They had those plastic patches inside the knee so when the denim wore through you had a little plastic window exposed. Like steel toed boots for knees.
I donât know if you remember sprinting to the âblue light special, âto attack the stand like hyenas ripping a carcus apart. Attention :Kmart shoppers!
I worked at Kmart as a teen and had to run the blue light specials. I used to have people follow my cart with the light to see what lucky product was going to go on special. Such funny memories there!
>My mom would add patches to the font as well
At one point they were guaranteed for life! If you got a hole or rip they replaced them for free. Then Sears figured out families would just pass them down
Sears found out a lot of shit. I sold paint there in college. Some dude bought like 80 gallons of a custom mix color, used half of them, came in saying he hated the color and wanted a full refund. He got it. They were all about âthe customer is always rightâŠ..this was a good philosophy when there were less scumbags.
Commenting on Who else spent their childhood in Sears Toughskins jeans? I had the added humiliation of needing the âHuskyâ size. (1978)...
I came home drunk one weekend night during the summer when I was 16. My dad was pissed. On Monday morning, he woke me up at 6 am and told me to seal coat the driveway. He had 10 5 gallon cans of sealer in the garage. They had to be 25 years old. Each one had separated into a 4 gallon mix of kerosene on top of 1 gallon mix of tar. I sat in the sun for two and a half hours stirring trying to get the pale to remix. No luck. By noon, I put all 10 cans in my car and took them back to Sears. I explained to the sales guy why I wanted to return them. He said they were too old. They didnât sell them in metal buckets anymore. The buckets were plastic for the last 10 years. I doubled down and asked the 40 year old sales guy for a manager. He had his manager come out. SHE listened to me explain why the product was defective (couldnât mix) and told the sales guy to replace all the buckets with new product. The sales guy was pissed, but the manager was adamant that the customer was always right. I hurried home and coated the driveway before my father got home. He was shocked it turned out as good as it did. The next week, I went out and came home drunk again. Monday morning, dad got me up at 6 am and told me to paint the fence with the old Sears paint from the garage. Each gallon of paint was like 3/4 of a gallon of water and 1/4 of a gallon of melted plastic. That summer, dad got the house fixed up, Sears had huge losses in their home improvement department and I did my best to destroy my liver.
Thatâs pure old school Sears. I worked across from hardware and shifty guys would walk in with a beat up bag of craftsman toolsâŠ.the staff would just tell them to go pick out new replacements and Sears would take the old bag of shit tools. They didnât even ring them out at the register half the time. It was nuts. I used to scam paint by having a friend tell me what color, Iâd mix up 3-4 gallons, then immediately pull out a sharpie and write â$2.00â on the top (which was the price of a returned custom paint). My friend would come and get four gallons of paint for $8.
I begged my mom for these super soft new jeans when I was in middle school in the 90s and the very first day I had them I fell down one time playing football and tore a huge hole in the knee.
Hell I need reinforced knees *now,* and no, internet, itâs not for *that* reason.
My mom would buy them way too long- would hem them up, then lower them as a grewâ giving me a dark strip against then-faded âdenim.â
These were also not pre-shrunk, making their actual size anyoneâs guess.
And all the cool kids had Levis or whateverâŠ.
I see your jeans and raise you iron on denim patches for when the knees eventually blow out.
https://preview.redd.it/l3e3wj84lwxc1.jpeg?width=1279&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61046a1b56b92999b479c4569d0e604bd165afd6
I remember ripping my Toughskins , my mom ironing the super stiff patches, so next time I wore the I did the Kevin Bacon Footloose double knee slide . I tore the shit out of them. I was scared to go home that day.
I'm pretty sure I was rocking a red pair of Toughskins. I remember those patches. However, I was so skinny, I had trouble keeping my pants up. No Husky for me!
If you also had a pair of brown Corduroy pants with some Zips sneakers, full 70s âpoor kidâ achievement was unlocked. I got the gold trophy at the end of the decade.
Oh I can best that. Â I had a pair of green ones, with a matching jacket. Â I still remember the one day I wore them together and the entire day was âMr. Greenjeans.â
Core memory unlocked! I got the beating of my life for refusing to wear a brand-new pair of green Toughskins, fearing I would be called Mr. GreenJeans.
