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Here Are 30 Things That Were Supposed To Be The Next Big Thing, But Ended Up Forgotten, As Shared By People Online
While it’s fun to guess and debate what the next big thing will be, regardless of whether it’s technology, political or social situations, or any other aspect, it’s much more fun to take a look at the things people said would be the next big thing that never did.
Reddit has recently been discussing just that—all of the things that people thought would be huge, but that most of us have now forgotten (or didn’t even know) about.
The online community’s user u/LineOfDeath (very appropriate given the question) asked people “What was supposed to be ‘The Next Big Thing’, but totally flopped?” and over 50,000 comments later, the AskReddit post blew up with over 76,000 upvotes in under a day.
Bored Panda invites you to take a look at the things people answered in the list below. And while you’re there, vote and comment on the best ones. Well, OK, not the best ones, but you get what I mean.
More Info: Reddit
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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”
I like the reversion to Nokia burner phones- not being pestered by the internet. Snake in colour
The Segway. It was supposed to change the way everyone lived. The invention of the century or something like that. A really big deal.
Agreed. Riding on flat ground? Awesome. Hit a bump? You entire life flashes before your eyes. 10/10 experience, would ride again
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almost got run over by a cop riding one of these in an elevator. I'm not kidding.
I want a movie where the chase sequence is a bunch of cops riding Segways going after a bunch of elderly guys in wheelchairs.
alas, it's only meant for mall cops.. we ordinary civilians cant compete-
60 Minutes did a program on how it would help people who couldn't walk, how it would revolutionize transportation, etc. Then the dang thing was actually released...
But... you have to stand upright on it and be able to keep a good balance. How does that work for people who can barely walk?
Load More Replies... My grandfather had one instead of a wheelchair. He was able to stand, but walking was hard. He had it outfitted with off-road tires (they lived on a farm)
I tried on at Leeds Castle in Kent. They are really great. Shame they are illegal to ride on normal roads.
As I understand it - the fact that the Segway wasmade illegal to ride on Public Roads and Sidewalks was what stopped it from becoming a real alternative to inner city transportation.
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I think the price tag was rather prohibitive. They were ahead of their time. In the meantime, electric kick scooters have gained massive popularity. So have other hoverboard(-like) devices.
Have to account for the extra time it took to put on all of the protective gear. . . and also take it all off again when you got to where you were going.
It's a shame that we live in such a litigious society. These things (and now the electric scooters) have a potential of changing how we move around cities but they don't stand a chance because people would sue if they had an accident (or someone gets hit by one) - like you couldn't fall over or hit someone while riding a bike.
But nowadays we're having those f*cking e-scooters laying around everywhere.
Never has there been more hype. It was going to revolutionise the way we lived, cities were going to change....all before we even knew what it was.
Quite popular in Nashville, you can rent them and take tours around the city with them, also used by mall cops as well
I remember the "big reveal". It had been hyped for weeks and then ta-da! And we all just sat there scratching our heads.
I remember the lead-up to the reveal of what this big project was. Steve Jobs said that this mystery product was so revolutionary, cities will be built around it. I was sooooooo stoked. When they revealed these, I was like "wut?" Then again, I had the same reaction to the iPod. I was like "This isn't a new Newton! Who the f**k is going to spend nearly $500 on a walkman?" And that's how you know I'm not Steve Jobs. What was I talking about again? Oh yea...Segways are not all that.
I never understood this thing. This is the best example of a Solution in Search of a Problem. It doesn't go very far or very fast, you can't take any kind of baggage, it carries only one person, you don't have to walk but you still have to stand... Why did anybody ever think this was a good idea?
I read some guy bought the company and promptly drove one off a cliff to his death!
I think he did the off road version rather than own the company.
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Fun fact, the inventor of the Segway died falling off a cliff while riding a Segway. He wanted to demonstrate how quickly the Segway could stop.
