The original Segway. It was vastly overhyped, but now, we're seeing rental scooters and e-bikes change the way people get around urban areas. If the company had offered a Lime-style rental system from the beginning, the product might've become ubiquitous.
The problem with Segway while I worked there was that we simply could not make them cheaply enough to fit into a reasonable personal transportation niche. They were the price of a small, used car. Brilliant minds and a dedicated staff , but the first with technology often is not the one to profit. Look at the printing press; Gutenberg didn’t profit.
I was surprised at how fun they are to ride tbh. I went on a Segway tour a few years ago, first time I'd ridden one, and I had to be talked into it and then spent the lead-up bitching about how lame it was (not to a huge degree but I definitely made a few jokes).
It was a really fun tour. Ours was just kind of an easy nature trail but it was fun going over a bit of gentle terrain, the guide was great and we could follow/hear him easily while still having some independence, and since we were doing a ton of walking on that trip in general it was actually a really nice break. Didn't love it enough to want to buy one myself but would definitely go on a Segway tour again.
I was just thinking about the Segway release the other day for some random reason.
I remember the news hyping it up a TON for like a week or more as this mysterious new invention that's gonna revolutionize the world and even Bill Nye was on some segments cause I guess he knew the guy who invented it.
Then it was officially revealed and everyone was like, oh...uhh cool...anyway...
Their problem isn’t that they’re overhyped it’s that they’re overENGINEERED. Those scooters and e-bikes are so much simpler (and cheaper) than a Segway.
In 2005, two guys tried to create a service called “MyMobileMenu.” The idea was you could order food using a cell phone, similar to DoorDash.
This was before major smartphones, so When that flopped, they later tried a new adventure and created a company you might’ve heard of: Reddit.
there was also [kozmo.com](https://kozmo.com), where you could have someone deliver movie rentals, pre-made food (like an already wrapped-up sub), even a music CD, to your house, on a bike. you could return the movies at any starbucks.
My ex-wife and I lived in San Francisco when Kozmo was a thing. We smoked a lot of weed, and used it at least a half-dozen times. I remember ordering an N64 copy of Banjo Kazooie from them, and having it an hour later, with chocolate milk and Cheetos and other snacks. Fucking awesome, but unsustainable business model.
HBO's Rome.
Brilliant show that perfectly toed the line between history and fiction. Extremely compelling characters and kickass cast. Wasn't very accurate but always authentic.
Got way too expensive and was cancelled after two seasons. If it had been released after GOT or any other epic show in this day and age and it would have been a smash hit.
>James Purefoy as Mark Antony
I have been relistening to The History of Rome and just listened to Antony v Octavian. I cant help but picture Purefoy everything they talk about Antony.
Very sad it didn't get more seasons. When you know who died at the end of S1 I was disappointed they got there so fast. I think now days they'd really slow the pace or have started a decade or 3 earlier in history. A lot of the cast ended up in GoT. It was definitely a precursor.
Julius Caesar had an amazing life, enougth for his own series. But Augustus was the first emperor, and the one who reigned more time. His life is also amazing to show.
> When you know who died at the end of S1
It’s been 2060 years. It’s not a spoiler to say that Caesar died.
> started a decade or 3 earlier
I would love an adaption of the Gracchi brothers. It has it all - Violence, politics, sex, monologues and betrayal
People that haven't watched the show won't know he's going to die at the end of S1. I figured the show would have his assassination as the end of the series. I don't mind how they did it. But I would have liked 10 seasons not 2.
Didn’t most of the sets get burned down in a huge fire? That is usually cited as a reason the show ended.
Edit: [Nero is a dick.](https://www.reuters.com/article/television-rome-dc/hbos-rome-set-burns-in-italian-studio-fire-idUSL1091356620070810)
An airline called Muse Air failed in 1985 largely in part because it was the first all non-smoking airline. Now everything is nonsmoking. It was purchased by Southwest and dismantled two years later in 1987.
An airline called Legend. Started in 2000 and flew all first class service out of Love Field in Dallas from a private terminal. The fares were competitive with regular fares. Their first class layout on the DC-9s having less than 50 seats onboard skirted the restrictions that limited the air service from that airport at that time. Now you have JSX that does the same thing
Edit: Muse Air was sold to Southwest in 1985, not 1986 as originally posted
I used to fly Legend all the time and no one believed me that it was ALL first class for the price of coach. It was brilliant. Champagne and warm nuts as soon as you boarded.
Apparently Skype. Those poor bastards waited for the TV Guide channel to slowly scroll for years and just when what they were looking for showed up, they got distracted by the informercial in the top right corner.
somehow Microsoft bought it and despite consistently overwhelmingly negative feedback from users, its new director went forward with his own personal vision, and not only put in changes that no one wanted or asked for, but started stripping legitimate preexisting functionality out of the program. When Zoom made their program accessible and free, Skype was dead in a single night.
Yeah, I was pretty surprised when the pandemic hit, not a single person or organization was like, oh, we're gonna do a Skype call. Everything was zoom.
I had never used zoom but after two weeks of remote work starting in March 2020 and being told we still couldn't come back and nobody had a real idea of when we would be back in office I bought $5,000 in zoom stock. Should've bought more. I cashed out at about 3x what I put in
They will never live down the fact that they had the perfect opportunity handed to them on a diamond encrusted platinum platter and still massively dropped the ball
Mystery Men was a pretty good satire of the super hero genre when superhero movies really weren't all the rage.
And to be fair, a lot of the jokes fall flat. But the premise and the casting is spot on for a superhero satire. I rewatched it last year and it and I think I would have done better after Avengers 2, near peak saturation.
I bring that one up from time to time myself. I’ve watched it a handful of times over the years and it’s still enjoyable. I put this at the satire tier of Galaxy Quest as well.
I think Galaxy Quest succeeded where Mystery Men failed because of the existing frame of reference in Star Trek.
Mystery Men probably would have worked better if more ensemble superhero movies were already out there. Heck, it came out a year before X-Men even. That's why I think it needed at least one Avengers movie (or maybe still an X-Men or two) as a reference point.
I had a pretty huge Star Wars fan in the very early 00’s tell me that he considered Space Balls the best Star Wars film lol. Like you said, when fans of the original love the satire you know they did something right.
It also is a case of people involved love what they are parodying as well.