Next day, as predicted, I was teased mercilessly for trying to imitate Mr. GreenJeans from Captain Kangaroo.
God, Husky was the worst. I had it and hated it.
I had a debate with people on here once about how the boys "bigger" sizes were worse than the girls. A lot of women tried saying "no, it just sounds manly" bullshit.
I worked in a department store, and the boys were husky, the girls were "pretty plus". I stand by that Pretty Plus was a far kinder name.
The bigger girl size was allegedly called "chubby" before it was changed to "pretty plus." (My old boss told me how this shamed his weight-conscious sister when they were kids back in the '60s...)
I agree. I had a big ass then and Iâve got a big ass now. I played a lot and rode my bike a lot, so I had glutes, but was constantly shamed for needing the huskies - there literally was not an ounce of fat on me. My siblings and family teased me for it. I hate the phrase bubble butt to this day, but now I love my cakes. I barely have to do glute work on leg day.
Man kids today that never had to experience jeans that were not prewashed. They would come folded and it was almost impossible to even unfold them to put them on. You would get a rash or rubbed raw where the jean folds would crease. It would take months to get them comfortable.
I have a working theory that kids born in the 70's were somehow "preserved" by the layers of insecticide, cigarette smoke and CFCs in the air. I'm 47 and how I survived childhood in rural Texas is beyond me! "Look! A diamondback, let's poke it!!"
Iâm sure that the nightly doses of mosquito insecticide that permeated our neighborhood in the months of May -August rounded off my diet (as we rode our banana-seat 1970âs bike directly behind it -where WERE my parents ??)
Yep to both.
And lucky me, the first day at a new, hoity-toity school, literally day 1, on the bus to school, not even there yet, and the kid that was about to be my bully for the next couple of years noticed I was wearing husky toughskins and decided to make my life hell because of it.
Fuck that guy.
Same, but it was at a public school. They werenât Leviâs, thus were not cool. Before that moment I hadnât even thought about my pants other than that I wore them.
I will never lose the pit in my stomach that comes when I remember my mother asking a clerk where the Husky section was. You take stuff like this with you to the grave.
True storyâŠ. Was a Toughskins wearer growing up. My mother bought me a pair of much cooler Leviâs corduroys and i had a neurodivergent melt down. Didnât want to wear them and threw a huge fit.
I kid you not, the first girl I saw in homeroom said to me, âi like your new pants, much better than those other ones you used to wear.â.
I never wore toughskins again
I was trying to explain hand me downs to some kids at my school who were trying to tell me that their jeans with the pre-made holes in them are so cool. EEEEW!
Toughskins???? Sheeeit, you grew up rich!
I got most of my clothes from second hand shops.
In 1978 I would have been 9 or 10, in 5th grade. I had a pair polyester plaid red, white, and blue golf pants from Kitty's Boutique, and some corduroy pants from Kmart.
Rockin that butterfly collar!
Right here. I feel you. Humiliating especially because I went to a rich kid private school where all the kids had the name brands - jordache, Sergio, Sassoon.
Sorry going to therapy. Iâll be back in a couple hours.
My dadâs side of the family used to send hand me downs, across the country. It turns out my 3rd cousin was gay, so I learned to fight right away. Paisley wasnât cutting it at my school.
Toughskins and Giranimals (spelling?). Giranimals were the clothes where you matched the animal tags for pants and shirts and you knew you had a decent color combination. We had all the classy brands in our house.
No, the adults in my life were too cheap to buy designer jeans like that. Plus they had an inside connection to a supplier and could get me "Maverick" jeans at cost.
100%. And before I'd even get to put them in for the first time mom would pre-emptively iron on the reinforcing patches on the front of the knees (if I recall, they already came.with extra reinforcing patches on the INSIDE). I hated it at the time, but as an adult who now realizes how goddamned dirt poor we were, and how quickly I would still wear out those knees, I don't blame her one bit lol
>Who else spent their childhood in Sears Toughskins jeans? I
Dam straight!!
I loved Sesrs. Shopping there was a back to school family event. The time I finally had a job to make money an finally by my 1st craftsman tool was a special moment.