First, it isn't fun, second, not even true. He wanted to make way to a dog walker, and accidentally fell off the cliff.
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The single-wheel urban transport products are definitely being sold, I see people on them occasionally.
Airship travel. These were the next, awesome way to travel long distances; in fact the spire on top of the Empire State Building was meant as an anchoring point for airships.
The Hindenburg kind of put a damper on it, though
Hoverboards? I remember in a span of 3 months everyone had them and showed them off and then they just disappeared.
This one might be a bit obscure just because I've only ever met one other person familiar with it, but Google's Project Ara modular smartphone was looking like it could've been the end all be all of smartphones.
Based off the Phonebloks idea of having a Lego-like hot-swappable module phone, the idea was that you could switch out any components of the phone on the fly. Camera, fingerprint scanner, even different quality screens. Conceptually, it really looked like it could take over the phone market, as it would lead to people not having to buy whole new phones anymore, but rather replacement or upgraded parts to a phone they already liked, thereby reducing costs and increasing utility.
You don't want a phone with 5 cameras that inflate the cost unnecessarily? Just buy a one camera module. You want a 1440P Super Amoled screen to replace your 720P regular screen? Buy one and swap it in.
However, like many Google projects, it died off for myriad reasons and the longstanding era of $1000 dollar smartphone slabs lived on.
What ever happened to those curved televisions? I remember seeing one on an advert a few years back bit havent seen or heard about them since.
The "Dark Universe" cinematic universe, starting with 2017's THE MUMMY.
Asbestos
Technically it was a hit! Right until it flopped when people figured out the whole 'inhaling rockfibers is not healthy' thing...
It is still one of the most effective insulations and flame retardants of all time. It is just that whole "poking holes in your lungs" thing that killed it.
Dip N Dots...
Been the "Ice Cream Of The Future" for 40 years now it seems.
Lazer discs the size of records.
I remember those. Few places sold them. Everyoine sold and rented VHS tapes. And people could program their VCR to tape their favorite show.
QR Codes.
After so many years, they're finally getting some traction during Covid. I wonder if it will last.
HD DVD
Still remember half the movies being blue and the others red.
Amazon’s shopping buttons. They pushed really hard for those and I never saw the point.
At the time video calling with your phone completely flopped because 3G couldn't support it. There was so much advertising about this thing that was meant to be huge but the tech really didn't work yet. But it did blow up later on with 4G, better phones, wifi in more public spaces.
video calling is doomed to fail. I have to admit that zoom and skype are tedious.People like to do other things while speaking to others, which is why people still phone each other.
Hydrogen cars were a promising new form of motorized vehicle. They were supposed to be incredibly good for the environment, emitting only water as the exhaust. They exist, but not like how some people imagined. I was a pretty big hydrogen car believer at the time. There are some hydrogen stations, but mostly centered around California. Thing is that the hydrogen is quite expensive and not very efficient compared to smaller engines, hybrids, and EV’s. The hydrogen is also somewhat inefficient to produce, store, and distribute as well.
You can actually get a hydrogen car though, they’re out there. The Toyota Mirai is a really good example. Out of all hydrogen cars, that one is definitely most popular. In fact, Toyota pays for $15,000 worth of hydrogen in your first few years of ownership since it’s so expensive. This means that for your first 3-ish years of owning one, you might not have to pay a penny in fuel. As you can see I’m still a hydrogen advocate. Don’t expect to be able to take it very far from your nearest hydrogen station though.
Elizabeth Holmes.
Read "Bad Blood." She not only conned hundreds of people, she single-handedly set back the credibility of women in the tech industry.
The Wii U
YES. i still have my Wii U pad and all the acceseries to this day. and they work perfect
hat streaming service that lasted like two months. ‘Qubi’ or ‘Qupi’ I think?
