HitClips
By Jaylyn Cook
Kids, believe it or not, there was once a time when the iPod was just a sparkle in the eye of some random Apple designer (that many people still believe was Steve Jobs).
During that time, many relied on now-ancient technologies like the Walkman or boomboxes to listen to their favorite tunes. However, that changed when the world was introduced to HitClips.
I’m just going to be frank: HitClips were garbage. Yeah, they looked cool, and you could buy the players from McDonald’s for about nine bucks, but the reality is that they were just glorified 8-track consoles that fit in your pocket.
Who would want that? Your grandparents, maybe, but not a young millenial. Keep in mind it only played one minute of the songs you bought for them with the quality of a speaker system that had been submerged in water for a few hours.
That sounds awful compared to today’s standards, but HitClips were a strange revelation of innovation back then. That’s like when they introduced pagers and said, “We’ll never make anything better than this,” but then phone companies were like, “Sike, we’ve got cell phones with caller ID and texting coming out” a few years later.
In the case of HitClips, they became obsolete as soon as they were introduced, as MP3 players began to rise in popularity around the year 2000. The idea was neat for a little while, but ultimately, listening to one Britney Spears track for 60 seconds will never match the satisfaction of having 1000 full-length songs stored in your pocket.
Smencils
By Lisa Stemmons
Note to self: If I ever want to become absurdly but temporarily rich one day, I will just target my product to local middle schools and junior highs because they instantly transform a simple creation into a fad.
Some say it goes beyond a fad, creating an entire culture based around something as simple as a sucker or pencil. I tend to agree, even more so when the going price is just a buck.
I have not yet experienced the joys of parenthood, but I can imagine it is extremely difficult to refuse your mini-me/offspring of a measly dollar, especially when it’s going toward something as harmless as a Smencil.
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of owning a Smencil, they are “gourmet-scented” pencils made from 100 percent recycled newspapers. However, take the term “gourmet” with a grain of salt because more than half of the scents smelled like hot farts.
Not surprisingly, that did not stop thousands of children around the nation from incessantly smelling and most likely getting a slight buzz off their aroma. Urban Dictionary’s definition of Smencils are “drug infested pencils that will make you high if you smell them too much.” This is an exaggeration because everyone knows that the hardcore kids would turn to Expos and Sharpies, but the fragrance of Smencils was certainly powerful.
Additionally, the Smencil black market was intense. In order to preserve the smell, they came in top-of-the-line plastic freshness tubes, and the trading value went down if you didn’t have the original package.
The prized sweet-smelling Smencils were rarely used for their intended purpose as a writing utensil. And then there were the most valuable “Smart Smencils,” which were equipped with a peppermint scent to improve mental agility and concentration.
Needless to say, people were pretty caught up in the Smencil culture, and all you hardcore fans out there will be pleased to know that they now have colored Smencils.