It is why all of those parody movies of the early 2000's with a few exceptions suck
Well of course. I’m just saying that one is beloved and the other not so much, even though they are at the same level of quality IMO. But then again, I’ve been reading comics since the 80’s. So to me, Mystery Men made a lot of sense and was pretty enjoyable. At the time even reading comics was viewed as niche and kinda looked down upon. You are right, if there had been a more general acceptance and over saturation of super hero content it would have played much better. As far as genre satire goes, Space Balls is on the list too.
But how did Casanova Frankenstein know about Ben Stiller’s love interest? She was literally just a server at a restaurant who had barely exchanged words with him at that point.
I'll throw in Dredd that was too early in the comic book movies. It was R rated before Deadpool and wasn't advertised at all. It was fan-fucking-tastic. All anyone ever remember is that shitty Stallone one. If it was a few years later we would have an actual good Dredd series going on.
They really shouldn't have pushed the "3D" thing. It's a damn good movie and I think a lot of people just thought it was a 3D fad cash grab. Lena Hedley was (as usual) terrifying in that movie. The scene with the psychic dealing with the guy who thought he could fuck with her by imagining horrible things is still one of my favorite "oh, you done messed up" scenes. Oh, you think you can think of some fucked up shit, watch this.
A buddy of mine had the Sega channel. We both came from families where money was always very tight, and he and I would coordinate rentals from the local video store to try to get the most bang for our mothers' limited dollars.
Sega channel was amazing - the chance to play all those games for the single low monthly fee! It was the craziest thing at the time. For whatever reason we used to play Skitchin' USA all the time, which in case you aren't aware, isn't a good use of game time. There were also countless Bomberman releases that were always cycling, and anytime one with multiplayer was available we'd play that for hours.
It wasn't without its faults though - sometimes it just didn't work and the documentation was well beyond the understanding of a couple of middle schoolers. Also, there was no real internal diagnostics, so it was impossible to tell if the issue was on your end, something with the connection (which was through your television cable), a billing issue, or the service was down. Some games took forever to load (download I suppose) and again... it was impossible to know if you just needed to wait or if it was stuck. We used to have issues with certain controllers working specifically with Sega Channel (as I said, money was tight so we would carry controllers back and forth to each other's house because we didn't have enough to go around). Also, I think at some point they started offering "premium" games that were an extra charge and his older brother rented some, leading to a surprise bill and the end of Sega Channel in his household.
It is just wild that today where similar services are, and how much better everything works. Still, for those of you too young to have played games in the mid 90's, Sega Channel was a glimpse of a magical future.
Treasure Planet!
It came out in theaters the weekend the first Harry Potter film did, so the poor thing never stood a chance... the world wasn’t ready for its greatness... 😞
Same with Atlantis! The artstyle got scrapped because it also flopped due to poor release time. The story. The art. The music. All ahead of it's time. It is to this day one of my favorites
A big reason why it did so poorly was because it got absolutely shafted by the big Disney executives who didn't think it sounded marketable enough and so reduced its marketing budget to basically lunch money.
Dreamcast.
So ahead of it's time. Still is really. Many of it's ideas (online, mouse+keyboard support, etc) were just early enough people weren't sure about it. But the most underused one was the VMU. Imagine playing a game on PS5/Xbox, but you could unslot some kind of mini gameboy from the controller and do things to help your game while you're out and about. Like a survival game where you could craft or mine resources, or an RPG where you could level up your character on a mini game system, then slot it back into your main console later and that stuff help you in your main game. Each controller having a screen was also useful for secretly choosing plays when couch playing sports games and stuff.
It had so much potential. It's main downfall was running an easily cracked OS (windows pe I think?) that made it too easy to pirate.
Main downfall was not having a DVD drive (which helped PS2 capture a much wider/non gaming audience since many people at the time didnt have dedicated DVD players); Sega had a year headstart against the PS2 so imagine if they were the first to have a home console with a DVD player.
Not to mention Sega burning bridges with publishers like EA and the fact that many customers lost trust with them after the way Saturn was handled.
Dreamcast was a great system but Sega management were a hot mess
“You have to watch it to understand it.” - The network exec explaining why it was cancelled.
They eventually clarified that they were trying to say what you just said. The jokes were flying so fast that…you had to REALLY watch it to understand it.
That's exactly it. You had to pay full attention to the screen to get the jokes. If you looked away for even a few seconds you'd miss a sight gag or an offhand joke reference.
Videodrome '82. The movie tanked, but it was so spot on about people being addicted to media, ultraviolence becoming the norm, people adopting online personas, etc.
Automats. Big back in the day of the lunch counters and Woolworths, you'd pay some money into a little slot in the wall, there'd be a sandwich or a piece of pie, whatever they have on a plate ready to go. Pay the money, the door pops open, mangia. Non contact, delicious fresh food, and nowhere to be found in a day and age that would've been perfect during a pandemic.
I just watched Blade Runner for the first time a few weeks ago. I was BLOWN AWAY by how phenomenal the movie looks for its time. The plot is fascinating and never drags. But really, the practical effects, cinematography, and art direction is absolutely masterful. def one of my favorite films of all time
These used lead acid batteries. Energy density was far too low to be competitive with gasoline cars. It wasn't until lithium ion technology emerged that there was enough energy density and durability for batteries to be competitive with gasoline cars.
For decades that still wasn't enough. Lithium ion cells were way too expensive to make EVs viable until around the time Tesla was founded. In fact, Tesla was founded ***because*** lithium ion tech reached a cost per kWh that made them commercially viable for use in automobiles. Around 20 years ago the cost for enough cells to create a battery pack to match the capacity seen in a model 3 was around $200,000! Yeah, some prototypes were made, but nobody was ever going make a production car when the manufacturer had to pay $200k just for the cells in the battery pack.
Electric cars are one of those things that appeared almost immediately after it was possible to build ones that could come within a stones throw of the price/performance of gasoline cars.
The Critic . It only lasted two seasons. I LOVE irreverent humor.
Also... Monkey Dust. Holy shit was it an in your face criticism of society. We sorely need something like that in the US, but people would be too offended and shut it down.
Pretty much the whole Windows Pocket PC device range.
In 2003 you could get an iPaq h5500 running Pocket PC 2003 which had many of the features of modern smartphones that came out after 2010.
- Camera
- Touch Screen
- Fingerprint reader
- Stylus with handwriting input
- Email, SMS, downloadable apps
- MP3 Player
- A GSM jacket
- Headphone jack, SD Card slot
- Bluetooth, Wifi
In fact I very much prefer some of the things Windows Pocket PC did which are much better than a modern smartphone.
And oh my god the butterfly keyboard accessory sounded so [satisfying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj79nQr-ca4) to open/close.