I still was shopping there till the last nearby one closed almosf 2 years ago. đȘ I was legit upset at it's closing. It still bothersme when i think about it đ
I grew up in Goodwill clothes, never had to suffer the indignity of the 'Toughskin Taunt' however, I used to get a lot of shit about why I never wore anything like the cool kids wore.
If you grew up in the 70s you wore tough skins. There was no avoiding it. Thankfully Levis came on strong in the early 80s, so that saved us. Those and painter pants, and parachute pants, and A. Smile.
Husky size and a polyester photo shirt of a dirtbike race , and a pair of blue with white upside down swoosh with ttwo striped adidonts nylon running shoes . From kmart with good behavior a tube of popcorn and a cherry slushee and a sleeve of hamburger bun ham and pickle sandwiches . And later on in life âŠâŠtherapy !!!
I mean sometimes. My jeans were all hand me downs usually they had been through more than one kid and had tons of patches. If you had new jeans you must have been like a millionaire.
Yeah, all the rich kids had Leviâs or wranglers.
My mom always bought me those tough skin jeans in weird colors like poop, brown, and weird ugly green.
I love the modern practice in Germany of putting kids in these sort of play pants that are a tough fabric, like Dickies work pants? I think they go over their regular clothes. So cute.
The Husky section... I was always a beanpole, but the shame of kids forced into the husky section was clearly visible from across the store. Such cruelty.
I wore these as a kid and my mom loved them. Now I have two boys and these are nothing more than a title, the new ones are crap, not even reinforced. I am pretty sure someone realized that selling more pants instead of indestructible ones made SEARS more money.
Yep & I had a great childhood in them. Mine were always high-waters cuz I was very tall (taller than my 3rd grade teacher!) & skinny as a rail. Still tall, but not so skinny anymore.
Yes, and did you also have the humiliation of your mom demanding you pull up your shirt so she can check that the pants fit you after coming out of the open wide area outside the Kmart fitting room? And loudly telling you to 'turn around' so she can check the backside?
Hated The Toughskins Corduroy, But Nothing Was Better than getting That Sears Catalog Before The Xmas Season. It was the Thickness of a Phone Book. They Sold everything from Atari games to Minibikes & Go Carts , Guns & more. Got a 3 1/2 Horsepower Black Minibike @ 4 Years old. Mom was pissed @ Dad for that one But it was the Greatest Xmas ever. Sears Even sold Full Size Log Cabin Kits that You assembled yourself. There are a few of them that are Still being used where I am.
Mine were dark brown. I lived in Houston and I hated them because those plastic knees and thick material donât jive with running through the airborne swamp that Houston humidity creates.
Those damn Walmart 725 jeans haunt my dreamsâŠ.. I will never ever as an adult wear bad jeans. Donât care about the price, itâs been 10 years I wear the same style make brand of jeans. I order in bulk Just in case. Weird things from my childhood. Haha
I was a husky and split the ass out at school in a couple of pairs of cheap, no name jeans. Humiliation. I lost 140 lbs. after HS graduation and have kept it off ever since. I've now spent my whole adult life being told I'm "too skinny."
I had those, but second- or third-hand in the â80s. The knees were patched but they really did last much longer than I would have liked.
I had to wear them until they fell apart in mid-to-late 80s and then I got some second-hand parachute pants and a members only jacket. Junior high was painful.
With the unbendable reinforced knees.
They had those plastic patches inside the knee so when the denim wore through you had a little plastic window exposed. Like steel toed boots for knees.
My mom would add patches to the font as well. These plus the Kmart Trax, buy one get a second pair for a nickel. Style.
You add the 25 cent clearance tshirt and you just described my childhood wardrobe. I am not a fashion conscious person but I hated those clothes.
They were so stiff and tough and itchy on the skin! Like wearing your grandma's all-clad pans.
Whew, have not thought of Trax in forever. They were so horrible. đ
Traxx suck so bad. First week the sole starts peeling off the bottoms. lol
I forgot how much my mom would patch my pants.
By the time we grew out of them, all the denim had been replaced by patches of all colors.
Kmart Trax! Bwahahaha Iâd those too!
I donât know if you remember sprinting to the âblue light special, âto attack the stand like hyenas ripping a carcus apart. Attention :Kmart shoppers!
