9 gadgets that were commonplace in every 1960s kitchen that no one uses anymore

Throughout the 60s, and even into the 70s, one of the main meals that were served used gelatin, and so specific moulds were used to make sure they looked appetising. And given that home refrigeration had taken off, they could be stored to be unveiled as your grand centrepiece.

However, eventually these gelatin-based meals started falling out of popularity, with barely any being served on our modern-day tables. And as such, people stopped using the moulds as well.

During the 1960s, fresh fruit imports really started taking off, so what better way to impress your guests than to have an exotic fruit from halfway around the world? Melon ballers were invented in order to allow hostesses to carve the fruit into grand designs worthy of five-star hotels.

However, the only real use for the gadget was for melons, and as multi-purpose tools started gaining in popularity, people decided to ditch an item that was only good for one fruit.

While many things on this list are relics of the past, this nifty gadget could still be used in modern kitchens. Its main use was for melting chocolate for sauces, and this gadget was able to heat many foodstuffs without burning them or forcing them to go soggy.

However, these items were incredibly bulky, and so modern kitchen users instead usually balance a bowl, or a similar item, over a pan to achieve the same effect, while saving space in their homes.

Another gadget that would still find a use today is these ice cube trays that came with an in-built lever, allowing you to get the frozen ice cubes out without needing to pry them out with your fingers.

Many of these were made of metals, like aluminium, which is what led to their downfall. More flexible plastic trays eventually made their way onto the market, which were easier to use, while many modern-day refrigerators can make their own ice.

One of the most famous old kitchen gadgets was the toast rack, and if you watch family films from decades ago, you'd see plenty of breakfast tables using this gadget, which helped prevent toast from going soggy by allowing steam to escape, although this did mean the toast went cooler quicker.

While you might still spot one in a hotel or restaurant, as breakfast stopped being a meal that people gathered around the table for long periods of time, this gadget was no longer required, and it eventually just became an extra thing to wash up.

One of the easiest ways to have a carbonated drink at home in the 1960s was with this glass gadget, with the carbon stored inside instantly adding a burst of fizz to any drink you needed, whether it be water or cocktails.

However, with all the stored pressure, there would be the occasional accident with these objects, and as fizzy drinks became a mass market item, with people picking them up at the supermarket, you no longer needed a specialised item back at home.

One of the ways that people back in the 1960s cooked hot dogs was through electricity, which is where this kitchen appliance came in. By piercing the meat with a metal prong, a cooked frankfurter could be ready in just 90 seconds, and this was before microwaves were even a thing!

Electrocuted hot dogs, however, are an acquired taste, and given the live electricity running through the appliance, if misused, you could get a nasty shock. So it's no surprise that these stopped being popular.

While today, we buy butter in blocks, back in the 1960s, most people were still buying their butter loose, and as a result, it required shaping when you got back home. Enter the butter pat, which made this chore incredibly easy, while its grooved sides also added a bit of design flair to the finished item.

However, when butter started being sold in blocks, the convenience of this meant that the butter pat would be left in the drawer gathering dust.

One of the best ways to prepare ingredients like runner beans back in the 1960s was the bean slicer, which you would mount to the counter before hand cranking it to slice the beans; this was a popular method at the time and various counter-mounted gadgets existed.

These existed at a time when bulk preparing vegetables was common, but this has fallen out of modern-day practice, and nowadays, we'd rather use a knife for the beans we want to cut, instead of having a bulky appliance take up the kitchen space.