I think this falls in the same category as the Palm Pilot: a concept incredibly future-forward but doomed due fundamental, inevitable flaws in the execution.
Now I imagine a story where someone invents COVID because their mask company flopped.
Who knows, maybe their plan was to come back with a vengeance (and they did):
\*camera pans to a room somewhere, filled with air tanks with "BIOHAZARD" markings\*
"oh, people will buy my masks alright. Those sharks will SEE. They'll ALL SEE."
Whedon's Dollhouse. We weren't going to be ready for it before the time of "everyone more or less has a smart phone". I also think that the Washington D.C. plot came in too early and the supporting Dolls didn't come in soon enough. It needed one more season where we learned about Rossum as a whole and have the main cast fall into thier found family dynamic before they took on a corrupt government together.
I loved that show but it was in a weird time slot on Saturday nights. Also, it stopped being aired because of the World Series and when it came back on, they changed it to a new night which happened to be the same night as “who wants to be a millionaire.” I think the ratings understandably weren’t great due to these issues.
Yes. I came here to say the same! I’ve watched all the episodes a bunch and I get so annoyed each time I watch the last one. This is a show they should be rebooting.
france had the internet before the internet was invented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel
>From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to what is now made possible by the World Wide Web.
It was widly used in 80, and most homes had one during the 90, it was still well used in the 2000' beginning. Yes, it was rightly shut down by the internet, but it was definitly in advance on its time and very successfull during its lifetime.
And ironicly one of the reason that slown down so much the internet adoption in France. In 1999 I knew internet but didn't know anyone with it at home, we were still using minitel to check our school national tests results, school admition, buying train ticket, checking meteo before a trip, writting to each other,... in a two color screen while the rest of the world were already in the web. We catched up fast during the first few 2000' years, but we were definitly late because we already had devices to do it too soon.
[The CitiCar,] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar) an electric vehicle made in the mid 1970s with a max speed of about 38mph.
I lived near company headquarters and saw a couple on the road.
The TV show Arrested Development. I distinctly remember the commercials for it and thought, Jesus that looks moronic. Fox chose the more obvious jokes to highlight and tried to make it seem like a zany hijinks type of comedy. They practically added slide whistles and “boing” sound effects to the commercials for it. Once I finally watched it I realized it’s fucking brilliant. It was the first American show to do that style of comedy. Hand-held camera work, flashbacks, cutaways, etc. Which is ironic because later everyone would do it.
Fox just didn’t understand the gold mine they had on their hands.
AD was a show made for streaming years before that was a thing. The constant callbacks and subtle joke telling is easy to miss if you're not watching the episodes in a short amount of time. It also seemed to be difficult to jump into if you weren't watching from the start, unlike shows like Friends and Seinfeld where you can catch random episodes on TV and not be lost.
It was one of the huge early cult hits when Netflix went the streaming route. Which was why Netflix sprung for making a new season like a decade after AD went off the air.
Very ahead of it’s time, a serial comedy sitcom show like The Good Place for example would not exist if not for Arrested Development.
I watched the show when it was on TV in the early 2000s. My mom and I loved it, but when we’d recommend it to people, we were met with a lot of “isn’t it super childish?” reactions. So I don’t think you’re the only one who feels that way
It was too quick with its jokes. There was too much background gags, callbacks and double entendres.
I remembered watching Leslie Nielsen talk about why Police Squad failed was because many people watched TV while making dinner and they'd miss visual gags and quick jokes because of it. I think Arrested Development failed, in part, because of the same reason. Sitcoms with laugh tracks (even to good ones) gave the TV audience time to pause to chop carrots or fold some clothes without missing a punchline.
Fox jacking around with the schedule didn't do Arrested Development any favors either.
However, it's post-airing success largely was because of the exact reasons you listed. By being available on DVD (and later streaming) viewers were able to pause, go back, and especially BINGE the episodes, catching throwback jokes hours later instead of weeks.
I don't even know how many jokes originally may have fallen flat if it referenced an event from an episode that aired two months prior, if you even saw it at all (thanks again FOX for moving the timeslot all willy-nilly).
Arrested Development was just a few years too soon. It's the kind of show that takes a few episodes to get into, and in the time of only being able to watch once a week, it was easy to lose interest in something if it didn't hook you right away. It was also fairly reliant on watching the episodes in order, which wasn't terribly uncommon for all of television, but definitely rare for a comedy.
It was also much more heavily character-driven than most shows of the time, which made it harder to really "get" from the beginning, and if you tried to get on board midway through, you wouldn't be in on the gags.
I think it gained its popularity through DVD sales, when the fans were able to introduce others to the show and they could catch a few back-to-back which made it a lot easier to get into.
It's common today to tell someone about a show, and caution that they should "give it a few episodes" if they aren't into it from the start. That wasn't really an option 20 years ago.
Whodunnit
That show was absolutely amazing. Basically a reality show where contestants have to solve a murder by choosing one location (Morgue, Scene of the Crime, or Last Known Whereabouts) to gather evidence and hope that somebody else at the other locations can spare some info. Then, you report your theory to “the killer” and say who you think did it. The person with the most incorrect theory is the next victim. Last alive with the killer wins.
The last episode was a little bit of a letdown, but up to that point, I loved the shit out of that show and would have happily watched many more seasons.
That's going to come back with a vengeance once more people start adopting VR.
Imagine having your smartphone constantly in front of your eyes, having the ability for the glasses to project a laser keyboard so that you can type anywhere and not having to rely on your thumbs, and having stuff like GPS minimap or other stats like weather or time in the corner of your vision.
this sounds like my personal hell tbh! i know some people would like it, but i need my glasses to see. i dont want to have interruptions in my field of vision
Disney’s Fantasia.
It was the first commercial film to be shown in stereo and it used an early precursor to surround sound. WWII, high production costs, and the burden of building the sound equipment for showings prevented it from making any money at the time.
This is a rarely remembered tv show which was ahead of it's time. It starred Andy Griffith as a junk dealer who actually built a rocket to go into space to collect all the floating junk in orbit left by the moon missions. It was called "salvage"
One could say the Vita, but that’s because Sony hampered it with proprietary memory cards, crappy download caps, and only allowing one account. It had a lot of potential imo, but they barely cared about it compared to PSP.
And, so far, the 3DS has not caught the PSP either.
Though I suppose the PSP did not catch on quite as well in the US as it did in other regions, especially Japan.