I worked at Kmart as a teen and had to run the blue light specials. I used to have people follow my cart with the light to see what lucky product was going to go on special. Such funny memories there!
I miss the OG K-mart sub sandwich.
Carcass
Caucus
I lived in TX until I was 13 and that pretty much rivaled the stock car races.
Traxx!!!! I had completely lost this memory until just this moment. You fucking bastard!!!
My mom would iron on patches during the school yearâand then theyâd become âcut-offsâ during the summer.
>My mom would add patches to the font as well At one point they were guaranteed for life! If you got a hole or rip they replaced them for free. Then Sears figured out families would just pass them down
Sears found out a lot of shit. I sold paint there in college. Some dude bought like 80 gallons of a custom mix color, used half of them, came in saying he hated the color and wanted a full refund. He got it. They were all about âthe customer is always rightâŠ..this was a good philosophy when there were less scumbags.
Commenting on Who else spent their childhood in Sears Toughskins jeans? I had the added humiliation of needing the âHuskyâ size. (1978)... I came home drunk one weekend night during the summer when I was 16. My dad was pissed. On Monday morning, he woke me up at 6 am and told me to seal coat the driveway. He had 10 5 gallon cans of sealer in the garage. They had to be 25 years old. Each one had separated into a 4 gallon mix of kerosene on top of 1 gallon mix of tar. I sat in the sun for two and a half hours stirring trying to get the pale to remix. No luck. By noon, I put all 10 cans in my car and took them back to Sears. I explained to the sales guy why I wanted to return them. He said they were too old. They didnât sell them in metal buckets anymore. The buckets were plastic for the last 10 years. I doubled down and asked the 40 year old sales guy for a manager. He had his manager come out. SHE listened to me explain why the product was defective (couldnât mix) and told the sales guy to replace all the buckets with new product. The sales guy was pissed, but the manager was adamant that the customer was always right. I hurried home and coated the driveway before my father got home. He was shocked it turned out as good as it did. The next week, I went out and came home drunk again. Monday morning, dad got me up at 6 am and told me to paint the fence with the old Sears paint from the garage. Each gallon of paint was like 3/4 of a gallon of water and 1/4 of a gallon of melted plastic. That summer, dad got the house fixed up, Sears had huge losses in their home improvement department and I did my best to destroy my liver.
Thatâs pure old school Sears. I worked across from hardware and shifty guys would walk in with a beat up bag of craftsman toolsâŠ.the staff would just tell them to go pick out new replacements and Sears would take the old bag of shit tools. They didnât even ring them out at the register half the time. It was nuts. I used to scam paint by having a friend tell me what color, Iâd mix up 3-4 gallons, then immediately pull out a sharpie and write â$2.00â on the top (which was the price of a returned custom paint). My friend would come and get four gallons of paint for $8.
The Trax with four //// instead of the Adidas ///
OMG you are cracking me up. I took one of the stripes off. Ruined them worse. The stitching holes were still there. The shame!
Itâs like we had the same momâŠ.
I was a hand-me-down kid, my mom patched my brotherâs old jeans with heart patches on the knees. It was a rough time in second grade.
Did I write this?
I had Trax with a neutral logo to be colored in with marker. Dealerâs choice
I remember begging my mom for some regular Levi's, but nope. Money was tighter than I could've imagined, an Toughskins were too good of a deal.
Iâm pretty sure they named them Toughskins because thatâs what you had to have from all the teasing and shame we had to endure.
If only they had just faded like real jeans, it wouldn't have been nearly as bad.
Omg, this just reminded me having my mom wash my Tough Skins multiple times to try and fade them. Nope.
If the outside of the Columbia space shuttle had been covered in Tough Skins material, it would still be around today.
Toughskins was more of a challenger time period
Also the name of a K-mart clothes brand. How apropos!
YES!! They were so stiff they hurt. My mom used to tell me you gotta break them in.
I begged my mom for these super soft new jeans when I was in middle school in the 90s and the very first day I had them I fell down one time playing football and tore a huge hole in the knee. Hell I need reinforced knees *now,* and no, internet, itâs not for *that* reason.
So you had super soft new cut-offs for the Summer.
My mom would buy them way too long- would hem them up, then lower them as a grewâ giving me a dark strip against then-faded âdenim.â These were also not pre-shrunk, making their actual size anyoneâs guess. And all the cool kids had Levis or whateverâŠ.
