18 Paper Products in the 1970s That Were Phased Out

The 1970s home was full of paper. Patterned, branded, avocado green, and harvest gold. Paper products were a design statement back then, not just a utility. Companies competed hard on print, texture, and theme. Grocery stores dedicated entire aisles to napkins, towels, plates, and bags with personality. Then slowly, through the 1980s and 1990s, the character got stripped out. Plain white took over. Costs got cut. Designs got dropped. Most people never noticed a specific product leaving. They just noticed one day that everything looked a little more boring than it used to.

1. Vera Neumann Printed Paper Napkins

Vera Neumann was a textile designer who built a massive following in the 60s and 70s with bold floral and geometric prints. Her designs appeared on scarves, bedding, and eventually on paper napkins sold in grocery and department stores. The napkins were a genuine household staple for a specific generation of homemakers who cared about a well-set table even for casual meals. When Vera’s licensing empire contracted in the early 80s, the paper napkin line was among the first products dropped. Generic floral napkins from other brands filled the shelf space but never matched the specific energy of her prints. Collectors still hunt vintage Vera napkins at estate sales, which says everything about the loyalty those designs earned.

2. Scott Colored Bathroom Tissue

Scott Paper was one of the biggest names in bathroom tissue through the ’70s, and their colored tissue options were a genuine home decor consideration. Pink, yellow, blue, and green rolls were sold to match bathroom color schemes, which were taken seriously in a decade defined by harvest gold and avocado fixtures. Scott and competitors like Charmin all offered color lines through the 70s. Health concerns about dyes and skin sensitivity began circulating in the early 80s. Consumer preference shifted toward white. Scott phased out the colors gradually over the decade. Colored bathroom tissue hung on in European markets much longer. In the US, it essentially vanished, taking an entire approach to coordinating bathroom interiors with it.

3. Hallmark Party Paks Themed Plates

Hallmark sold complete party sets through the ’70s under the Party Pak name, featuring plates, cups, napkins, and tablecloths with unified graphic themes. The designs were distinctly ’70s, with lots of macrame-inspired patterns, earth tones, and illustrated characters with a handcrafted feel. Grocery and drugstores stocked them year-round, not just for birthdays. Hallmark repositioned its paper party line toward licensed characters and foil-balloon tie-ins throughout the ’80s. The original Party Pak aesthetic was retired entirely. The themed coordinate system those sets offered was genuinely useful, and the quality was higher than most party supply alternatives. Nothing that replaced them had the same cohesive design sensibility.

4. Printed Wax Paper Bread Bags

Through the ’70s, many regional and national bread brands used wax paper bags with detailed printed illustrations and brand characters that were genuinely charming. The wax coating gave the bags a slight sheen, and the printing had a quality that cheap plastic packaging never matched. Kids saved the bags for school lunches and crafts. Bread companies shifted aggressively to clear or printed plastic bags through the late ’70s and early ’80s because plastic was cheaper to produce and preserved freshness more effectively. The wax paper bag disappeared almost entirely within a decade. A few specialty and artisan bread brands have brought it back as a premium packaging signal, but the mass market version is completely gone.

5. Mead Theme Printed Notebook Paper

Mead and other school supply brands sold loose-leaf notebook paper in the ’70s with subtle printed borders, themes, and decorative elements along the margins. Sports themes, nature scenes, and geometric borders were common. It was a small detail, but kids had preferences and would specifically ask for certain designs at back-to-school time. Production costs made the decorative printing increasingly hard to justify as plain wide-ruled white paper became the category standard. By the early ’80s, the decorated versions had mostly disappeared from mainstream retail. The blank white page took over completely. It sounds like a minor loss, but it represented a moment when even functional school supplies were expected to have some visual personality.

6. Dixie Riddle Cups

Dixie bathroom cups with jokes and riddles printed inside were a genuine household fixture throughout the ’70s. Kids looked forward to unrolling a new cup just to read the joke at the bottom. The riddles were corny, and the humor was completely age-appropriate, which made them a rare paper product that children actually engaged with beyond its basic function. Dixie ran the riddle cups for years before shifting toward licensed character designs and eventually plain branded options. The riddle format was dropped without any particular announcement. Parents who grew up with them tried to explain the concept to their own kids years later and were surprised to find out it had ended. It was a small daily joy that disappeared too quietly.