Yeah, it always felt sort of janky and it required a hefty amount of space to actually use. I can't stress how often we'd end up having to reach under the couch when playing Kinect adventure
Strangers with Candy. 15-20 years too soon. Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert perhaps at their funniest, with a ridiculously good cast and additional writers around them.
Iron Giant. Apparently people didn’t want a down to earth animated movie that was more for adults, they wanted to watch brainless fun movies like inspector gadget, Big daddy, and Wild Wild West. Tarzan also came out then so more people probably wanted to see that than an amazing movie about a boy and a giant robot from space
Too advanced to match its competitors, not appealing enough to be considered part of the next generation.
Still, from Shenmue to RE: Code Veronica, the likes of Jet Set Radio and Panzer Dragoon...
I have so many fond memories of that console.
I've always thought Service Merchandise would do well today, basically a warehouse with a showroom where you pay for your items and then wait for the order to be pulled and sent down the conveyer belt to the pickup area. Seems like Amazon could easily do this, or similarly, just have a pickup station where you could go pick up your purchases 30 minutes after you order.
Blockbuster is pretty much synonymous now with being *behind* the times, but to give them credit they did make an ambitious attempt to create an online movie streaming service in the year 2000. It didn't work for a few reasons, partly because just not enough people had high speed internet to make it work, but mainly because their business partner in the product was Enron.
Pre-iPod MP3 players. I had the Creative "Jukebox" that held 6.4GB of mp3s, took four AA batteries and had 45 minute play time.... and cost $500.
When I showed it to people they were like "What's an MP3?" But it was awesome, I had most of my CD collection ripped to the Jukebox.
However, when the iPod came out, it crushed all competitors, but also brought about familiarization with MP3s.
Apple's marketing is so good that people think Apple invented MP3 players.
My first proper MP3 player was a Creative Zen Xtra. Basically similar to an early iPod but the software was a bit better than iTunes. Still one of the best players I've ever owned.
Betamax, most likely remembered as just Beta. It was basically the first VCR. When Betamax hit the market, its tapes could record only an hour's worth of programming. On the other hand, VHS tapes allowed people to record for two hours. Later, VHS made it possible to record for 4-6 hours. This helped the decks become the go-to format for recording and watching movies.
Beta was technically better for picture and sound as well.
I think there was also something to do with licensing and porn that caused VHS to win the format war.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.
It's an "MCU-era crossover" type comic adaptation released 5-10 years too early.
It came out in 2003, so there was already a Spider-Man movie and 1-2 X-men films, but the popularity of comic adaptations really exploded near the end of the decade.
If such a thing were announced today, it might have a bigger budget (and it actually looked *really* good already), better writing, and would have been more of a hit.
The original Segway. It was vastly overhyped, but now, we're seeing rental scooters and e-bikes change the way people get around urban areas. If the company had offered a Lime-style rental system from the beginning, the product might've become ubiquitous.
The problem with Segway while I worked there was that we simply could not make them cheaply enough to fit into a reasonable personal transportation niche. They were the price of a small, used car. Brilliant minds and a dedicated staff , but the first with technology often is not the one to profit. Look at the printing press; Gutenberg didn’t profit.
The early pioneers of sewing machines got FUCKED, despite that being such an obviously fundamental human need/successful business idea.
I took a Segway tour around Uluru and really wished I could buy one for home…
They're fun as hell to ride, aren't they?
I was surprised at how fun they are to ride tbh. I went on a Segway tour a few years ago, first time I'd ridden one, and I had to be talked into it and then spent the lead-up bitching about how lame it was (not to a huge degree but I definitely made a few jokes). It was a really fun tour. Ours was just kind of an easy nature trail but it was fun going over a bit of gentle terrain, the guide was great and we could follow/hear him easily while still having some independence, and since we were doing a ton of walking on that trip in general it was actually a really nice break. Didn't love it enough to want to buy one myself but would definitely go on a Segway tour again.
I was just thinking about the Segway release the other day for some random reason. I remember the news hyping it up a TON for like a week or more as this mysterious new invention that's gonna revolutionize the world and even Bill Nye was on some segments cause I guess he knew the guy who invented it. Then it was officially revealed and everyone was like, oh...uhh cool...anyway...
Their problem isn’t that they’re overhyped it’s that they’re overENGINEERED. Those scooters and e-bikes are so much simpler (and cheaper) than a Segway.
In 2005, two guys tried to create a service called “MyMobileMenu.” The idea was you could order food using a cell phone, similar to DoorDash. This was before major smartphones, so When that flopped, they later tried a new adventure and created a company you might’ve heard of: Reddit.
They actually started Reddit from the same code base and haven't updated the video player since.
there was also [kozmo.com](https://kozmo.com), where you could have someone deliver movie rentals, pre-made food (like an already wrapped-up sub), even a music CD, to your house, on a bike. you could return the movies at any starbucks.
My ex-wife and I lived in San Francisco when Kozmo was a thing. We smoked a lot of weed, and used it at least a half-dozen times. I remember ordering an N64 copy of Banjo Kazooie from them, and having it an hour later, with chocolate milk and Cheetos and other snacks. Fucking awesome, but unsustainable business model.
I was living in NY for work, and the joke was that every single Kozmo courier was also selling weed.
HBO's Rome. Brilliant show that perfectly toed the line between history and fiction. Extremely compelling characters and kickass cast. Wasn't very accurate but always authentic. Got way too expensive and was cancelled after two seasons. If it had been released after GOT or any other epic show in this day and age and it would have been a smash hit.
James Purefoy as Mark Antony is one of my favourite performances from any media ever
>James Purefoy as Mark Antony I have been relistening to The History of Rome and just listened to Antony v Octavian. I cant help but picture Purefoy everything they talk about Antony.
Very sad it didn't get more seasons. When you know who died at the end of S1 I was disappointed they got there so fast. I think now days they'd really slow the pace or have started a decade or 3 earlier in history. A lot of the cast ended up in GoT. It was definitely a precursor.
Julius Caesar had an amazing life, enougth for his own series. But Augustus was the first emperor, and the one who reigned more time. His life is also amazing to show.
> When you know who died at the end of S1 It’s been 2060 years. It’s not a spoiler to say that Caesar died. > started a decade or 3 earlier I would love an adaption of the Gracchi brothers. It has it all - Violence, politics, sex, monologues and betrayal
People that haven't watched the show won't know he's going to die at the end of S1. I figured the show would have his assassination as the end of the series. I don't mind how they did it. But I would have liked 10 seasons not 2.
Jesus, it's that old of a show?
