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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
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
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”
Andrew Gibb 4 years ago
I like the reversion to Nokia burner phones- not being pestered by the internet. Snake in colour
RELATED:
#3
2020
#4
The Segway. It was supposed to change the way everyone lived. The invention of the century or something like that. A really big deal.
#5
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
#6
Google+ was supposed to be the answer to Facebook
#8
The European Super League.
#9
Hoverboards? I remember in a span of 3 months everyone had them and showed them off and then they just disappeared.
#12
Mini disc
#13
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.
#15
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.
#17
Asbestos
Technically it was a hit! Right until it flopped when people figured out the whole 'inhaling rockfibers is not healthy' thing...
GirlFriday 4 years ago
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.
#19
McDonald's pizza.
#21
Lazer discs the size of records.
Tim Haight 4 years ago
I remember those. Few places sold them. Everyoine sold and rented VHS tapes. And people could program their VCR to tape their favorite show.
#22
QR Codes. After so many years, they're finally getting some traction during Covid. I wonder if it will last.
#23
HD DVD
Still remember half the movies being blue and the others red.
#24
Amazon’s shopping buttons. They pushed really hard for those and I never saw the point.
#25
The 2010 live action avatar: the last air bender movie
#26
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.
Andrew Gibb 4 years ago
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.
#27
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.
#28
Elizabeth Holmes.
Easily Excitable Panda 4 years ago
Read "Bad Blood." She not only conned hundreds of people, she single-handedly set back the credibility of women in the tech industry.
tuzdayschild 4 years ago
"single-handedly set back the credibility of women in the tech industry" is unfair. Reminds me of when a black person does something illegal and all black people are measured by that person. This was a single dishonest women, not all women. I live for the day people stop thinking like this.
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Paul Davis 4 years ago (edited)
To be fair, these investors were complete morons. They handed her piles of cash without any good evidence she was able to do what she claimed. Particularly that she was making incredible claims to be able to do what literally no one else knew how to do theoretically, which SHOULD have required extremely strong proof before anyone gave her money for it. On tours the equipment would always be "down" for some reason once the tour reached the magic room where they were analyzing the samples, and the investors were too lazy and stupid to insist on waiting for it to work again, which would have unveiled the masquerade many times over. If only someone trying to invest in this had ever shown some critical thinking skills she never would have gotten very far at all with this scam.
Leo Domitrix 4 years ago
To be fair in return? Someone (more than one, IIRC?) did. She fired them, then freaked out at people in the Dept of Defense about how these people wanted her to fail, wanted Theranos to fail, etc etc etc.... Theranos makes the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme look tame.
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Full of Giggles 4 years ago (edited)
A con artist. She co-founded Theranos, a bogus health technology company. She claimed her company had created a revolutionary blood testing method and falsified financial records to make the company appear profitable to potential investors. Theranos received close to $9B USD from investors and she kept half of it for herself.
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Full of Giggles 4 years ago
Not yet. Her trial is scheduled for this July.
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Pezor Zass 4 years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes there's a documentary about the business scam she was running
Frans Meijer 4 years ago
There's an excellent podcast about her called "The Dropout". Really worth listening to.
I want cake 4 years ago
From memory: she started a company called Theranos after she convinced loads of professors, scientists, and investors that she had figured out how to do a near infinite amount of tests on a single drop of blood, which would have revolutionised medicine and forensics, if she hadn't been lying about it all along. She conned investors out of millions of dollars.
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Lord Bafford 4 years ago
What will she do with all those black turtlenecks when she'll go to prison?
Emmanuel Nwachukwu 4 years ago
The great woman set to change everything only to find out she and her company was a flop.. just like the floppy disk
#29
The Wii U
Romery Wells 4 years ago
YES. i still have my Wii U pad and all the acceseries to this day. and they work perfect
#30
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.
surprised pikachu 4 years ago
oh my gosh yes! the ads didn't even really tell you what it was.
#31
Zune
tuzdayschild 4 years ago
I loved my Zune. Remember the day they went offline world wide. It was like a day of dysfunctional unity.
#32
Google Wave. It was supposed to replace email with a more collaborative approach. Essentially it was like a dynamically-created discussion board you'd share with select people and you could have a more readable discussion than one with a bunch of forwards and CCs and the like.
