Hot take... This trend was just a modern (at its time) reimagining of the TRUE peak of tech design: 80s era clear cases with brightly colored interior components.
For example: https://www.thisiswhyimbroke.com/retro-transparent-neon-phone/
this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2025
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Fun fact, you can relive the old days by going to prison and being on good behavior to get a transparent TV or radio/CD player in your cell very similar to this.
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Yes, from roughly 1997-2013 according to that image. In that one brief 16 year moment, it peaked.
Wii would like to chat 
That blue light hit different
I like how they threw a 2DS into the pile of late 90s, early 2000s tech.
Initially I agreed, but actually I think it stands. The design is similar enough, regardless of era. Honestly, I really do wish this kind of design would come back
Fun factoid of the day: The Nintendo 2DS only actually has one screen. Go ahead, open one up, you'll see...
fun followup of the day: a "factoid" is something that isn't true, but is presented as being true. go ahead, look it up!
Funner follow-up: this definition is correct and true to the original usage of “factoid”, however, the alternative definition meaning “a small or minor fact” has been used often enough that it’s generally accepted, and appears in several dictionaries. Ain’t English grand!?
Sources:
Interesting. I might research that on the toilet tonight, or just drop the word factoid from my vocabulary.
Regardless, clowns still have to go to college, while politicians do not. Fun fact of the day!
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Honestly, I am really happy we passed that transparent bubblegum-toy style. My hope is that we move towards physical buttons again, at least where they make sense (cars for example).
Wish granted. Now everything comes with those cheap shitty bubble-like buttons that are incomprehensibly stiff and only work if you press at just the right angle with just the right amount of force, and there's a 50% chance they register twice.
Wrong, you can get colored and transparent shells for the Steam Deck. Design technology is still peaking.
)
I got one in 'atomic purple' because that is the most rad color.
Still perplexed Nintendo hasn't released atomic purple joycons.
Literally just got a semi-transparent Xbox controller. My kid loves looking at the rumble motor moving inside.
I only got the backplate but man I'm tempted to do the front too.
Also transparent filaments are great. I 3D printed an olfa knife handle in transparent green (think Razer's green) and it looks fucking awesome.
Got a picture?
Also cheap emulation devices like anbernic keeping atomic purple alive
I guess it's very much a matter of taste.
Ten years or so earlier, you could still get a TV where the sides of the case were made of wood. Wood, metal and black plastic throughout. Physical buttons that went 'clunk', a physical slider to adjust the volume, a metal dial for tuning.
To me, that was peak design.
I actually took a busted one of those and fit a 32in flat into it. Blocks off a little of the edges with the frame and gives it that square screen look without losing anything important. Cheap soundbar sounds amazing inside the box, everything is plugged into a surge protector inside and fed through the antenna hole.
I really want to get a Vintage breadbox or radio to put the DVD player inside of.
That sounds amazing. I'd love to see a photo. I'd planned a similar project with an old radio, but it's one of those things that's been on my "I'll get round to it eventually" list for 5 years :)
I'm snap a pic when I get home, I still need to find the right tacky fabric to finish the boarder, but it at least works
Imo the old Macintosh design is the 1969 VW Beetle/ bus of computers. ✌️☮️🌼
Well if you don’t like black rectangle, you can have silver rectangle.
Eventually all of these products found a place in our hearts.
And our brains, our kidneys and for some of us, our balls.
That translucent blue plastic becomes about the most absolute brittle shit over time. When they say plastic lasts hundreds if not thousands of years, translucent blue plastic missed that memo.
When they say it lasts, they don't mean it stays in the exact same condition and shape.
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Plastic lasts thousands of years, most of it lasts tens of thousands of years but blue plastic singlehandedly brings down the average.
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Never forget what they took from us
Games that HAD to be complete and bug free when released.
They certainly weren’t
RGB, plastic edition.
The original iMac being the device that kicked off the colored, translucent plastic craze of the late 1990s and early 2000s.
There was a translucent George Foreman grill!
Translucent products had been around for a decade prior to those iMacs. If anything, they marked the beginning of the end for the trend.
I always thought it was a Nintendo thing first.
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Technology design peaked here:
I submit my transparent purple TI-83, and Tiger Game.Com.
That blue ps2 looks dope af
Argument
It just looks so... technological
One of these is not like the others
I don't know why, but translucent colored plastic gives me "cheap garbage" vibes. Probably because knock off memory cards and controllers for the PS1/PS2 used exactly that design.
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