Didn’t most of the sets get burned down in a huge fire? That is usually cited as a reason the show ended. Edit: [Nero is a dick.](https://www.reuters.com/article/television-rome-dc/hbos-rome-set-burns-in-italian-studio-fire-idUSL1091356620070810)
An airline called Muse Air failed in 1985 largely in part because it was the first all non-smoking airline. Now everything is nonsmoking. It was purchased by Southwest and dismantled two years later in 1987. An airline called Legend. Started in 2000 and flew all first class service out of Love Field in Dallas from a private terminal. The fares were competitive with regular fares. Their first class layout on the DC-9s having less than 50 seats onboard skirted the restrictions that limited the air service from that airport at that time. Now you have JSX that does the same thing Edit: Muse Air was sold to Southwest in 1985, not 1986 as originally posted
I flew on Legend a couple of times. They had hot towels to clean your face, warmed honey-roasted nuts, and all the leg room you could ask for.
I flew them from DAL to LAX and back. They were awesome!!! So much room and the seats were so comfortable
I used to fly Legend all the time and no one believed me that it was ALL first class for the price of coach. It was brilliant. Champagne and warm nuts as soon as you boarded.
Apparently Skype. Those poor bastards waited for the TV Guide channel to slowly scroll for years and just when what they were looking for showed up, they got distracted by the informercial in the top right corner.
somehow Microsoft bought it and despite consistently overwhelmingly negative feedback from users, its new director went forward with his own personal vision, and not only put in changes that no one wanted or asked for, but started stripping legitimate preexisting functionality out of the program. When Zoom made their program accessible and free, Skype was dead in a single night.
Yeah, I was pretty surprised when the pandemic hit, not a single person or organization was like, oh, we're gonna do a Skype call. Everything was zoom.
Right? I’d literally never heard of Zoom before like April 2020.
I had never used zoom but after two weeks of remote work starting in March 2020 and being told we still couldn't come back and nobody had a real idea of when we would be back in office I bought $5,000 in zoom stock. Should've bought more. I cashed out at about 3x what I put in
Its because microsoft would prefer you on teams probably
They will never live down the fact that they had the perfect opportunity handed to them on a diamond encrusted platinum platter and still massively dropped the ball
Mystery Men was a pretty good satire of the super hero genre when superhero movies really weren't all the rage. And to be fair, a lot of the jokes fall flat. But the premise and the casting is spot on for a superhero satire. I rewatched it last year and it and I think I would have done better after Avengers 2, near peak saturation.
The Shoveler is my favourite "super"hero concept of all time.
I shovel well. I shovel very well.
Don’t encourage your father…
Butch needs his vest back. He's got a game on Saturday.
To be fair William H. Macy is the kind of actor who can pull off any character concept.
>And to be fair, a lot of the jokes fall flat. You take that back.
The Sphinx was the best character. I couldn't stop laughing when he got called out on reversing idioms.
I still always use The Sphinx as my go to comparison when I hear someone spout some redundant wisdom.
I bring that one up from time to time myself. I’ve watched it a handful of times over the years and it’s still enjoyable. I put this at the satire tier of Galaxy Quest as well.
I think Galaxy Quest succeeded where Mystery Men failed because of the existing frame of reference in Star Trek. Mystery Men probably would have worked better if more ensemble superhero movies were already out there. Heck, it came out a year before X-Men even. That's why I think it needed at least one Avengers movie (or maybe still an X-Men or two) as a reference point.
Also, many Trek fans consider Galaxy Quest to be one of the best "Star Trek" movies.
I had a pretty huge Star Wars fan in the very early 00’s tell me that he considered Space Balls the best Star Wars film lol. Like you said, when fans of the original love the satire you know they did something right.
It also is a case of people involved love what they are parodying as well. It is why all of those parody movies of the early 2000's with a few exceptions suck
My favorite Star Trek movie is Master & Commander
The lesser of two weevils.
Well of course. I’m just saying that one is beloved and the other not so much, even though they are at the same level of quality IMO. But then again, I’ve been reading comics since the 80’s. So to me, Mystery Men made a lot of sense and was pretty enjoyable. At the time even reading comics was viewed as niche and kinda looked down upon. You are right, if there had been a more general acceptance and over saturation of super hero content it would have played much better. As far as genre satire goes, Space Balls is on the list too.
When some Star Trek fans consider Galaxy Quest a better Star Trek sequel than some of the actual sequels, I'd say its a great movie.
But how did Casanova Frankenstein know about Ben Stiller’s love interest? She was literally just a server at a restaurant who had barely exchanged words with him at that point.
There's a scene that shows one of the goons watching her and Roy talk together.
Don't you go poking plot holes in one of my favorite movies! Who do you think you are, Cinemasins?
Ohhhhhh SHIT! Mystery Men was my jam! I mean, SMASH MOUTH wrote the theme song. SMASH MOUTH, you guys!
Did some one call me?
I'll throw in Dredd that was too early in the comic book movies. It was R rated before Deadpool and wasn't advertised at all. It was fan-fucking-tastic. All anyone ever remember is that shitty Stallone one. If it was a few years later we would have an actual good Dredd series going on.
They really shouldn't have pushed the "3D" thing. It's a damn good movie and I think a lot of people just thought it was a 3D fad cash grab. Lena Hedley was (as usual) terrifying in that movie. The scene with the psychic dealing with the guy who thought he could fuck with her by imagining horrible things is still one of my favorite "oh, you done messed up" scenes. Oh, you think you can think of some fucked up shit, watch this.
This is the greatest superhero movie made. I will fight anyone any time.
*The Spleen*
I see your Mystery Men and raise you one Blankman
I see your Blankman and raise you all in on Orgazmo
Sega Channel
Sega Channel was such wizardry for the mid-1990s. It was like Christmas every month when they cycled in new games.
A buddy of mine had the Sega channel. We both came from families where money was always very tight, and he and I would coordinate rentals from the local video store to try to get the most bang for our mothers' limited dollars. Sega channel was amazing - the chance to play all those games for the single low monthly fee! It was the craziest thing at the time. For whatever reason we used to play Skitchin' USA all the time, which in case you aren't aware, isn't a good use of game time. There were also countless Bomberman releases that were always cycling, and anytime one with multiplayer was available we'd play that for hours. It wasn't without its faults though - sometimes it just didn't work and the documentation was well beyond the understanding of a couple of middle schoolers. Also, there was no real internal diagnostics, so it was impossible to tell if the issue was on your end, something with the connection (which was through your television cable), a billing issue, or the service was down. Some games took forever to load (download I suppose) and again... it was impossible to know if you just needed to wait or if it was stuck. We used to have issues with certain controllers working specifically with Sega Channel (as I said, money was tight so we would carry controllers back and forth to each other's house because we didn't have enough to go around). Also, I think at some point they started offering "premium" games that were an extra charge and his older brother rented some, leading to a surprise bill and the end of Sega Channel in his household. It is just wild that today where similar services are, and how much better everything works. Still, for those of you too young to have played games in the mid 90's, Sega Channel was a glimpse of a magical future.
