90s Gadgets - 90s Nostalgia Theme

We're continuing our 90s throwback theme this week with a look at the gadgets that defined the decade! Quizmaster Sups brings the nostalgia with four electronics that came out in the 1990s, except one of them is out of place. How well do you remember the beeping, blinking toys from decades ago? Join hosts Andi and Tanner in seeing if you can find the lie among the 90s gadgets!

Transcript

Andi 0:01

I feel like I remember you carrying this around in middle

Tanner 0:05

Yeah, absolutely.

Andi 0:07

I don't remember this, it could either just be that it missed, me. Or, I was too young to remember this

Sups 0:16

in that statement just was shouting nineties, like every word that came up.

Andi 0:22

Hello and welcome to this episode of I Should Have Known, the trivia game show that can't be trusted. Each week, one of our Quizmasters will present you with four facts about a topic, but one of those facts is a lie. And we're getting nostalgic over here at I Should Have Known. We're throwing it back to the 90s, and today your is Soups.

Sups 0:43

Hello.

Andi 0:43

Supes is going to be presenting us with four gadgets that were made in the 90s, except one of them was not made in the 90s. So join me, Andy, and our other host Tanner in figuring out which one of his gadgets is a lie

Sups 0:59

Okay. Did you own a lot of gadgets? in the 90s.

Andi 1:02

Tanner did. Tanner had like all the stuff growing up. He had such like a stereotypical American childhood. Like,

Tanner 1:10

Basically, if there was a new game console or a Game Boy, I got my parents to get it for me. Yep.

Sups 1:16

all right. So before we get going, here's the PQQ of the

Andi 1:21

Mm hmm.

Sups 1:22

If you combine egg and watch, Which famous 90s gadget do you get?

Tanner 1:29

The Tamagotchi.

Sups 1:31

Exactly.

Tanner 1:32

think it's got to be it. Yeah. Yeah.

Andi 1:33

my

Tanner 1:34

This episode is going to be so easy for me, yeah.

Andi 1:36

feel like I'm doomed. Like, I did not have a Tamagotchi

Tanner 1:40

So, for people who don't know, what the heck is a Tamagotchi?

Sups 1:42

this was released by Bandai, in 1996 in Japan, and it arrived in the U S in 1997. Uh, it's pocket sized It's kind of your digital pet. So the pet grows into you have to feed the pet. If you overfeed, then it will die. It

Andi 1:59

And wasn't it like, it was like real time too, right? So you had to like, actually do it at certain real times in the real world.

Tanner 2:07

Right. but in my experience, they always died. Like, I don't think there was a way to keep them alive. I just always

Andi 2:12

Wow, I'm so surprised that you, as a child, were unable to care for a little electronic creature in real time.

Tanner 2:21

it was foretelling how I would do the egg experiment in middle school.

Andi 2:24

Oh,

Tanner 2:27

Did you have one, Supes?

Sups 2:28

Me? No, no, no time. No time for games. It's only homework. Study, study, study.

Andi 2:35

I feel like Tomagouchi wasn't like a game It was more of like training for like caring for a creature motherhood,

Sups 2:43

Yeah. Yeah. That's what it was.

Andi 2:44

yeah, so, but for that one you gave us the year, for the next four, for the four big ones, you're not gonna tell us the year until the end, right?

Sups 2:51

exactly. All right. So gadget number one palm pilot.

Tanner 2:58

Mmm.

Sups 2:59

the palm pilot was A PDA device, so PDA in this case is not public display of affection, but rather personal digital assistant.

Andi 3:10

Alright.

Sups 3:11

this device, could take notes, manage or view documents, contacts, and some of them even you could play games, it sold more than 30 million units worldwide. They had two variations. One was the professional, which retailed for 399. And the other one was the personal one, which was for 299. Um, the original Palm pilots. Had 128 kilobytes of RAM.

Andi 3:40

Oh my god! Oh!

