Some Silly Inventions That Became Wildly Popular

Stuff You Should Know

iHeartPodcasts

Society & Culture

4.5 • 82.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 April 2026

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Once in a while someone comes up with a solution for a problem we didn’t know we had, and maybe even a problem that didn’t even exist. Even more rarely, the stars align just right so that some crackpot invention captures everyone’s imagination.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This is an IHeart podcast.
0:02.5	Guaranteed Human.
0:05.5	Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio.
0:15.1	Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too.
0:20.0	And it's time to buckle down and get serious about some silly inventions that turned out to be pretty popular.
0:27.6	Yeah, man, this takes me right back.
0:30.6	It does because this is a super kind of 80s, but I really associate most of this with the 90s, don't you?
0:38.0	Oh, I just mean this episode takes me back to like 2012.
0:41.5	Oh, gotcha.
0:42.7	But yeah, sure.
0:43.9	Yeah.
0:44.6	Well, this article was clearly written around 2009 or 2010 by our esteemed colleague, Jonathan Strickland.
0:52.4	Esteemed.
0:53.8	Oh, yeah. There's loads of esteem going his wayickland. Esteemed. Oh, yeah.
0:54.6	There's loads of esteem going his way from us.
0:59.1	We're talking today about some silly inventions.
1:03.2	Typically, they were what you would call direct response TV marketed types of inventions or products, right?
1:10.6	Which are what those, like the little thing,
1:14.6	at least in the United States, that little red icon that says,
1:17.2	as seen on TV, those are basically across the board,
1:20.7	direct response TV marketed products.
1:24.3	That's right.
	...

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