Pre and Post iMac G3 uses of Translucent Plastics

[mectojic]

Preamble:

The use of translucency – especially in plastics – as a design choice, has a long history. Despite some uses earlier in time, the first substantial experimentation with colourful translucency came in the mid 1990s, mostly in Japan (it seems). Then, after Apple experimented with some translucent casings in their designs, the iMac G3 was announced on May 6, 1998 and shipped from August 15. From then, and especially after the January 1999 release of the 5-colours of iMac, the colourful translucent plastic design trend suddenly exploded into every conceivable product category.

This wiki thread intends to:

1) Create a list of translucent plastic products that existed leading up to the iMac G3 of 1998/99. The intention is to try and reconstruct potential influences and precursors to Apple’s design choice – and also celebrate these early examples.

2) Create a limited list of translucent products inspired by the iMac. There are literally thousands of products to list here, so I want to keep it strictly to ones of some aesthetic/historical significance (rather than including cheap and derivative products). Translucent accessories specifically made for the iMac G3 are of special interest. This was the only era of technology where entire workstations could be tailored to match your choice of computer colour, and even in the era of M1 iMacs, there has never been anything like it before or after.


#1) Pre-iMac Translucent Plastics

1987: 'Salamander' cartridge for Nintendo Famicom: Japan-exclusive cartridge, clear turquoise. The only clear-shelled NES game.

1994 (or 1995?) - Motorola Memo Express pager- came in two translucent colours, blue and green.
1995: Tokyo Telemessage Phoenix pager
1997 (?) - Motorola Xpress Xtra numeric pager. Came in green, red, others?

1997: Fujifilm Clip-it DS-10S Digital Camera – limited run (only 3000, Japan).
1997 (?): ADB keyboards – Filco FKB-97S / Macway TP-997 / Macally MK-96
1998 (January 30th): Nintendo Super Game Boy 2 (Japan-exclusive)
1998 (April 4th): Sega Saturn 'Skeleton' (Japan-exclusive)

Game Boys: translucent models:
1995: release of the first colourful (but opaque) Game Boys: red, green, black, yellow, white, blue, plus an "X-Ray" model that used clear translucent plastic. The use of the term “X-ray” in marketing suggests the novelty of the design style.

1996 (July): The Game Boy Pocket is released, and continues the trend of opaque colours, with small development of the translucent plastic idea. One 1996 model was again “clear”, while a Japan-only clear purple was released. Other than that Japanese model, the only other translucent colours came from limited edition Game Boy Pockets (including a translucent 'ocean' clear blue in Australia, and a translucent “extreme” green).

1998 (April): More limited-edition translucent colours were released for the Japan-only Game Boy Light (including clear yellow, and clear blue); in October, the Game Boy Color was released, with a model reusing the Japanese Pocket’s translucent clear purple, marketed as "Atomic Purple" in the English-speaking world. (As a matter of interest, the Game Boy Color was released with 5 opaque colours at launch to form the word 'COLOR' – probably a major inspiration for the 5 fruit iMacs of January 1999.)


Within Apple:
Translucent plastic prototypes – for internal use only, never a design choice.

1996 (announced December): Newton eMate 300. The choice of translucency was made not by Jony Ive, but Thomas Meyerhoffer, who chose it for its light and fun look. He said that translucent plastic “gave the product more life”. This is probably the genesis of the 1998 iMac design.

1997 (February): Power Macintosh 9600 and 8600 – translucent green latch.
1997 (August): Apple LaserWriter 8500 – frosty-green cover flap and paper cassette.
1998 (March): first gen Apple Studio Display, 15-inch Flat Panel "Azul" – translucent dark blue.
1998 (April) All-in-One Power Mac G3 “Molar Mac” – minor use of translucent plastics.

This Macworld article has more details on these pre-iMac products:
https://www.macworld.com/article/219735/the-unexplored-history-of-translucent-apple-design.html


#2) iMac G3-inspired translucent products:

From Apple: iMac (1998 Bondi Blue, 1999 tray-load fruit colors, slot-load fruit colors, SE graphite, summer 2000 jewel tones, 2001 psychedelic Macs), Power Mac G3 B&W (Jan 1999), iBook Clamshell (blueberry, tangerine, graphite rev 1, graphite rev 2, indigo, key lime), 1999 Airport Base Station (graphite), Power Mac G4 (graphite), Apple Studio Displays (CRT 17" and 21", + LCD in blueberry + graphite), Apple Cinema Display (graphite), 1999 PowerBook G3 (bronze translucent keyboard), 2001 iBook G3 'snow' (translucent keyboard), 2001 PowerBook G4 Titanium (translucent black keyboard); Apple USB keyboard M2452 and USB mouse M4848 (released in Bondi Blue, fruit colors + graphite).

2000: new Game Boy Color models released in a variety of translucent colours. Also, the worm light accessory.