Tanner 3:44

that with kilobytes?

Andi 3:46

What would you even be able to do?

Sups 3:49

Yes. So 128 KB of RAM.

Andi 3:52

Oh, wow. I don't remember these. I don't think I grew up in the kind of environment where, people I knew would have used them.

Tanner 4:03

See, this is where our experiences diverged, I think. I definitely had a knockoff Palm Pilot. I can't say if it was in the 90s but as a child or a teen, I definitely had a PDA. not that I needed to keep track of files or contacts or anything. I didn't need this, but I definitely begged my parents to buy me one. It wasn't 299, but it had a little stylus and you could like, play snake on it or it was

Andi 4:30

Oh, I feel like I remember you carrying this around in middle

Tanner 4:34

Yeah, absolutely.

Andi 4:35

Yeah, but, a little skeptical of the timeline there. So I had kind of assumed when we started that it would be the 90s gadget, the lie, would be older. But now I'm wondering if maybe this actually came out in, like, the 2000s. But it also could have started in, like, 1998 or 99. And then it technically would count.

Tanner 4:57

right, because it's just when it came out. And so it could have come out and people in New York and L. A. were using it in the 90s, but it didn't get to, you know, rural Wisconsin until, like, I'm trying to think also when they were replaced with phones. You know, cause it's kind of redundant. Yeah, I like your thinking. Maybe it's later than the 90s. It seems so 90s though.

Andi 5:18

It does kind of, I guess. I don't know, I think of like a beeper. It seems like a beeper. Is that related to beepers?

Sups 5:24

Pager.

Andi 5:25

pager or whatever

Tanner 5:26

beepers,

Andi 5:27

I also didn't interact with people who had these types of things.

Tanner 5:31

No.

Andi 5:31

Except medical professionals, I guess. So, Okay, I'm thinking about it. I'm trying to pin this one somewhere on the timeline and thinking, maybe later 90s or early 2000s. So, I have to hear the other three though before I can really make a choice.

Tanner 5:44

right.

Sups 5:46

the pilot, number two,

Tanner 5:49

Let's hear what talk boy is.

Sups 5:51

If you have seen Home Alone, 2, Lost in New York, this was a device that Kevin uses to change his voice to trick, adults. it had a cassette tape to record sounds and had a microphone. in the movie, this was just a prop and Tiger Electronics. They obtained permission to recreate this toy for mass production. of course, the device became very, very popular. There were 11 versions the top boy was about 25. it's basically a small recorder, that has a cassette tape, which records sounds, and had a microphone that uses Speak into and then the recorded voice could be slowed down by pushing a button and the voice became deeper So you would think that somebody else so it's kind of like a voice changer

Andi 6:42

Yeah, so, I had never heard of this before.

Tanner 6:46

Me too.

Andi 6:47

I did not know about Talkboy. I have not seen Home Alone 2 since I was a child, if I ever even saw it then, so it's hard to guess, but one thing that I could maybe think of is that, well, if I don't remember this, it could either just be that it missed, me. Or, I was too young to remember this because it either came out before the 90s or in, like, the early 90s. I don't know when that movie came out.

Tanner 7:13

Right. like a historical timeline doesn't really help me too much because I don't remember that movie either. and I, to be honest, did not own one of these, but I think I remember it as a toy, as a gadget, because I remember things like weird little devices that could change your voice, like make it a robot voice, or make it deeper, or higher. I remember playing around with those. So I think this was in the same vein as that. But I never had one.

Sups 7:38

parents didn't get you a toy. Wow.

Tanner 7:40

I know!

Andi 7:42

I know, right? Now you're, like, retroactively angry at your parents?

Tanner 7:46

exactly. but yeah, I agree with you. Like it could have been earlier. It could be an eighties toy, but then the home alone thing, that timeline wouldn't work. So it could be

Andi 7:54

Yeah, I'm really glad this episode isn't which one of these gadgets isn't real because

Tanner 7:59

Right.

