970s and even the early '80s, wearing midthigh-length shorts as underwear was thought to be hopelessly old-fashioned, with only older men daring to be caught in them. Then the pendulum swung back: in the late 1980s and TheNineties, [[WildMassGuessing perhaps as a backlash against the burgeoning gay culture or maybe due to inspiration from the ultra-manly, proletarian fashion sense of Seattle grunge rock]], boxer shorts (especially plaid ones) became cool again, and during the 90s and 2000s, wearing briefs was often thought of as effeminate or immature. Eventually, though, with the rise of "slim-fit" in the 2010s, the two sides met in the middle, so that now in most department stores you can easily find "boxer briefs", which have elastic waistbands and legbands but cover everything above the mid-thigh. Additionally, men wearing the classic brief has seen a resurgence as well. When it comes to ProfessionalWrestling, however, [[UnderwearOfPower this trope has always been inoperative]].

* Men's underpants seem to go through this cycle. The Coopers (now “Jockey”) underwear company introduced briefs for men in the 1930s -- which caused a sensation, as they were skimpier than most women's panties at the time. This gradually brought about a change in men's intimate and leisurely fashions, with short underpants replacing the boxer shorts and long johns previously popular and male swimmers, bodybuilders and surfers wearing skimpy trunks instead of the one-piece swimsuits from the 1920s. By the 1970s and even the early '80s, wearing midthigh-length shorts as underwear was thought to be hopelessly old-fashioned, with only older men daring to be caught in them. Then the pendulum swung back: in the late 1980s and TheNineties, [[WildMassGuessing perhaps as a backlash against the burgeoning gay culture or maybe due to inspiration from the ultra-manly, proletarian fashion sense of Seattle grunge rock]], boxer shorts (especially plaid ones) became cool again, and during the 90s and 2000s, wearing briefs was often thought of as effeminate or immature. Eventually, though, with the rise of "slim-fit" in the 2010s, the two sides met in the middle, so that now in most department stores you can easily find "boxer briefs", which have elastic waistbands and legbands but cover everything above the mid-thigh. When it comes to ProfessionalWrestling, however, [[UnderwearOfPower this trope has always been inoperative]].