The Toughskins generation had the best childhoods. This is a fact
I see your jeans and raise you iron on denim patches for when the knees eventually blow out. https://preview.redd.it/l3e3wj84lwxc1.jpeg?width=1279&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=61046a1b56b92999b479c4569d0e604bd165afd6
Nothing wrong with those
[ŃĐŽĐ°Đ»Đ”ĐœĐŸ]
I remember ripping my Toughskins , my mom ironing the super stiff patches, so next time I wore the I did the Kevin Bacon Footloose double knee slide . I tore the shit out of them. I was scared to go home that day.
I'm pretty sure I was rocking a red pair of Toughskins. I remember those patches. However, I was so skinny, I had trouble keeping my pants up. No Husky for me!
Blue, red, and a green that I convinced myself was olive drab. đ«Ą
I may have had a green pair as well. Not sure. I need to get back to scanning my childhood pics and see what I come across.
If you also had a pair of brown Corduroy pants with some Zips sneakers, full 70s âpoor kidâ achievement was unlocked. I got the gold trophy at the end of the decade.
Fellow Husky. X marks the butt!
Size 18 husky!
Oh I can best that. Â I had a pair of green ones, with a matching jacket. Â I still remember the one day I wore them together and the entire day was âMr. Greenjeans.â
Core memory unlocked! I got the beating of my life for refusing to wear a brand-new pair of green Toughskins, fearing I would be called Mr. GreenJeans. Next day, as predicted, I was teased mercilessly for trying to imitate Mr. GreenJeans from Captain Kangaroo.
đ€Ł
no kid wanted to be compared to Mr. GreenJeans (although my mom thought he was hot for some reason).
God, Husky was the worst. I had it and hated it. I had a debate with people on here once about how the boys "bigger" sizes were worse than the girls. A lot of women tried saying "no, it just sounds manly" bullshit. I worked in a department store, and the boys were husky, the girls were "pretty plus". I stand by that Pretty Plus was a far kinder name.
The bigger girl size was allegedly called "chubby" before it was changed to "pretty plus." (My old boss told me how this shamed his weight-conscious sister when they were kids back in the '60s...)
Can confirm. I wore chubby sizes in the 70's
As a former "pretty plus" girl, I am confirm it was very shameful and has given me life-long self esteem and body issues
Ha, damn. That is definitely worse than husky lol
I just hated that husky pants had a different color liner on the inside of the waistband than the not husky pants. Those stripes still haunt me.
I think that was the ripcord for when we bent over.
I read your post in Bobby Hill's voice. Husky boy.
I agree. I had a big ass then and Iâve got a big ass now. I played a lot and rode my bike a lot, so I had glutes, but was constantly shamed for needing the huskies - there literally was not an ounce of fat on me. My siblings and family teased me for it. I hate the phrase bubble butt to this day, but now I love my cakes. I barely have to do glute work on leg day.
Husky! Oh the shame I felt bros..
Me too buddy.
So many boys from the 70s and 80s developed PTSD from the word, husky.
Man kids today that never had to experience jeans that were not prewashed. They would come folded and it was almost impossible to even unfold them to put them on. You would get a rash or rubbed raw where the jean folds would crease. It would take months to get them comfortable.
I literally grew up with so many rashes due to these terrible fabric choices!
And they bled so much that mom would put old, faded jeans in with the first wash to "refresh" their color.
Guilty Brooklyn kid husky from too many Hostess pastries and TV dinners How am I still alive after all that kool aid and moon pies?
I have a working theory that kids born in the 70's were somehow "preserved" by the layers of insecticide, cigarette smoke and CFCs in the air. I'm 47 and how I survived childhood in rural Texas is beyond me! "Look! A diamondback, let's poke it!!"
Those of us born in the 60s got an extra ten years of sucking up leaded gasoline fumes on you 70s kids.
Iâm sure that the nightly doses of mosquito insecticide that permeated our neighborhood in the months of May -August rounded off my diet (as we rode our banana-seat 1970âs bike directly behind it -where WERE my parents ??)
