But few of today's imaginative ideas would have made it onto drawing boards without cork's competition from screw-top bottle caps, plastic stoppers and aluminum Tetra Paks.

WSJ: Cork's Popping Potential

Writers vied to see who could heap the most scorn on the allegedly boring conformity of that receding decade, drawing supercilious caricatures of middle-class men and women of the era as superficial, plastic figures.

FORBES: A Nostalgic New Year's Look At The 1950s