Remember the Segway craze of the early 2000s? Mall cops were zooming down walkways with them, and guided Segway tours became a hit in popular tourist destinations. But then, seemingly overnight, they disappeared. And now they’re nowhere to be found, as electric scooters have quickly become the preferred mode of transit for pedestrians who don’t feel like walking.
There’s a new “next big thing” every year, but unfortunately, they don’t all live up to their own expectations. Redditors have recently been discussing “next big things” that massively flopped, so below, you can look back on products and companies that, in hindsight, probably received too much hype. Enjoy scrolling through, and be sure to upvote the things you had completely forgotten about!
Not entirely relevant, but I liked the trend where everybody wanted the smallest cell phone possible. For 20 years cell phones got smaller and smaller. Often being the main selling point of the phone.
Then all of sudden you could watch videos on your phone, and almost overnight the trend reversed to “larger is better”.
The “[pandemic] baby boom” People thought that during lockdowns we’d see a bunch of pregnancies because couples would essentially have nothing else to do. Instead we saw people isolate more even after the lockdowns ended and fewer people are dating at all now let alone having kids. When inflation started to increase you also saw more people choose to delay having kids due to increased costs and some residual effects of shortages (like the baby formula shortage we had in the US last year)
Internet of Things.
I’m an engineer, and while I was in college people in my field have been banging that drum.
Turns out we just need a good enough refrigerator, not an internet connected one.
Blockchain. I couldn’t stop hearing about it in grad school. I got pushed into studying data analytics and had to do a course on it. In the end I wrote my paper on the usefulness of it and basically said “it’s not without its uses, but there doesn’t seem to be a pressing need for it.” I read later a much better assessment of “a solution looking for a problem” and that basically nailed it.
I’m still very distraught we never got the modular phone revolution I was promised back in the early 2010s. Now it’s wildly exciting to have a replaceable battery. My heart weeps
Motion controls in video games. They have not disappeared completely but they are nowhere as popular as they were back in the late 2000s.
The DCEU. I mean, they started a franchise finally showing Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman together on the big screen, and yet they somehow managed to botch it so spectacularly, so early on.
Kinect was a full body motion control thing for the Xbox 360. It was supposed to change the gaming industry. It had maybe a dozen games made for it, most of which barely worked. And it silently went away after about 2 or 3 years.
The litany of film adaptations of young adult novels that happened in the wake of Hunger Games’ success. Aside from Divergent, which eventually ran out of gas, and Maze Runner all of them flopped and didn’t get sequels.
How is that tesla cybertruck, it was announced years ago but not available yet, or is it?
Clear Pepsi. If I remember correctly they even used a Van Halen song for the commercials
One of the funniest I remember was solar roads. Solar panels that you drive on. Without damaging them, somehow. With your operating room tires.
Disney’s Atlantis. They had a whole park planned around it. Unfortunately they released it in a year saturated by insanely good movies.
Emu meat!
For a while there in the late 80s & early 90s it was a thing that doctors & lawyers who wanted the ranch lifestyle would invest in. There was enough awareness of it that emus getting killed by the monster was even played for a gag in *8 Legged Freaks* & one of the *Tremors* movies.
Gonna tentatively suggest this, Apple’s Vision Pro headset thing.
A VR headset with a separate battery that you have to carry, creepy eye vision screen on the front, and all for only $3500+. How could it fail?
Also, now that I think of it. Apple’s Ping social networking thing.