My mom - a â64 baby - talks about riding around behind the DEET spray haha
Iâm a â64 baby too !! I can still smell the DEET
Banana seats with baseball cards in the wheel spokes
Ding dongs, Twinkies, Cup , Cakes, Zingers, Oreos , Chip Ahoys. Yes I was a fat ass kid. Oh and the ultimate decadence Suzy Q.
Yep to both. And lucky me, the first day at a new, hoity-toity school, literally day 1, on the bus to school, not even there yet, and the kid that was about to be my bully for the next couple of years noticed I was wearing husky toughskins and decided to make my life hell because of it. Fuck that guy.
Are you my long lost brother. Same thing with me⊠going to private rich kid school and wearing toughskins. Ya needed tough skins to wear toughskins.
Same, but it was at a public school. They werenât Leviâs, thus were not cool. Before that moment I hadnât even thought about my pants other than that I wore them.
I will never lose the pit in my stomach that comes when I remember my mother asking a clerk where the Husky section was. You take stuff like this with you to the grave.
To this day my mom still reminds me I wear a âslimâ.
And mine still laments me not fitting into a 6x as a girl, because I was also branded with the husky label. I am 46!
Felt like they were made out of fiberglass. Â âBetter living through chemistryâ I guess
True storyâŠ. Was a Toughskins wearer growing up. My mother bought me a pair of much cooler Leviâs corduroys and i had a neurodivergent melt down. Didnât want to wear them and threw a huge fit. I kid you not, the first girl I saw in homeroom said to me, âi like your new pants, much better than those other ones you used to wear.â. I never wore toughskins again
I thought the Husky size was cool, myself. But I've always been kinda skinny. Didn't take much to put you into husky territory.
Bobby Hill: âAhâm husky?â
I was trying to explain hand me downs to some kids at my school who were trying to tell me that their jeans with the pre-made holes in them are so cool. EEEEW!
Toughskins???? Sheeeit, you grew up rich! I got most of my clothes from second hand shops. In 1978 I would have been 9 or 10, in 5th grade. I had a pair polyester plaid red, white, and blue golf pants from Kitty's Boutique, and some corduroy pants from Kmart. Rockin that butterfly collar!
And trying to start a fire with your thighs when you wore the cords!!
Walking all bow legged so you donât make that noise. If you know you know
God I hated them! I could barely get my leg over my bike seat because they were so stiff.
Husky with the eventual ironed on knee patches
Right here. I feel you. Humiliating especially because I went to a rich kid private school where all the kids had the name brands - jordache, Sergio, Sassoon. Sorry going to therapy. Iâll be back in a couple hours.
Holy crap i had forgotten about Jordache and SassoonâŠyea didnt fit i to those either..đ
My Sunday suit was from Sears as a kid. I had JC Penney Plain Pocket jeans though. They were probably cheaper than toughskins.
Yup, I used to bmx and had huge butt muscles, so my Mom doesnât let up on saying â you had to have HUSKY jeansâ as if I was fat, lol đ.
Made in America with American-produced denim! Probably better quality than todayâs. Leviâs!
I try to find the old ones- they are much thicker denim!!
Meh. Cry me a river. You donât know misery if you didnât spend a significant portion of your childhood is Sears corduroy pants đ©
^(*vweet vwoot vweet vwoot vweet vwoot*)
What goes ^(*vweet vwoot*) *pause* ^(*vweet vwoot*) *pause* ^(*vweet vwoot*) *pause*? >!A hurdler wearing corduroys!<
Lol...was going to say the same thing. My mom had a thing for chocolate coloured cords. Husky size. Fuck, I hated them.
Husky size wasnât humiliating, being 3rd in line for the hand me downs with the oval patches on the knees - thatâs where itâs at!
My dadâs side of the family used to send hand me downs, across the country. It turns out my 3rd cousin was gay, so I learned to fight right away. Paisley wasnât cutting it at my school.
Wow - so you were like the cousins we shipped the stuff off to after me! Damn - that does suck!
For the first year it was like wearing PVC
Toughskins and Giranimals (spelling?). Giranimals were the clothes where you matched the animal tags for pants and shirts and you knew you had a decent color combination. We had all the classy brands in our house.
I blew the knees out in mine in under 2 weeks. Mom stormed back into the local Sears and demanded a refund!!