I thought it was a good idea, but it flopped big time and Google got rid of it after a few years.
#33
Sega’s Dreamcast
Guy MacGregor 4 years ago
Well... The dreamcast is technically the first XBox... So it does have a good legacy
#35
Quadraphonic entertainment systems in the early 1970s, were supposed to replace stereophonic systems. Now they are chiefly remembered for inspiring the name of The Who's second rock opera.
M O'Connell 4 years ago
The concept still lives on in the form of 5.1, and 7.1 surround systems. But those are being surpassed in availability by Atmos, which automatically mixes to best fit the speakers you have.
#38
MoviePass
#39
Ouya and microconsoles in general
Jill 4 years ago (edited)
We still have our Ouya for one reason only, BOMB SQUAD! It is the most fun and well done party game ever. The developer never sold it to any other platform and doesnt make any money from it. Win-Win! (Except for him, I would really love it if he had made some money on it.)
#40
Smart diapers! I’m pretty sure Pampers sells them but imagine it won’t be long before they’re discontinued. It’s an idea that’s been posted on Mommy blogs, childcare forums, magazines, news articles. Every so often I’ll see a story online while doing some childcare research. I don’t know a single parent, nanny, early childhood educator, caregiver that has or wants to use a smart diaper. The only way I could see it being useful is for night or for a special needs child. The idea is still being pushed as a “luxury” item for millennials but it’s just nonsense. What’s even funnier is that the tech is almost backwards. Cloth diapering has become insanely popular!
#41
Mixer, Microsoft's Twitch. Failed spectacularly.
ARandomPerson 4 years ago
when they payed 40 million for ninja and then gave up on mixer a couple days later
#42
Solar roadways
Niffler_13 4 years ago
They have them in European countries. It's actually a really good concept.
#43
P.T. demo
RoseTheMad 4 years ago
It's not that it flopped, it's that Hideo Kojima ( main developer of P.T. and what would have become Silent Hills) left Konami, and Konami thus cancelled Silent Hills in favour of making pachinko machines. Honestly, since that move, Konami has gone downhill and has, imo, certainly flopped as a company. Silent Hill however, is still popular and many wish for a reveal of a new entry to the series someday, and there have been a few hints over the years but so far nothing, and the SH following has been dissappointed. (but honestly the Silent Hill games, especially 1-4 are some of the best horror games ever made imo)
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GirlFriday 4 years ago (edited)
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.
Nerds All the Way Down 4 years ago
I do remember that! That's the only thing i recognize tho.
Load More Replies... Tim Haight 4 years ago
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 
Becky Samuel 4 years ago
This is in everyday usage for people on camera. Hardly a failed product.
Load More Replies... Tim Haight 4 years ago
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 
M O'Connell 4 years ago
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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chi-wei shen 4 years ago
What about Youtube Premium? It's still not big and hopefully, it never will be.
Spork420 4 years ago
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.
AzKhaleesi 4 years ago
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...
Alex Little 4 years ago
No-one mentioned the Sinclair C5? Although its going back quite a few years, to the mid-80's
ivan bolitekurac 4 years ago
VR doesn't seem to take of as they imagined it.Not saying people aren't using them...
Dee Pond 4 years ago
Those are still a really big thing, they're just called smart phones now.
Load More Replies...
GirlFriday 4 years ago (edited)
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.
Nerds All the Way Down 4 years ago
I do remember that! That's the only thing i recognize tho.
Load More Replies... Tim Haight 4 years ago
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
Becky Samuel 4 years ago
This is in everyday usage for people on camera. Hardly a failed product.
Load More Replies... Tim Haight 4 years ago
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
M O'Connell 4 years ago
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... chi-wei shen 4 years ago
What about Youtube Premium? It's still not big and hopefully, it never will be.
Spork420 4 years ago
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.
AzKhaleesi 4 years ago
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... Alex Little 4 years ago
No-one mentioned the Sinclair C5? Although its going back quite a few years, to the mid-80's
ivan bolitekurac 4 years ago
VR doesn't seem to take of as they imagined it.Not saying people aren't using them...
Dee Pond 4 years ago
Those are still a really big thing, they're just called smart phones now.
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