Garfield debuted in 1978, and most of its regular gags were born shortly thereafter. Garfield liked to sleep, he loved lasagna and he hated Mondays. Nearly 50 years later, he’s pretty much doing the same thing — he still likes to sleep, he still loves lasagna and he still hates Mondays.
But despite the relentless sameness of the comic, there are examples of it aging poorly, mostly because the technology around Garfield has changed, even if the cat himself hasn’t.
Answering Machines
Answering machines used to be comedy gold (see: Seinfeld and Swingers), so it’s no surprise that Jon’s dating life in Garfield would involve one that rejects Jon on behalf of a woman.
Television Patinas
TVs used to weigh a million pounds and were made of wood, so, like any other piece of wood furniture, you needed to wax them. Nowadays, the closest thing we have to waxing a television screen is when you watch the waxy visage of Mickey Rourke in 4K.
Rabbit Ears
TVs also used to have antennas, as did cars and radios and everything else in the ‘80s. In fact, even President Ronald Reagan had an antennae for his wife Nancy to control him from long distances.
Dictionaries
Nowadays, if you don’t know what a word is, you Google it, or go to Dictionary.com. But years ago, there were these giant tomes called dictionaries that had words in them. Well, most books had words in them, but dictionaries had like, a lot of words in them — sorry, it’s tough to explain.
Milkmen
This strip is just weird. It features Garfield mauling a milkman, but milkmen stopped being a thing in the 1960s. And this particular strip came out in 2003. It’s like Jim Davis was going out of his way to be irrelevant.