Early 2000’s 12 y/o with questionable parents
The Bud Light can design was introduced in 2004 and lasted until 2008. Being one of the most disposable items, I’d guess the pile was made in those years.
Beer can might also have a best before date stamped on the bottom
everyone keeps saying 80s or 90s, yet completely miss the spool of blue Ethernet cable under it all.
everyone is pretty spot on with the boombox and toy.
based on that plus the Ethernet, plus the age on the items. I would say it’s been there since between 2001-2010.
I installed pallets of internet cabling in the mid 90s
I have no doubt, but it wasn’t something that was so common that you’d leave a whole spool of it out in a pile of junk.
getting your hands on the stuff took effort and it wasn’t cheap back then either unless you were running a business in IT infra.
While it looks like ethernet I don’t see a plug on it, so it could be any ethernet looking cable (coaxial, rj11, etc). Could be wrong though
2000-2010 seems a pretty good guess though, who would throw brand new stuff away
Bottom center looks like a Fisher Price Fish-N-Reel toy circa 1995.
The Boombox appears to be a Lennox Sound CT-731, That listing features a picture of the bottom of its box bearing a copyright date of 2000.
That’s been only out in the weather a year or two but I recognize the patina of being stored in a hot garden shed for decades. Someone cleaned out the back of their shed and dumped it.
Two would be pushing it. The leaves would have matted more and built up in greater amounts. Put out last spring is my estimate: that’s one year of detritus.
Assuming this isn’t just two feet off the side of a trailhead or something.
I’d say late 80s to early 90s trash, that football looks like one I bought at a garage sale in the 90s but was at least 10 years old when I bought it. Plastics often have production dates, a small circle of numbers from 1 to 12 with an arrow points at the month of production with the numbers on either side of the arrow being the year.
That radio looks late 90s to me, possibly even early 2000s. Definitely not 80s.
Yeah, based off the radio and memories I’d put it late 90s early 00s. All my radios from the 80s-mid-90s had much more squared corners.
I think I found the cassette player, although it dates it to the 80s… Although it could of been an old object dumped alongside more contemporary ones, as the cassette doesn’t appear to be as aged as other objects…
https://www.ebay.com/itm/405015397001
Logo on the Wilson football dates from 1994-present, so oldest possible age of pile is ~1994, although I think it is younger.
Design on the Bud Light can is circa 2004, but I feel like someone could of dropped that separate from the pile.
This game is really fun, we should start a subreddit.
If you really like this, it’s not that far off from how archeologists date stuff. Though they collect a lot more datapoints, have more context, and use more references.
great point, I used to find trash piles like this in the woods around where I lived, and even as a child I always wondered about who put them there, what their life was like, and what people would think about the piles I left behind, how I could leave clearer messages for them so they were not confused.
I think I found the cassette player
Nah. The one in your link has round speaker grilles, while the one in OP’s pic have different shaped speaker grilles. Also OP’s one is missing the carry handle.
Does seem to be a similar model and likely related to it, but not quite the same.
good point, I was just getting off work and killing time before heading home, so definitely blew passed some details on the cassette deck!
That ball is way too inflated, it has not been sitting in the sun for over a decade.
Someone dumping some shit might well have had some of the objects much longer than some of the others. And if anything, a person is less likely to be dumping new objects, except for disposable things like beer cans.
concur, dumping pile was probably in use during a range of time, curious what might be under there if OP starts poking around with a shovel, was mostly trying to narrow down an oldest object and then work from there.
R/chaeology
I don’t know the exact model of the cassette player, but the silver plastic and the rounded bits of the design to me are very late 90’s to early 2000’s.
My guess is this stuff has only been out there a few years from the general condition.
Hard to say, my reason for guessing older is that the pile appears to be in a fairly dense woodland area. In these types of situations materials do not break down as quickly as they would in direct sunlight, the boogie board on the bottom right leads me to believe the pile has at least partial sun exposure (or it blew from somewhere else / another pile with more sun).
I have seen a 90’s USA football sit exactly like that in a pile for years (5+) and still look relatively inflated, although I bet if you pick that ball up you will quickly realize it has little air and is largely held together by the structure of the material.
Love this game though, wish we could find a source of pictures like this where the dump date is definitively known, but obscured, so we could all test our hypothesis’s definitively.
Looks like the speakers are a slightly different shape. Maybe it’s an updated version?
Looks like a toddler or a young child might have some fun with it, but I wouldn’t recommend letting a child play with trash…
What kind of people just dumps garbage like that - what are they thinking? why? whar has happened in their life?
I did solid waste dump responses when I worked for a health department.
When people who can’t pay to dump have trash, they dump it in the woods, ravines, forestry roads, etc.
Usually the drive to dump trash is when someone dies and someone else is having to clear out their effects, be it family, a landlord, or some worker. Or someone is evicted from their home, vehicle, or encampment.
Otherwise most people hoard it until they die or are evicted.
There’s an extra layer of mystery with it being in a wooded area with no path in or out
I think the toy fishing reel is from this 1995-ish model:
The older 80’s vintage was black:
And the 2000’s model was a very different molding:
More on the toy fishing rod:
https://thisoldtoy.com/l_fp_set/toy-pages/8000-plus/72000/72414-fish-n-reel.html
Those look like items from around 1993. The items don’t look like they have been exposed to the elements for 33 years, though. Maybe 5 to 10 years of exposure.
Cassette player is late 90s
Everything else could be produced any time since then.
I don’t think this stuff has been outside in the sun for more than 18 months.
I should have mentioned that this is under a pretty thick canopy of leaves
Ok, maybe 36 months?
This cheap plastic stuff like that laundry basket gets shredded pretty quick in the sun.
The character on the body board graphic might give a clue. I don’t recognize it, but the drawing style of the eye looks like early nineties Disney.
The show “Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries” aired in 1995-2000, so it makes sense if the merch and licensed products are from that period too.
This is then slightly newer than the other stuff on the pile.
I think its loony toons? tweety bird?
Just came to say definitely Tweety Bird
Until today I had almost completely forgot the “tweetybird/ Taz” era of style in the mid 90’s
I wonder how many regrettable Taz tattoos are still out in the wild
Probably so many. I forgot about Taz 😂
The boombox is the only concrete clue I can identify. It’s an am/fm cassette, but doesn’t seem to have a cd player, so I’m assuming it went out of style in the early aughts. Best guess, this trash is about 20 years old.
Definitely the 90s. Though maybe only out there for like 5 or 6 years?