7. Anchor Hocking Printed Freezer Paper

Freezer paper was a kitchen staple in the ’70s used for wrapping meat, fish, and bulk groceries before home chest freezers became standard. Several brands, including Anchor Hocking, sold printed freezer paper rolls with measurement guides, storage time charts, and sometimes decorative borders printed directly on the non-coated side. The functional printing made the paper genuinely useful beyond basic wrapping. As vacuum sealing and zip-lock freezer bags took over through the ’80s, the freezer paper roll lost its dominant position in the kitchen. Plain white versions still exist for specialty and craft use. The printed informational versions with charts and guides are completely gone, replaced by a sticker on the box that nobody reads.

8. Colored Facial Tissue Boxes

Kleenex and Puffs both sold facial tissues in colors through the ’70s, pastel pinks, yellows, and blues that matched bathroom and bedroom decor in the same way colored bathroom tissue did. The tissue itself was tinted, and the boxes were designed to coordinate. Department stores and pharmacies stocked them prominently. The same dye sensitivity concerns that killed colored bathroom tissue hit facial tissue simultaneously. Dermatologists began recommending uncolored tissue for sensitive skin and around the eyes. Both major brands phased the colored options out through the early ’80s. The decorative tissue box cover industry actually grew in response, since plain white boxes needed to be hidden. One product’s disappearance created a cottage industry.

9. Paper Bag Kite Kits

Through the early and mid-’70s, several paper product and toy companies sold kite kits that used a large treated paper bag as the kite body, with balsa sticks and string included. The concept was simple, affordable, and accessible. Kids could build a functioning kite from a bag in under an hour. The treated paper held up reasonably well in light wind. Cheap plastic kite manufacturing out of Asia made the paper bag kit economically uncompetitive by the late ’70s. Plastic kites were more durable, more colorful, and ultimately cheaper at retail. The paper bag kit vanished from store shelves quickly and completely. It survives now only as a craft project instruction in vintage activity books that show up at thrift stores.

10. Patterned Paper Drinking Straws

Paper straws in the ’70s were not the plain white eco-alternative familiar today. They came in stripes, polka dots, and solid colors and were a standard feature at diners, soda fountains, and home parties. The paper had a wax coating that kept it from dissolving too quickly, though it eventually softened. Plastic straws took over almost completely throughout the late ’70s and ’80s because they were cheaper and did not soften. The patterned paper straw disappeared from mainstream use for roughly four decades before environmental concerns brought paper straws back. The modern versions are better engineered, but the patterned and striped designs of the original ’70s straw have a charm that plain white recycled paper cannot replicate.

11. Sears Christmas Catalog Wrapping Paper

Sears sold branded holiday wrapping paper through the ’70s that featured illustrations tied directly to products and themes from the annual Christmas Wish Book catalog. The paper was heavy stock with rich ink coverage and specific holiday scenes that felt genuinely premium compared to drugstore alternatives. Buying Sears wrapping paper was part of the same seasonal ritual as circling items in the catalog itself. As Sears began its long decline through the ’80s and catalog culture weakened, the branded wrapping paper line was cut. It was a small product in the larger Sears catalog, but it represented a specific kind of retail world where a department store could sell wrapping paper and have customers specifically choose it over competitors.

12. Colored Butcher Paper Rolls

Colored butcher paper rolls were sold in home and kitchen stores through the ’70s in shades beyond the standard white and brown. Red, blue, and green rolls were used for table coverings at casual parties, school projects, and holiday decorations. Teachers bought them in bulk. Households kept a roll or two in a kitchen drawer. The product existed in a niche between craft paper and party supplies and served both functions reasonably well. Specialty arts and crafts retailers gradually captured the market, selling similar products at higher price points to specific craft audiences. The affordable everyday household colored paper roll that lived in the kitchen junk drawer area stopped being a standard grocery store item sometime in the early ’80s.

