You can usually tell how much money a company has spent on a product by how much money they throw behind the marketing for it.
For example, the more trailers you see for a movie, the more ads for a television show, the higher the production budget was on the front end.
These items received more than their fair share of hype, but in the end, these folks say it didn’t matter, because they were actually terrible.
1. I’m still howling.
Spongebob sweet victory music but got switched to Travis Scott “sicko mode” in the Super Bowl.
I’m a HUGE Stars fan and the first time I saw them throw sweet victory (edited to make everyone appear to be wearing green) on the jumbotron I lost it. I take the train into Dallas along with a lot of other fans and you can always hear someone singing that on the train home after a win.
Also, their entire media/jumbotron team are some of the best in any major sport.
2. A show of solidarity.
Hands Across America.
My mom was a teacher in LA when this happened. She said the school she worked at organized buses to skid row in downtown LA, I guess to show solidarity with the homeless?
She said after the long chain of hand holding and it was over, a man experiencing homelessness asked “ am I supposed to feel different now?” I was like 8 when this happened.
3. Not an actual joke.
Floyd Mayweather vs Logan Paul. Glad I didn’t pay for it.
I didn’t even know this had hype. I thought it was an April fools joke and then just a weird publicity stunt.
4. So say we all.
Adulthood. I’d like a refund.
Adulthood would be fine if they would let you re-spend the points you had to allocate to your starting attributes and skills before you got to finish the tutorial.
5. No one is talking about Ted.
Ted.
Back in the early 2000s billboards went up all over Denver saying “Ted is coming” “Are you ready for Ted”.. and a whole bunch of other cryptic Ted stuff, nobody knew who or what Ted was.
It escalated to the point everyone was talking about Ted.
Turns out Ted was an airline. It lasted like a month. and failed.
6. I’d almost forgotten.
Gabbo.
Well kids, this is where you would watch Itchy and Scratchy, except they’re on the Gabbo show now.
So, here’s Eastern Europe’s favorite cat and mouse team, Worker and Parasite.
7. Vacation transport only.
Segways.
Not necessarily terrible, but incredible, over-the-top hype.
Interestingly though Segways paved the way for a host of other personal electric vehicles. Especially self balancing ones.
8. Can’t argue with this.
Game of Thrones Season 8
I missed the series finale because I was out of town and could only get a flight back after the episode aired.
After each episode before that, I would usually have a few texts between friends about what happened, things we liked, and where we thought the show was headed; the usual fan chat. I got off the airplane and – nothing. No texts at all. No “Oh shit!” Or “Holy crap, did you see that?!” Just a weird, unnerving silence.
I eventually texted a friend asking how it was and all I got was, “Yep it ended.” Nothing else. It was just a bleak, emotionless, dismissive answer covering a mountain of contempt at what she just saw.
The next day I knew exactly what she meant.
9. At least one person had a good time.
Fyre Festival.
Shoutout to the one time there was a dude who went on record to say he was the only dude who enjoyed Fyre Festival, because he won the ability to go in a giveaway and seeing a bunch of rich snobs in misery was incredibly funny to him.
10. Ouch.
Every seasons for the NY Mets past the early 90s
IT’S ABOUT THE METS BABY
11. It started off ok.
2020.
It was doing okay after February but going into March? Not fun.
I remember how Halloween last year was some once in a lifetime thing.
12. Destined to fail.
I feel like “hoverboards” were seriously misnamed. I expected Back To The Future not Back To The Hospital with bone fractures.
The “hoverboards” they sold were made so poorly that they were destined to fail. Everything was cheap plastic and the electronics were crudely soldered and covered in hot glue to hold it all together.
I made a decent bit of money repairing them, but stopped after folks kept complaining after they broke them again expecting me to cover it.
13. I’m not so sure about that.
Raiding area 51
Nobody thought that was gonna be real, right?
Nobody was actually stupid enough to go through with it (and get themselves arrested/killed), people had fun and we got some funny memes out of it.
All things considered, it went as well as we could have hoped.
14. It seemed cool at first.
Google Glass got a lot of hype, but then it was gone.
Back when Google Glass had beta testers, I met a guy at a conference that was a tester. It seemed kind of cool at first but I found myself being weirded out with every conversation we had.
Imagine knowing someone who is always holding their phone up as if they’re constantly recording everything you do. Are you gonna feel comfortable talking to that person or are you gonna be wondering if and why they’re recording everything and what they’re gonna do with those videos?
That’s the feeling that Google glass gave me from the other end and I feel like Google really didn’t understand how weird it was to be on the outside looking in
15. I didn’t think it was that bad.
Harry Potter and the cursed child. Awful and I don’t actually believe it’s part of HP.
I wanted to purchase this at a local bookstore. The owner invited me to read a few pages before I buy it because I might have different expectations.
It was her way to tell me that it sucks and to save the money.
16. What a waste.
Anthem.