Andi 8:00

This one would be shooting up to the top of that list. Like that's so unbelievable, but that's not the debatable part of today's episode. So like, I'm just digesting all of this information. I think I'm gonna have to just assume this was from the nineties.

Tanner 8:16

Yeah. It sounds like a nineties toy to me. Like, I don't know what I mean by that. I don't know what a nineties toy is really, but

Andi 8:22

It's just a feeling you have.

Tanner 8:24

If it's playing off Game Boy, that name, then like this fits in with the time.

Andi 8:28

maybe.

Tanner 8:29

But we're only halfway through.

Andi 8:30

Yeah, we have to hear more.

Sups 8:32

Alright. the top boy, three number three,

Tanner 8:36

Ah,

Sups 8:36

So, after the huge hit of Sony Walkman, Sony then released the CD player, this man, D 50 Sony's engineers, they managed to minimize the size of the player to make it as portable as possible, Sony also introduced a lot of, enhancement technologies, particularly the electronic shock protection ESP to prevent, skipping while the device was in motion. So when you were walking around and the CD was like, let's say, jumping around so that the music doesn't stop. And so when they introduced this thing, this man. became even more popular.

Tanner 9:13

Sony Discman.

Andi 9:15

Wow. Well, I did not have a Sony disc, man. I had a CD player, though, that was like, my baby. And I carried it. everywhere.

Tanner 9:24

Yep. Same actually. I did not own a Discman. I got my CD player from Sam Goody, but it was like a knock off. It was not Sony.

Sups 9:31

Same, same for me.

Andi 9:32

Yeah, I always called it a CD player. I never even thought of it as anything else. So, I guess that kind of puts the timeline somewhere in there. but yeah, I love my CD player. it was the most devastating thing when you drop it and then the CD would break inside of it.

Tanner 9:47

Yeah.

Andi 9:47

That happened a few times. And especially when it was like burned CDs that like someone made for you

Tanner 9:52

Oh. Irreplaceable.

Andi 9:55

The social rules for me in, like, middle school were all around, like, burning CDs. Like, there was a whole culture involved in doing this.

Tanner 10:05

Yep.

Andi 10:05

and you had to, like, decorate the CD and stuff. It was, like, whole thing.

Tanner 10:10

I pretty much invested in jewel cases. I was printing out labels for them with the song listing on the back. I was so into CDs, yeah. I specifically remember my like, atomic green see through CD player that I would like, try to bike around with, but it had to have the ESP turned on. the shock protection, because I would like, you know, be trying to do BMX with this CD player in my backpack and like, the music was just like, skipping and my big headphones on my ears were like, falling off my head, but I was so cool.

Andi 10:41

The, like, ridiculous headphones. Yeah.

Sups 10:45

in that statement just was shouting nineties, like every word that came up.

Andi 10:50

Those were the days. But going back to the fact here, the Discman, specifically this one device, I don't know when CDs came out, they were invented in like the 70s or 80s. I don't know when they replaced cassettes, but do we think that was in the 90s, or do we think that was in the late 80s?

Tanner 11:12

I'm pretty confident this has to be the 90s. Because to me, you were using cassettes in the 80s, and then you were using the iPod as soon as it comes out in the 2000s. So, this has to be the 90s to me.

Andi 11:25

I mean, I remember, like, I had the Mulan soundtrack on cassette,

Tanner 11:31

Wow, okay.

Andi 11:32

that soundtrack slaps, man. so, I feel like if I was still using cassettes in the 90s, then CDs must have been, like, a little bit before that. But it could be, like, a 1989 situation, so

Tanner 11:47

that's true. It could be right at the cusp.

Andi 11:49

but I do think this is like a late 90s, early 2000s thing

Tanner 11:54

I think so.

Andi 11:55

We have one more to hear.

Sups 11:56

All right, so last gadget from the 90s the webcam

Tanner 12:01

Ooh.