13. Scripto Disposable Notepad Calendars

Scripto and similar office supply brands sold tear-off daily calendar notepads through the ’70s that combined a date calendar with a small blank notes section on each page. They sat on kitchen counters and office desks. Each morning you tore off the previous day. The ritual was oddly satisfying, and the accumulated torn pages were sometimes saved for phone numbers or grocery lists jotted in the margins. Digital clocks with date displays made the daily tear-off calendar feel redundant through the late ’70s and ’80s. The format shrank to a novelty gift item rather than a household essential. The specific combination of calendar and notepad on a single tearable page disappeared from everyday home use almost entirely.

14. Illustrated Recipe Box Liners

Recipe box inserts and divider cards sold through the ’70s often came with illustrated paper liners that fit inside the box itself, featuring kitchen scenes, herb illustrations, or vintage food imagery. They were sold separately in stationery and kitchen stores and gave the inside of a standard metal or wood recipe box a finished look. The recipe box, as a kitchen object, began to decline in the late ’80s as spiral-bound cookbooks and, eventually, digital options took over meal planning. When recipe boxes stopped being purchased as new items, the liner market collapsed with them. The illustrated liner is now a product that requires a specific explanation to anyone under fifty. The object it was designed for is itself mostly gone.

15. American Greetings Seasonal Shelf Paper

American Greetings sold decorative shelf paper through the ’70s in seasonal and holiday patterns that homemakers used to line kitchen cabinets and pantry shelves. The paper came in rolls and featured designs that matched the brand’s greeting-card aesthetic. Spring florals, fall leaves, and Christmas patterns were the strongest sellers. Shelf lining as a kitchen practice weakened significantly through the ’80s as laminate cabinet interiors became standard and easier to wipe clean. The decorative paper roll lost its functional argument. American Greetings exited the category quietly. Contact paper in solid colors and basic patterns absorbed whatever market remained. The illustrated seasonal version from a greeting card company is no longer available.

16. Bounty Printed Paper Towel Patterns

Bounty and several competitors sold paper towels through the 70s with printed patterns on every sheet, small flowers, geometric designs, and check patterns in two-color printing. The prints were a selling point. Homemakers considered them when choosing which roll to place on the counter because a patterned towel on a decorative holder looked better than a plain white one. Manufacturing efficiency pressures through the 80s made the printing an easy cost to eliminate. Bounty moved toward textured white and later toward the quilted design it still uses today. A few brands still offer subtle prints, but the bold two-color patterned kitchen paper towel that felt like a small design decision is no longer a mainstream grocery store option.

17. Holiday Inn Branded Stationery Sets

Holiday Inn provided branded paper stationery in rooms throughout the ’70s, including notepads, envelopes, and writing paper featuring the hotel’s distinctive green-and-yellow sign logo. Guests regularly took the stationery home, which was understood and tolerated as free advertising. The quality was decent, the logo design was strong, and the paper felt like a legitimate souvenir of travel at a time when Holiday Inn represented a specific kind of American road trip culture. As fax machines and later email eliminated business demand for hotel stationery, the sets were quietly removed from rooms through the late ’80s and ’90s. The Holiday Inn stationery set in a desk drawer was a ’70s American household fixture that barely registered as unusual at the time.

18. Colored Crepe Paper Party Rolls

Crepe paper rolls in a wide range of colors were a standard party supply throughout the ’70s, used for streamers, table skirts, homemade flowers, and ceiling decorations. The paper had a specific texture and stretch that made it satisfying to work with, and the color range was broad enough to match any theme. Plastic and Mylar party decorations began displacing crepe paper through the late ’70s because they were more durable and more visually striking. The craft crepe roll became a school supply item rather than a party essential. Modern party supply stores carry a version but the thick, richly dyed crepe roll that came off a heavy cardboard core and decorated every ’70s birthday party ceiling is no longer what you find at the end of the party aisle.

• Tags:
• Paper Products
• 70s Home
• Vintage Packaging
• Household Nostalgia
• Retro Design