The flight mechanics and ‘Iron Man-ish’ bada$$ feeling of huge explosions and gameplay is so damn cool to have just let it rot in a gutter.
What a waste, such potential.
I know someone who is a voice actor who voiced a character in Anthem. They pretty much said that it was great to be in the booth recording the lines. The director was very encouraging and was saying how great the performance was and how they’re going to get some great animation for the character.
Once the game was out my friend looked up their character on YouTube to find their performance was paired with some generic looped animation that didn’t really match the character at all. They were quite disappointed.
I assume there were some budget cuts mid production.
17. Anal leakage.
Olestra was a fat substitute that had no calories. Chips would have no fat content and less calories! It was a craze until they realized it gave everyone the shits.
Like for some people a few handful were enough for explosive zero warning uncontainable poops.
I think seepage was the term that was used with Pringles. Olestra is now used as a base for deck stains and a lubricant in small power tools.
18. There and then gone.
Quibi. I saw ads and promotions for it CONSTANTLY for months leading up to its release, and they had some pretty famous celebrities in the shows.
Then it disappeared after like a month of its release.
The company I worked for at the time offered a choice, free Netflix or free Quibi. After looking at thousands of accounts, I saw one that had chosen Quibi over Netflix.
19. We were honestly used to it at that point.
Floam. It was that early 2000s toy that looked really fun on TV but then we got it and it fell apart almost instantly.
On the commercials it would show kids creating amazing sculptures and using it to coat their skateboards….
In reality it was fun for like 2 uses and then those sticky beads got fucking everywhere.
20. It didn’t solve the world’s problems.
Kony 2012.
Proof that it does take a little more than awareness to solve the world’s problems.
The only thing I remember about Kony 2012 was that the guy who started the movement had a mental breakdown and stripped down naked in public.
21. Eaten Alive.
Some years back, there was some asshole that hyped up a huge live event of him being eaten by a snake in a digestion proof suit. I thought it was incredibly stupid, but kept hearing about from co-workers.
Day after the event, I hear he bitched out as it was working on swallowing him. So they had to kill the snake to save his dumb a$$.
It was Eaten Alive, a discovery channel special. The guy was Paul Rosalie, and supposedly the snake did not get killed.
He had to make the snake defend itself to even attack him, as it wasn’t interested in him when he acted like prey.
22. They were so cute!
Mini CDs.
On a similar note, does anyone remember Hit Clips? all the tv stations had commercials aggressively promoting Hit Clips in the y2k era and a few people at school had them. they were marketed as portable music (this was pre-ipod so that was a pretty big deal) but only played like 20 seconds of audio; they didn’t even carry a full song. total letdown.
23. That’s awkward.
Google+.
I met my husband on google+, which is pretty embarrassing to explain to people.
24. Seriously the worst “holiday.”
New Year’s Eve, every year.
25. We thought it was going to be so great.
2020
Remember that meme showing how all the holidays were on weekends?
At least Cinco De Mayo was on taco Tuesday and the whole entire month of April was 420 instead of just a day
26. It’s personal, yet not.
That one pizza party specifically in our elementary school
Like 8 boxes of pizza and they limit us to 2 slices each. But each slice was actually 1 regular slice cut in half. And no seconds. Even though there’s 4 untouched boxes.
27. We really tried.
The Power Glove.
You can’t imagine how awesome NES kids thought that this thing was going to be.
Then you finally played something with one, and tried convince yourself that it was indeed awesome before slowly, oh so slowly, accepting that it was lame as hell.
Then having to memorize the codes you needed to type in on the glove, otherwise it wouldn’t work, so my to realize it didn’t work regardless so you just yank it off and use the dpad on the glove because – ironically – it was better than your existing controller which had the sticky fire button!
Lucky I never paid for the damn thing, picked it up at a garage sale for $15 a year after it came out – I could see why it was found at a garage sale, I ended up “taking it apart to see why it sucked” but broke it and threw it out. Wish I’d have kept it, they go for decent cash on eBay these days.
28. It’s cool in theory.
3-D TV
I got that 3D playstation tv that launched at like $500 for the low cost of $12. I used the 3D a handful of times, and will admit the “Full-screen Split Screen” thing for the like 3 games that supported it was pretty damn impressive.
I hardly used the 3D, damn good tv though, colors pop beautifully.
29. Massive failure is one word for it.
Fyre Festival.
30. Just no follow through.
Ouya.
I think the Ouya was partially over-hyped by the company itself but partially by the public who got very excited over ideas that were never promised…
31. So much cringe.
Geraldo Rivera opening Al Capone’s safe.
I watched it live. And laughed my a$$ off. He dug himself such an epic hole with all of the desperate hype leading up to the big reveal…
I remember the look of total defeat and humiliation when he just mumbled “There nothing here. I’m sorry,” walked off screen, and reportedly went straight to a bar and got blackout drunk.
It’s hard to argue about most of these things, I think.
What else belongs on this list? Make sure you drop it in the comments!