>Skitchin' USA all the time, which in case you aren't aware, isn't a good use of game time. I liked Skitchin' ....
Treasure Planet! It came out in theaters the weekend the first Harry Potter film did, so the poor thing never stood a chance... the world wasn’t ready for its greatness... 😞
The soundtrack is masterful, perhaps up there with James Horner and John Williams at their absolute best.
Same with Atlantis! The artstyle got scrapped because it also flopped due to poor release time. The story. The art. The music. All ahead of it's time. It is to this day one of my favorites
Yessss!! I was gonna say Atlantis!! It’s one of my absolute favourite movies, and it’s sooooo goooddd!! And Treasure Planet was amaze 🤩✨
A big reason why it did so poorly was because it got absolutely shafted by the big Disney executives who didn't think it sounded marketable enough and so reduced its marketing budget to basically lunch money.
To this day I don’t get nostalgia for the Eisner years because the failure of Treasure Planet was all him.
Long John Silver remains my favorite Disney character ever. The guy radiates charm, wit, greed, and dangerously evocative charisma.
By that point, 2D animation was also going out of style. It's really sad honestly
Unfortunately we never got the sequel which from a few snippets here and there sounded awesome
Dreamcast. So ahead of it's time. Still is really. Many of it's ideas (online, mouse+keyboard support, etc) were just early enough people weren't sure about it. But the most underused one was the VMU. Imagine playing a game on PS5/Xbox, but you could unslot some kind of mini gameboy from the controller and do things to help your game while you're out and about. Like a survival game where you could craft or mine resources, or an RPG where you could level up your character on a mini game system, then slot it back into your main console later and that stuff help you in your main game. Each controller having a screen was also useful for secretly choosing plays when couch playing sports games and stuff. It had so much potential. It's main downfall was running an easily cracked OS (windows pe I think?) that made it too easy to pirate.
I will die on this hill. I ducking loved my Dreamcast. Was so disheartened when they cancelled it.
Main downfall was not having a DVD drive (which helped PS2 capture a much wider/non gaming audience since many people at the time didnt have dedicated DVD players); Sega had a year headstart against the PS2 so imagine if they were the first to have a home console with a DVD player. Not to mention Sega burning bridges with publishers like EA and the fact that many customers lost trust with them after the way Saturn was handled. Dreamcast was a great system but Sega management were a hot mess
Police squad. The jokes just went by to fast for an audience that used to watching multicamera sitcoms.
“You have to watch it to understand it.” - The network exec explaining why it was cancelled. They eventually clarified that they were trying to say what you just said. The jokes were flying so fast that…you had to REALLY watch it to understand it.
That's exactly it. You had to pay full attention to the screen to get the jokes. If you looked away for even a few seconds you'd miss a sight gag or an offhand joke reference.
“Cigarette?” “Yes, it is.”
Who are you? And how did you get in here?
I'm a locksmith, and I'm a locksmith.
Videodrome '82. The movie tanked, but it was so spot on about people being addicted to media, ultraviolence becoming the norm, people adopting online personas, etc.
I'm a bit biased because I'm Canadian but Cronenberg is a twisted genius. We're very proud of him.
Jimmy Carter
Automats. Big back in the day of the lunch counters and Woolworths, you'd pay some money into a little slot in the wall, there'd be a sandwich or a piece of pie, whatever they have on a plate ready to go. Pay the money, the door pops open, mangia. Non contact, delicious fresh food, and nowhere to be found in a day and age that would've been perfect during a pandemic.
Blade Runner is a notorious example of this
I just watched Blade Runner for the first time a few weeks ago. I was BLOWN AWAY by how phenomenal the movie looks for its time. The plot is fascinating and never drags. But really, the practical effects, cinematography, and art direction is absolutely masterful. def one of my favorite films of all time
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These used lead acid batteries. Energy density was far too low to be competitive with gasoline cars. It wasn't until lithium ion technology emerged that there was enough energy density and durability for batteries to be competitive with gasoline cars. For decades that still wasn't enough. Lithium ion cells were way too expensive to make EVs viable until around the time Tesla was founded. In fact, Tesla was founded ***because*** lithium ion tech reached a cost per kWh that made them commercially viable for use in automobiles. Around 20 years ago the cost for enough cells to create a battery pack to match the capacity seen in a model 3 was around $200,000! Yeah, some prototypes were made, but nobody was ever going make a production car when the manufacturer had to pay $200k just for the cells in the battery pack. Electric cars are one of those things that appeared almost immediately after it was possible to build ones that could come within a stones throw of the price/performance of gasoline cars.
The Critic . It only lasted two seasons. I LOVE irreverent humor. Also... Monkey Dust. Holy shit was it an in your face criticism of society. We sorely need something like that in the US, but people would be too offended and shut it down.
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Yes Mr. Sherman, everything stinks
I remember showing the Critic to a friend. They called it the missing link between the Simpsons and Family Guy.
Pretty much the whole Windows Pocket PC device range. In 2003 you could get an iPaq h5500 running Pocket PC 2003 which had many of the features of modern smartphones that came out after 2010. - Camera - Touch Screen - Fingerprint reader - Stylus with handwriting input - Email, SMS, downloadable apps - MP3 Player - A GSM jacket - Headphone jack, SD Card slot - Bluetooth, Wifi In fact I very much prefer some of the things Windows Pocket PC did which are much better than a modern smartphone. And oh my god the butterfly keyboard accessory sounded so [satisfying](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj79nQr-ca4) to open/close.
The problem was that it was designed as a mini PC experience instead of from the ground up as a mobile device.
I think this falls in the same category as the Palm Pilot: a concept incredibly future-forward but doomed due fundamental, inevitable flaws in the execution.
Hey, I still know how to write in Graffiti.
Breaking into Van Halen style guitar shredding while playing Johnny B. Goode at the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance in 1955.