Sups 12:02

So the first webcam, was invented in the 90s by two, computer scientists, and they wanted a way to monitor their coffee pot from their offices. So so the building that they worked in, had only one coffee pot for the entire, building. and every time for them to Come, let's say from the second floor to the fourth floor, wherever that coffee pot was, that was a massive waste of time, right? Because if they go and they find that the coffee pot was empty, they had to spend another time.

Andi 12:32

Cause they can't just make another pot of coffee.

Tanner 12:35

too much work.

Sups 12:36

work.

Andi 12:36

These are all men that you're describing.

Sups 12:38

they set up a camera in the room, connected it to the internet. And then that was the first record and they connected into their intranetworks. So everybody could now view. So people from Japan and other countries, they were like, Hey, can you leave the lights on at night? Because we want to see how the coffee is like the coffee.

Andi 12:55

Oh my god. We want to check on the coffee pot.

Sups 12:59

after this happened, Connectix, a company that was founded by Steve Wozniak, who is also the co founder of Connectix. Apple. They released the first commercial webcam,

Tanner 13:10

Okay.

Sups 13:10

that cost about$99. The camera was called Quick Cam, and then became, very popular

Andi 13:18

webcam.

Tanner 13:20

almost sounds too early for the webcam.

Andi 13:22

that's what I was going to say. I was going to say, if you had me guess, what decade did the webcam, come out? I would have said the 2000s,

Tanner 13:30

Yeah. Cause what good is it if you don't have a really good internet?

Andi 13:33

yeah, yeah, that's, exactly where my line of thinking is, is like, who had good enough internet in the 90s where this would be? useful. but if we're talking about just the story of this intranet webcam, then that be the 90s. That does sound like something that could have happened in the 90s.

Tanner 13:54

Right.

Andi 13:55

but if we're talking about the commercial device,

Tanner 13:58

Mmhmm.

Andi 13:59

early to

Tanner 14:00

Like when I bought one. Yeah. That's where it gets tricky. It's my experience of it versus when it actually was invented or came out.

Andi 14:07

Hmm.

Tanner 14:08

It can't be earlier than the 90s, but I feel like it's the

Andi 14:12

Yeah, it's really hard to say, but I, I think it could have been like the later 90s that this came out, that this was invented

Tanner 14:19

Maybe it's like right right at the end like 99 just before Y2K

Andi 14:25

Yeah,

Tanner 14:25

I love this story though, with the coffee.

Andi 14:27

the coffee. pot

Tanner 14:28

That's such a boring

Andi 14:29

Yeah. I Feel like I was researching some episode about coffee and this story came up when it was like it was invented, because of coffee.

Tanner 14:37

Mm hmm.

Andi 14:38

but when did that happen? Is this episode's question and I don't know. I'm not sure, but I do remember like I had a webcam that was separate from my computer

Tanner 14:49

I remember they were pretty big. Like, I would plug in my speakers, plug in my big webcam, and then, like, maybe a microphone? Like, so many add ons. How many jacks were in my computer? Like, goodness.

Andi 15:01

hmm. That's a tricky one.

Tanner 15:04

I could see this being dressed at the end of the 90s, but I'm still very suspicious of this one.

Andi 15:10

if you could, Supes, could you repeat the four gadgets from the 90s before Tanner and I guess which one is not actually from the 90s?

Sups 15:19

Okay. gadgets number one, the palm pilot, number two, top boy, number three, discman, and number four, the webcam.

Tanner 15:41

Okay. I would narrow it down to the palm pilot or the webcam

Andi 15:50

Yeah, thinking it's those two. I don't think it's impossible, the Discman, but I think I'm more confident with that one being in the 90s than those two. I would agree that's where I'm skeptical. I think it's maybe the Plum Pilot is older.

Tanner 16:05

Mmm.

Andi 16:06

the 80s.