Even bad timing aside (a mobile based streaming service at a time when no one could really leave their house) the marketing was just horrible. I saw ads for it for nearly a week before I realized it was a new video streaming service, and by that point was so annoyed by the ads untrusting everything I didn’t care at all, just out of spite. Also I mean it was just YouTube you have to pay for and got worse content.
EDIT: it was Quibi. It made so little impact I couldn’t recall at first.
oh my gosh yes! the ads didn't even really tell you what it was.
Note: this post originally had 44 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Remember those robot pets? They were supposed to be the wave of the future. It was an advanced Furby that you could teach tricks and maybe to speak.
I do remember that! That's the only thing i recognize tho.
Load More Replies... Hair in a can - Hyped breathlessly on off-hour infomercials, spray-on hair is supposed to cover up bald spots. In practice, the can emits a fine powder that ends up looking a little better than if you had used a can of spray paint hairinacan...39d94c.jpg 
This is in everyday usage for people on camera. Hardly a failed product.
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Released at the height of the tech boom in the late 1990s, the CueCat was a massively expensive failure. Millions of the cat-shaped bar-code scanners were produced and shipped for free across the U.S., in hopes that people would use them to scan specially marked bar codes to visit Internet sites. (How this was easier than a typing a link, the company never did answer.) Despite a much ballyhooed launch, with CueCat codes printed in Wired and BusinessWeek, consumers never got into the idea of reading their magazines next to a wired cat-shaped scanner, and the CueCat became little more than a high-tech paperweight. cuecat-608...1eb66c.jpg 
Their software no longer works, but if you happen to have one of the devices, there is a driver available that lets you use it as an ordinary text-entry barcode scanner. There's a bookstore by me that uses one at checkout.
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What about Youtube Premium? It's still not big and hopefully, it never will be.
Those community bikes or scooters or whatever they were that showed up by the hundreds in cities a few years ago and littered every corner. Those came and went real fast.
Those are still all over california but I think everyone realizes how much they cost to up keep etc. plus they were getting stolen.
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No-one mentioned the Sinclair C5? Although its going back quite a few years, to the mid-80's
VR doesn't seem to take of as they imagined it.Not saying people aren't using them...
Those are still a really big thing, they're just called smart phones now.
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Remember those robot pets? They were supposed to be the wave of the future. It was an advanced Furby that you could teach tricks and maybe to speak.
I do remember that! That's the only thing i recognize tho.
Load More Replies... Hair in a can - Hyped breathlessly on off-hour infomercials, spray-on hair is supposed to cover up bald spots. In practice, the can emits a fine powder that ends up looking a little better than if you had used a can of spray paint hairinacan...39d94c.jpg
This is in everyday usage for people on camera. Hardly a failed product.
Load More Replies... Released at the height of the tech boom in the late 1990s, the CueCat was a massively expensive failure. Millions of the cat-shaped bar-code scanners were produced and shipped for free across the U.S., in hopes that people would use them to scan specially marked bar codes to visit Internet sites. (How this was easier than a typing a link, the company never did answer.) Despite a much ballyhooed launch, with CueCat codes printed in Wired and BusinessWeek, consumers never got into the idea of reading their magazines next to a wired cat-shaped scanner, and the CueCat became little more than a high-tech paperweight. cuecat-608...1eb66c.jpg
Their software no longer works, but if you happen to have one of the devices, there is a driver available that lets you use it as an ordinary text-entry barcode scanner. There's a bookstore by me that uses one at checkout.
Load More Replies... What about Youtube Premium? It's still not big and hopefully, it never will be.
Those community bikes or scooters or whatever they were that showed up by the hundreds in cities a few years ago and littered every corner. Those came and went real fast.
Those are still all over california but I think everyone realizes how much they cost to up keep etc. plus they were getting stolen.
Load More Replies... No-one mentioned the Sinclair C5? Although its going back quite a few years, to the mid-80's
VR doesn't seem to take of as they imagined it.Not saying people aren't using them...
Those are still a really big thing, they're just called smart phones now.
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