If Everyone Jumped: Year-End Roundup of Our Favorite 2010 Oddities
The past 12 months included fabulous trends, dazzling red carpet moments and stunning product innovation, but 2010 was also a great year for the weird. We’ve featured tons of off-beat trends and odd products in our weekly If Everyone Jumped posts this year, including $3,000 T-shirts from Valentino, glow-in-the-dark sunglasses and candles that smell like fast food. With this the last week of 2010, here is a recap of our top five favorites:
We're not jumping on these trends, but they're still interesting.
5. The Return of the Fanny Pack
Ah, the cyclical nature of fashion can be a fantastic thing when lovable trends are re-invented and made exciting to wear again, but some fads should be left in the past (and by the past, we mean the ‘80s). This year, Rihanna was spotted wearing a fanny pack and Tory Burch even began selling them. Most of the ones we found online carried a hefty price tag, and we never thought Tory Burch would ever be making one, so we’ll see if the hip bag catches back on for good. If it does, then boy does whoever markets that thing deserve a pat on the back.
Researchers in the U.K. announced they were in the process of coming up with a way for young adults to test themselves for STDs by essentially inserting their own urine into their iPhones or other mobile devices. The object is to get the STD rate down by allowing for increased testing privacy. We had to put at least one IEJ topic that gives you the willies on the list.
3. Japanese Anti-Aging Goggles
One of our favorite IEJ trends this year involved brands that were essentially attempting to charge consumers for a product that did basically nothing the average person couldn’t do themselves for free. We thought we’d seen it all in the ant-aging game when British beauty brand Rodial came out with snake bite anti-aging serum, but these goggles claimed to fight wrinkles and lines by holding the skin around your eyes taut. The makers declared that holding the skin in place for an extended amount of time would cause it to stay that way. (Helpful hint: if you believe them, you can hold your skin that way using your own fingers – or a pair of swim goggles that at least you can take to the pool once you realize they don’t work like Botox).
The Teva stilettos are meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but they are a fantastic oddity nonetheless. This fall, news spread through the blogosphere of Teva’s partnership with Grey Ant to sell hiking sandal meets New Year’s Eve party shoes. That horrible combination was running for more $300. ‘Nuff said.
The informational video for this thing is definitely in the top 10 most entertaining things we’ve ever seen. The Snuggie’s weird younger sister popped up across the Web this summer, and it is basically a blanket with a hole in it that is supposed to help you sleep in public. A big IEJ trend this year was strange products with huge price tags. The Snazzy Napper (aka the “snazzy way to sleep while you travelâ€) takes number 1 partly for the fact that it is not insanely expensive. That and it’s sheer WTF genius.