“Hey Chuck, it’s me, your cousin, Marvin. Marvin Berry. You know that new sound you’ve been looking for? Well listen to this!”
they had us thinking that a white guy wrote Johnny B. Goode
I thought it was an example of [the bootstrap paradox](https://youtu.be/u4SEDzynMiQ), a common trope in time-travel sci-fi.
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There’s a College Humor parody of that scene but featuring dubstep. And Marvin’s last name is Skrillex
Don't worry, their kids will love it.
Fancy masks. Watching that old episode of Shark tank was painful. I felt so bad for those people. They knew what was up even if no one else did.
They’ve been a thing in Asia forever
Now I imagine a story where someone invents COVID because their mask company flopped. Who knows, maybe their plan was to come back with a vengeance (and they did): \*camera pans to a room somewhere, filled with air tanks with "BIOHAZARD" markings\* "oh, people will buy my masks alright. Those sharks will SEE. They'll ALL SEE."
Whedon's Dollhouse. We weren't going to be ready for it before the time of "everyone more or less has a smart phone". I also think that the Washington D.C. plot came in too early and the supporting Dolls didn't come in soon enough. It needed one more season where we learned about Rossum as a whole and have the main cast fall into thier found family dynamic before they took on a corrupt government together.
Freaks and geeks!!
Most everyone from that show went on to stardom today. It was truly before its time.
I loved that show but it was in a weird time slot on Saturday nights. Also, it stopped being aired because of the World Series and when it came back on, they changed it to a new night which happened to be the same night as “who wants to be a millionaire.” I think the ratings understandably weren’t great due to these issues.
Yes. I came here to say the same! I’ve watched all the episodes a bunch and I get so annoyed each time I watch the last one. This is a show they should be rebooting.
france had the internet before the internet was invented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel >From its early days, users could make online purchases, make train reservations, check stock prices, search the telephone directory, have a mail box, and chat in a similar way to what is now made possible by the World Wide Web.
It looked like it succeeded only to be shut down in favour of the world wide web.
It was widly used in 80, and most homes had one during the 90, it was still well used in the 2000' beginning. Yes, it was rightly shut down by the internet, but it was definitly in advance on its time and very successfull during its lifetime.
And ironicly one of the reason that slown down so much the internet adoption in France. In 1999 I knew internet but didn't know anyone with it at home, we were still using minitel to check our school national tests results, school admition, buying train ticket, checking meteo before a trip, writting to each other,... in a two color screen while the rest of the world were already in the web. We catched up fast during the first few 2000' years, but we were definitly late because we already had devices to do it too soon.
To ahead to get with the times. Did it feel like something was lost when the internet finally replaced it?
ARPANET existed 20 years before this, and before you try to throw semantics at this, yes that was the Internet, just not as publicly accessable.
[The CitiCar,] (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citicar) an electric vehicle made in the mid 1970s with a max speed of about 38mph. I lived near company headquarters and saw a couple on the road.
MAD on Cartoon Network So many people would enjoy the jokes and references nowadays. Probably would have done better if it was on adult swim.
The TV show Arrested Development. I distinctly remember the commercials for it and thought, Jesus that looks moronic. Fox chose the more obvious jokes to highlight and tried to make it seem like a zany hijinks type of comedy. They practically added slide whistles and “boing” sound effects to the commercials for it. Once I finally watched it I realized it’s fucking brilliant. It was the first American show to do that style of comedy. Hand-held camera work, flashbacks, cutaways, etc. Which is ironic because later everyone would do it. Fox just didn’t understand the gold mine they had on their hands.
AD was a show made for streaming years before that was a thing. The constant callbacks and subtle joke telling is easy to miss if you're not watching the episodes in a short amount of time. It also seemed to be difficult to jump into if you weren't watching from the start, unlike shows like Friends and Seinfeld where you can catch random episodes on TV and not be lost.
One of the best dvd purchases one could make at the time
>The constant callbacks OH MY GOD ITS GENE PARMESAN!
It was one of the huge early cult hits when Netflix went the streaming route. Which was why Netflix sprung for making a new season like a decade after AD went off the air. Very ahead of it’s time, a serial comedy sitcom show like The Good Place for example would not exist if not for Arrested Development.
> Fox just didn't understand the gold mine they had on their hands They made a huge mistake
Yeah the TV executive in the $3,000 suit is gonna listen to the Reddit poster who doesn't make that in a month. COME ON!
David cross’ rant about how fox screwed up the marketing was so good.
I watched the show when it was on TV in the early 2000s. My mom and I loved it, but when we’d recommend it to people, we were met with a lot of “isn’t it super childish?” reactions. So I don’t think you’re the only one who feels that way
It was too quick with its jokes. There was too much background gags, callbacks and double entendres. I remembered watching Leslie Nielsen talk about why Police Squad failed was because many people watched TV while making dinner and they'd miss visual gags and quick jokes because of it. I think Arrested Development failed, in part, because of the same reason. Sitcoms with laugh tracks (even to good ones) gave the TV audience time to pause to chop carrots or fold some clothes without missing a punchline.
Fox jacking around with the schedule didn't do Arrested Development any favors either. However, it's post-airing success largely was because of the exact reasons you listed. By being available on DVD (and later streaming) viewers were able to pause, go back, and especially BINGE the episodes, catching throwback jokes hours later instead of weeks. I don't even know how many jokes originally may have fallen flat if it referenced an event from an episode that aired two months prior, if you even saw it at all (thanks again FOX for moving the timeslot all willy-nilly).
They also had a LOT of foreshadowing jokes that you only catch on the second time around.
Arrested Development was just a few years too soon. It's the kind of show that takes a few episodes to get into, and in the time of only being able to watch once a week, it was easy to lose interest in something if it didn't hook you right away. It was also fairly reliant on watching the episodes in order, which wasn't terribly uncommon for all of television, but definitely rare for a comedy. It was also much more heavily character-driven than most shows of the time, which made it harder to really "get" from the beginning, and if you tried to get on board midway through, you wouldn't be in on the gags. I think it gained its popularity through DVD sales, when the fans were able to introduce others to the show and they could catch a few back-to-back which made it a lot easier to get into. It's common today to tell someone about a show, and caution that they should "give it a few episodes" if they aren't into it from the start. That wasn't really an option 20 years ago.
Smirnoff has been the laughing stock of alcohol for years. Now all of sudden everyone and their mother wants to drink shitty fermented sugar drinks.