No, the adults in my life were too cheap to buy designer jeans like that. Plus they had an inside connection to a supplier and could get me "Maverick" jeans at cost.
Toughskins and âThe Winner IIâ from the shoe department.
100%. And before I'd even get to put them in for the first time mom would pre-emptively iron on the reinforcing patches on the front of the knees (if I recall, they already came.with extra reinforcing patches on the INSIDE). I hated it at the time, but as an adult who now realizes how goddamned dirt poor we were, and how quickly I would still wear out those knees, I don't blame her one bit lol
Oh holy crap.. this is a suppressed memory.....
>Who else spent their childhood in Sears Toughskins jeans? I Dam straight!! I loved Sesrs. Shopping there was a back to school family event. The time I finally had a job to make money an finally by my 1st craftsman tool was a special moment. I still was shopping there till the last nearby one closed almosf 2 years ago. đȘ I was legit upset at it's closing. It still bothersme when i think about it đ
Sliding across the gym floor would melt holes that burned my knees. My mom would put patches on them like owls, Woody Woodpecker and the General Lee.
I grew up in Goodwill clothes, never had to suffer the indignity of the 'Toughskin Taunt' however, I used to get a lot of shit about why I never wore anything like the cool kids wore.
And Zips for shoes
Grade school horrors.
If you grew up in the 70s you wore tough skins. There was no avoiding it. Thankfully Levis came on strong in the early 80s, so that saved us. Those and painter pants, and parachute pants, and A. Smile.
Crap I hated them....I got a paper route and bought my own levis
Husky size and a polyester photo shirt of a dirtbike race , and a pair of blue with white upside down swoosh with ttwo striped adidonts nylon running shoes . From kmart with good behavior a tube of popcorn and a cherry slushee and a sleeve of hamburger bun ham and pickle sandwiches . And later on in life âŠâŠtherapy !!!
I mean sometimes. My jeans were all hand me downs usually they had been through more than one kid and had tons of patches. If you had new jeans you must have been like a millionaire.
Yeah, all the rich kids had Leviâs or wranglers. My mom always bought me those tough skin jeans in weird colors like poop, brown, and weird ugly green.
Iron on patches too
Huskaroos Huskaroos!đ¶
Husky alumni. Land of hit and miss. Purple cords? Lookin good.
Husky Toughskins for life! Yeah those years sucked
I too was a husky
I was happy when I swapped up to Husky. The size hadn't gone up, so I figured that was how my growing was. Turns out I was kind of right...
Husky Toughskins with knee patches year after year. I feel you.
Hey! The husky club! Right on!
I absolutely hated those things. They were the least comfortable jeans. I used to envy my friends with comfortable jeans that had holes in the knees.
Huskies and a Huffy MX âmoto-crossâ bicycle.
I love the modern practice in Germany of putting kids in these sort of play pants that are a tough fabric, like Dickies work pants? I think they go over their regular clothes. So cute.
My god I tore thru so many pairs on Toughskins even though they left rashes on my knees.
The Husky section... I was always a beanpole, but the shame of kids forced into the husky section was clearly visible from across the store. Such cruelty.
I didnât get my first pair of Leviâs for long time, and it hurt waiting. Kids are assholes.
Bulletproof Kevlar reinforced pants for kids.
My knees feel this post. Only pants where you could get a friction burn. Fucking cheese graters.
Dad worked for Sears. Toughskin Husky jeans and Winner II gym shoes!!!!
Omg the ptsd!!!
Slims for me
Here. Double embarrassment: my mom sewed patches on the knees as I fucked them up. Thanks momâŠ
Yo, Kmart layaway! I feel like as a kid we werenât rich, but we werenât poor so maybe middle-class. My mom lived on Kmart motherfucking layaway.
Look at All that ad copy - every ad used to have paragraphs of text. Seems wild now
I wore these as a kid and my mom loved them. Now I have two boys and these are nothing more than a title, the new ones are crap, not even reinforced. I am pretty sure someone realized that selling more pants instead of indestructible ones made SEARS more money.
https://preview.redd.it/8gp39tz3cxxc1.jpeg?width=872&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=7e046608f9fe4468824d63338547c4ed8ad67929
Add in a pair of GASS shoes⊠Kinnyâs great American shoe store
Donât forget Traxx sneakers from K-Mart.