Tanner 16:07

Yeah. See I'm thinking that what's the purpose of these like the talkboy is just a weird gadget that you just record with a cassette

Andi 16:14

like a fun toy.

Tanner 16:16

Yeah, it's a fun toy the Discman? It depends on CDs, but with the webcam, you really only need it for like internet calls to me. And so you have to have a good functioning internet. So that would lead me towards later than the nineties. And the Palm Pilot, it's functional in the eighties, but really it shines with the internet, but then it's already being replaced by the cell phone,

Andi 16:39

Yeah. that's kind of where I'm thinking that they invented a device that just digitizes your, black book or whatever people used to carry around. And I feel like maybe a device that did that is older and then eventually they you know, they added internet, like capabilities to it. But I think it maybe it could have started a lot earlier, since the technology just to digitize your contacts is, seems pretty old, that technology. And I could see people wanting that in the 80s. but I do think like, yeah, it's either too late or too early.

Tanner 17:16

that would kind of explain why I had like a knockoff because it was already Old it's already

Andi 17:21

It was already old tech, technology. Yeah, maybe. So, I think I'm going to go with that one, I'm also thinking that the webcam, yeah, it didn't really become a major commercial gadget until, like, the 2000s, but maybe that coffee pot story is from, like, the late 90s,

Tanner 17:40

Right. Yeah, I'm gonna go with the webcam though because I think that it's useless without the internet and the internet just wasn't good enough for video calls in the 90s. So I think it's a 2000s invention.

Andi 17:51

And I'm going to go with the Palm Pilot number one.

Tanner 17:53

Alright.

Sups 17:53

right, so we have PalmPilot and Repcan okay, let's start with Talkboy. the gadget was in the market for about 1992 to 1999, And those seven years they had 11 versions of this.

Tanner 18:07

Wow.

Sups 18:07

Okay.

Andi 18:08

Wow. Okay. so that one, that one was in the 90s. We got That one.

Sups 18:12

solidly 90s. Now let's move on to Palm Pilot. the Palm Pilot was first released in 1996.

Tanner 18:19

Oh,

Andi 18:19

Okay.

Sups 18:20

it was, discontinued in 2011. So from 1996 to 2011. um, Tanner, you were saying webcam, you need good internet connection. Well, so these scientist story, they invented webcam. So the scientist version of the was 1991.

Andi 18:37

Oh, wow. So the lie is the Discman.

Sups 18:41

So, the lie is the Discman. First released in 84

Tanner 18:47

okay,

Sups 18:48

is very interesting is that when it first released, Walkman was still very popular. There was a really, there was a long time because CDs were very expensive. But Sony Disman, even the release in 1980s became super popular in the 1990s because of these added like the esp, enhanced features that they added. And that's when it like took off. Like in the eighties it was there, but like Walkman was still the thing because people were buying cassettes. CDs still didn't catch

Andi 19:14

right.

Sups 19:14

but in nineties, yeah, it changed.

Andi 19:16

Yeah. that's kind of what we talked about, where we're like, the CD is probably a lot older than we think, but, when did it become commercially successful is later.

Sups 19:25

yeah,

Andi 19:25

so yeah,

Tanner 19:26

That's really surprising to me.

Andi 19:28

think that makes sense, Of course, nobody bought it though. You know, like you'd have like a few niche nerds who were like in the CDs of the future, they used it, but everyone else like had their cassette players,

Tanner 19:42

Right. Yeah, cause to me, why would you replace your Walkman with a, Discman if your Walkman works just fine and they're still making cassettes?

Andi 19:49

Yeah,

Tanner 19:50

crazy.

Andi 19:50

yeah. Wow. And considering I was not alive in 1984, I'm not sure if it's true, but I guess I, I should have known

Tanner 19:58

I think I should have known.

Andi 20:00

Thanks for listening to this episode of I Should Have Known. We'll be continuing with our 90s nostalgia next week. as always.

Tanner 20:09

you say dog boy?