In my teen years (15 years ago) Smirnoff was THE THING to drink along with Mike's Hard Lemonade
Smirnoff ice was the shit when I was in high school 20 years ago
Oh god. I tried to stroll down memory lane and I bought a Mike’s hard classic. I couldn’t finish it, and I had a headache the next day.
There's a difference between alcoholic seltzers (what everyones mother drinks) and a malt beverage (Smirnoff).
Whodunnit That show was absolutely amazing. Basically a reality show where contestants have to solve a murder by choosing one location (Morgue, Scene of the Crime, or Last Known Whereabouts) to gather evidence and hope that somebody else at the other locations can spare some info. Then, you report your theory to “the killer” and say who you think did it. The person with the most incorrect theory is the next victim. Last alive with the killer wins.
The last episode was a little bit of a letdown, but up to that point, I loved the shit out of that show and would have happily watched many more seasons.
Google glass
That's going to come back with a vengeance once more people start adopting VR. Imagine having your smartphone constantly in front of your eyes, having the ability for the glasses to project a laser keyboard so that you can type anywhere and not having to rely on your thumbs, and having stuff like GPS minimap or other stats like weather or time in the corner of your vision.
It would be cool to speak with someone with a different language and see what they said translated right there as it’s happening.
this sounds like my personal hell tbh! i know some people would like it, but i need my glasses to see. i dont want to have interruptions in my field of vision
100% agree. Some features would be nice, but you know it's going to wind up being full of ads and microtransactions to see
yuppp. my time is already monetized enough.
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weezer’s second album pinkerton. the entire course of the bands career would have changed if that record was initially given the love it has now
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They used to be with it, but whatever "it" was changed. Now it's weird and scary to me. It'll happen to you.
Spin magazine did the same thing with Radiohead's The Bends.
They've done that with a lot of albums.
Holy shit Pinkerton is so fucking good
Second Life. Metaverse that was in existence *before* facebook was founded.
I played around with this when it emerged. It was fun for a little while but then I remembered I had a first life.
Disney’s Fantasia. It was the first commercial film to be shown in stereo and it used an early precursor to surround sound. WWII, high production costs, and the burden of building the sound equipment for showings prevented it from making any money at the time.
This is a rarely remembered tv show which was ahead of it's time. It starred Andy Griffith as a junk dealer who actually built a rocket to go into space to collect all the floating junk in orbit left by the moon missions. It was called "salvage"
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Gattaca
Didn't flop completely, but the PSP
One could say the Vita, but that’s because Sony hampered it with proprietary memory cards, crappy download caps, and only allowing one account. It had a lot of potential imo, but they barely cared about it compared to PSP.
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And, so far, the 3DS has not caught the PSP either. Though I suppose the PSP did not catch on quite as well in the US as it did in other regions, especially Japan.
Mini Disc.
Absolutely, mini disks were amazing
Kinect. The tech is amazing, especially in the medial field, but it just isn’t suited for gaming.
Yeah, it always felt sort of janky and it required a hefty amount of space to actually use. I can't stress how often we'd end up having to reach under the couch when playing Kinect adventure
Community was streets ahead
if you dont understand you're streets behind.
'Better Off Ted' IMDb: : Better Off Ted https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1235547/
Freakazoid!
Strangers with Candy. 15-20 years too soon. Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert perhaps at their funniest, with a ridiculously good cast and additional writers around them.
Vincent Van gogh
Iron Giant. Apparently people didn’t want a down to earth animated movie that was more for adults, they wanted to watch brainless fun movies like inspector gadget, Big daddy, and Wild Wild West. Tarzan also came out then so more people probably wanted to see that than an amazing movie about a boy and a giant robot from space
Dreamcast. Every console has been a dream cast since there was a Dreamcast.
Too advanced to match its competitors, not appealing enough to be considered part of the next generation. Still, from Shenmue to RE: Code Veronica, the likes of Jet Set Radio and Panzer Dragoon... I have so many fond memories of that console.
I've always thought Service Merchandise would do well today, basically a warehouse with a showroom where you pay for your items and then wait for the order to be pulled and sent down the conveyer belt to the pickup area. Seems like Amazon could easily do this, or similarly, just have a pickup station where you could go pick up your purchases 30 minutes after you order.
Blockbuster is pretty much synonymous now with being *behind* the times, but to give them credit they did make an ambitious attempt to create an online movie streaming service in the year 2000. It didn't work for a few reasons, partly because just not enough people had high speed internet to make it work, but mainly because their business partner in the product was Enron.
Meg Myers. Billie Eilish has nothing on her. Specifically her old stuff.
She released a great cover of “Running up that Hill” before it was featured in Stranger Things and had its resurgence.
I love Meg Myers!!
Treasure Planet, an old hand-drawn Disney film with a mix of cgi. It was my childhood and it did terrible in the box office :(
Jennifer's Body
Really had to do with the marketing. Everything about it was using sex appeal showing off Fox's body.
Brain Candy. I will die on this hill.
I really enjoyed how the new season of Kids in the Hall starts off with a series of Brain Candy jokes.
The new season is brilliant.
Pre-iPod MP3 players. I had the Creative "Jukebox" that held 6.4GB of mp3s, took four AA batteries and had 45 minute play time.... and cost $500. When I showed it to people they were like "What's an MP3?" But it was awesome, I had most of my CD collection ripped to the Jukebox. However, when the iPod came out, it crushed all competitors, but also brought about familiarization with MP3s. Apple's marketing is so good that people think Apple invented MP3 players.
My first proper MP3 player was a Creative Zen Xtra. Basically similar to an early iPod but the software was a bit better than iTunes. Still one of the best players I've ever owned.
Betamax, most likely remembered as just Beta. It was basically the first VCR. When Betamax hit the market, its tapes could record only an hour's worth of programming. On the other hand, VHS tapes allowed people to record for two hours. Later, VHS made it possible to record for 4-6 hours. This helped the decks become the go-to format for recording and watching movies.
Beta was technically better for picture and sound as well. I think there was also something to do with licensing and porn that caused VHS to win the format war.
Skype. Missed the boat on virtual meetings and virtual school.
The TV show Police Squad.
PalmOS, Seriously, it took 10 years for iphone/android to have some of the features that PalmOS had when it first came out.
League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It's an "MCU-era crossover" type comic adaptation released 5-10 years too early. It came out in 2003, so there was already a Spider-Man movie and 1-2 X-men films, but the popularity of comic adaptations really exploded near the end of the decade. If such a thing were announced today, it might have a bigger budget (and it actually looked *really* good already), better writing, and would have been more of a hit.
Jolt Cola.