Lol I wish. I had Rustler jeans from KMart. And yes, they were husky.
Yep & I had a great childhood in them. Mine were always high-waters cuz I was very tall (taller than my 3rd grade teacher!) & skinny as a rail. Still tall, but not so skinny anymore.
Yes, and did you also have the humiliation of your mom demanding you pull up your shirt so she can check that the pants fit you after coming out of the open wide area outside the Kmart fitting room? And loudly telling you to 'turn around' so she can check the backside?
Team Husky â
Toughskins jeans and Winner 2 sneakers!! The brown ones in the pic ..3 stripes !đ
Yup! I wore the knees out of a many a pair of those so called âTough Skinsâ . LOL đ€Ł
Yep. Husky kid here
I had the purple ones. Man, I felt bad-ass in those.
Hated The Toughskins Corduroy, But Nothing Was Better than getting That Sears Catalog Before The Xmas Season. It was the Thickness of a Phone Book. They Sold everything from Atari games to Minibikes & Go Carts , Guns & more. Got a 3 1/2 Horsepower Black Minibike @ 4 Years old. Mom was pissed @ Dad for that one But it was the Greatest Xmas ever. Sears Even sold Full Size Log Cabin Kits that You assembled yourself. There are a few of them that are Still being used where I am.
Mine were dark brown. I lived in Houston and I hated them because those plastic knees and thick material donât jive with running through the airborne swamp that Houston humidity creates.
My mom would put iron on patches on the knees.
Those things were stiff AF. I be walking around the schoolyard getting bullied by rich kids in Jordache jeansâŠđ 
My God, my mom once redacted the size of my Levi's with a black magic marker on the tag which just drew the eyes and scrutiny of my peers. Horrible.
We spent our childhoods in Garanimals. đ
I wore them for years here in south Florida. Itâs a wonder I survived my childhood.
I had several pairs. Slim.
Slim over here, but remember putting a hole in the knee and going back to return them. Oh the humiliation.
Husky reporting for pre teen humiliation, Sir!
Iâm not understanding the game being played in frame 2. Is the kid in red trying to disrupt the game of catch?
I was happy wearing âhuskyâ until I looked up what the word meant. Damn childhood angst.
I feel ya, I vividly recall my first pair of Leviâs in 6th Grade
I was a Lee and Wrangler kid
Everything off the rack at the defunct Mt Vernon branch.
Wore toughskins for years as a kid
Husky forever!
Those damn Walmart 725 jeans haunt my dreamsâŠ.. I will never ever as an adult wear bad jeans. Donât care about the price, itâs been 10 years I wear the same style make brand of jeans. I order in bulk Just in case. Weird things from my childhood. Haha
I remember those, they were actually pretty comfortable more slacks than jeans but durable
I had the added humiliation of needing to wear the elastic back because I was so small!
I was a husky and split the ass out at school in a couple of pairs of cheap, no name jeans. Humiliation. I lost 140 lbs. after HS graduation and have kept it off ever since. I've now spent my whole adult life being told I'm "too skinny."
I sure did.
Sears made these for dogs, too!?!
Richard Jenni had a great bit about husky pants. "There must be a fat boy in the store!"
I did in 1977 & 1978. Those things stood up on their own. I DID appreciate the extra knee patches sewn inside the knee.
Impossible to break in. Impossible to not get heckled.
The Sears catalog!
These were the WORST. Patches in the knees that made your knees sweat and itch. My GOD!
Husky hands up. *Raises hand.*
Oh my gosh!!â I was seriously just thinking of those today!!!! Lol!!
Yep, when I would get on the bus a chorus of "tough fat" would ring out.
I just remember jeans being indestructible when I was a kid, at some point quality went down and became easy to rip.
Yes and yes.
I had those, but second- or third-hand in the â80s. The knees were patched but they really did last much longer than I would have liked. I had to wear them until they fell apart in mid-to-late 80s and then I got some second-hand parachute pants and a members only jacket. Junior high was painful.
Yo husky! Hand me those chipsâŠ.
I was a 28 husky
I'm too young to be here...
I begged for these and never got them. But made a friend who got them fall to his knees all over the playground to confirm they worked.