The ‘90s were a great time for tech. This was the decade when computers went completely mainstream and became a bigger part of everyday life. 1991 also saw the World Wide Web become publicly accessible, and precursors to cell phones began to appear in everyday people’s pockets. 

In general, there was a certain optimism around technology at this time. No one knew it would come to pose so many different challenges, and it largely seemed like a miraculous way to connect with the world and other people.

Because of this, it’s not surprising that some ‘90s technology might evoke a little bit of nostalgia for a bygone era and a simpler time, when texting was a novelty and addictive social media platforms weren’t perpetually available to warp our attention spans at any given hour. Here are six gadgets that were wildly popular in the ‘90s but didn’t survive the tech boom of the 2000s. 

1. Motorola Pagers
2. Apple Newton
3. PalmPilots
4. VCRs
5. Walkmans
6. Talkboys

Motorola Pagers

Before cell phones took over the world, there were pagers. These devices actually date back to the 1920s—the Detroit Police Department installed the world’s first pager-like system into one of their cars in 1921. In 1949, meanwhile, Al Gross patented the world’s first telephone pager device in New York City’s Jewish Hospital.

The first consumer pager was Motorola’s Pageboy I, which was released in 1964. Pagers truly peaked in popularity in the 1990s, though, and over 61 million people were using pagers by 1994. However, Motorola exited the pager business in 2001, marking a true end of an era. However, some 2 million people still rely on pagers today, partly due to their reliability, security, and simplicity.

Apple Newton

Apple is an undeniable tech giant, but at one point, its products seemed to be flopping as much as they were succeeding. One such product that flopped was the Apple Newton MessagePad. Launched in 1993, these products were small handheld computers that came with simplified operating systems, touchscreens, and sometimes attached keyboards. They were also the first devices to popularize handwriting recognition technology and were precursors to the modern iPad. However, Steve Jobs abruptly discontinued the product in 1998 due to poor sales, which were related to high prices, competition from the PalmPilot, and other factors.

PalmPilots

Before there were iPhones, there were PalmPilots. These handy devices were all the rage in the ‘90s, offering touchscreen technology that allowed users to tap through contacts, calendars, games, and more information, and later models even provided internet access. The first Palm handheld device came out in 1996, and PalmPilots were all the rage at the turn of the millennium. But the company switched its focus to cellphones in the mid-2000s and the company shut down completely in 2011, taking all that remained of the Pilot gadgets along with it.

VCRs

VCRs emerged in the 1950s, but the ‘90s arguably marked their heyday—and their swan song. Between the ‘70s and ‘90s, almost every home had a VCR and an accompanying stack of tapes. These devices gave people the option to decide what and when they wanted to watch at home as opposed to constantly switching through various channels in the hopes of finding something good. This is a trend that certainly still dominates today, thanks to the rise of choose-your-own-adventure brands like Netflix. 

For a while, though, everyone had VCRs. But their popularity began declining in the early 2000s with the onset of DVDs. The last company to continue producing VCRs, a Japanese company called Funai Electronic, stopped making them in 2016.

Walkmans

In a bygone time, when Bluetooth still sounded like a concept out of science fiction, people had Walkmans. These were Sony-made music players that were first rolled out in 1979, and they enabled a whole generation to take their cassettes on the road. The original Sony Walkman sold over 200 million units, and the technology kick-started the portable music craze.

However, the introduction of the iPod in 2001 spelled the Walkman’s doom, and the technology was discontinued in 2010. However, Sony has continued selling products under the Walkman name, and the technology has experienced a bit of a resurgence in recent years as people look for alternatives to notification-heavy cell phones.

Talkboys

Talkboys were simple, slightly silly products that owed their existence to one movie: Home Alone. These devices allowed users to record audio and to play it back at different speeds. The product began as a fictional invention for the movie Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, but its creators, Tiger Electronics, made a real one in hopes that it would sell.

After a rocky start and a few revisions, the product boomed in sales in 1993, leading to a massive shortage around the holidays. Talkboys were all the rage for a few years, but by 1999, interest had petered out, and production stopped. Still, some models are still for sale on eBay, fortunately for those of us who want to time-travel back to a more innocent time for just a little while. 

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