2000: Nintendo 64, “Funtastic” models. (The original 1996 model came in opaque grey.)
https://nintendo64.fandom.com/wiki/Funtastic_Color_Series

1999: Kodak DC240i Zoom – limited run, sold in 5 iMac colours.
https://www.digitalkameramuseum.de/en/cameras/item/kodak-dc240i-zoom

1999: Pele Apolla Speakers (fruit colours)

1999: Apollo P2200 Printer (blue accents)
1999: Epson 740i printer (came in Blueberry standard, but could pay $15 to get a panel in the other iMac fruit colours)

D-Link USB Digital Video Camera (webcam – ice)

Macally: iStick Joystick, iHub (USB hub, bondi), iKey (USB bondi / graphite keyboard), iMediakey (graphite with media controls), Macally iBall (USB trackball, bondi and graphite models), iOptinet (jewel-tones optical 3-button mouse), iOptijr (tiny version of iOptinet), iWebkey (early RF wireless keyboard, graphite), iPocket (puck mouse accessory).

Macsense iCatch (for the puck mouse), Xrouter (blueberry, graphite)

Kensington Orbit (USB Bondi Blue trackball mouse, reskin of original)

Contour UniMouse (USB 3-button mouse, in fruit colours)

iDock and iDock2 (USB hub + swivel stand + legacy ports for iMac G3)

Wacom ET-0405-U Drawing Tablet (1999) – fruit colours

Vivitar consumer film cameras: CV35, CV40 & CV50

Agfa SnapScan 1212U (Bondi blue, apparently the first translucent scanner on the market)

Diamond Multimedia Rio 500 MP3 player.

Sony Playstation Analog Controller

Armetide, Inc. e.light

George Foreman grills (c.2001-2003) – a bit late to the party, but in theme of iMac G3s.

... continue reading to see more!

 

[G4fanboy]

Iomega - Unidad Zip externa (100 MB, USB)

La SuperFloppy, que es preferida por millones de personas, ahora para puertos USB. Rápido y cómodo plug and play, sin necesidad de apagar el ordenador o instalar controladores.

www.amazon.es

iMATION sUPERDISK

 

[pakra]

Here's my list I've built up for a while.

Freecom Traveller

Agfa SnapScan 1212u

Agfa SnapScan Touch

In addition to the Imation Superdisk, they also did (and still sell afaik) colored floppies.
Imation Neon diskettes

Vtech Fone

Cybiko

Motorola Memo Express

Samsung Fino 21c

Some MiniDisc players had a transparent inspired design.
Victor MiniDisc Player

Macally iStick and iCatch was already mentioned, but they did some additional transparent things:

Macally iBall

Macally iKey

Sony Playstation 2 Ocean Blue SCPH-37000

 

[mectojic]

Great, thanks for sharing! I didn't know about a lot of these.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Wow, I love all those bondi-esque peripherals. I will have to keep an eye out for such peripherals at the thrifts.

MacAlly - iball. hah baddump!

Great thread idea

 

[mectojic]

Wow, I love all those bondi-esque peripherals. I will have to keep an eye out for such peripherals at the thrifts.

MacAlly - iball. hah baddump!

Great thread idea

Thanks!
Definitely look out for them. PPC macs might be rising in price now, but some people have not yet realised the value and beauty of translucent plastics.

 

[retta283]

This is a bit newer than the scope of this thread probably but I thought these were awesome. The Hyperkin Duke controller, a near 1:1 remake of the 2001 Xbox controller for Xbox One systems. They were demoed in these four translucent colors, sadly only the green and red became available for purchase. Since are a love letter to 2001 I thought it was a neat throwback to the late era of this design.

 

[B S Magnet]

Who could forget the eMachines eOne?

Also, for maybe a year or so in 2001, Target sold a whole series of office supplies in translucent “fruit” hues, including three-ring binders, file boxes, CD desk racks, recipe boxes, and even scissors. I still have almost all of these in purple/“grape”, and I also have the orange/“tangerine”, green/“lime”, and blue/“blueberry” in three-ring binders. I was never a fan of the red-fuchsia/“strawberry” series, so I have none of that around.

 

[repairedCheese]

Turns out this whole concept has an actual Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_craze
Of course, there's a iMac G3 but they date its start to the late 80's, putting the iMac at the tale end of it. It's not a long article, but has perhaps the most citations I've seen for a entry that small.

 

[mectojic]

Who could forget the eMachines eOne?

Also, for maybe a year or so in 2001, Target sold a whole series of office supplies in translucent “fruit” hues, including three-ring binders, file boxes, CD desk racks, recipe boxes, and even scissors. I still have almost all of these in purple/“grape”, and I also have the orange/“tangerine”, green/“lime”, and blue/“blueberry” in three-ring binders. I was never a fan of the red-fuchsia/“strawberry” series, so I have none of that around.

I saw this, but hadn't seen that it came with matching keyboard and mouse – they actually look kinda nice!

I definitely remember the translucent office supplies era. I was very young then but going through school it was a very common thing to see. I personally had a translucent green office set, mini calculator and ruler. I still have some of them actually. I'd say that style didn't truly vanish from supply catalogues until ~2007. In Australia, translucent stationery was mostly overtaken by a local brand "Smiggle".

 

[mectojic]

Turns out this whole concept has an actual Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clear_craze
Of course, there's a iMac G3 but they date its start to the late 80's, putting the iMac at the tale end of it. It's not a long article, but has perhaps the most citations I've seen for a entry that small.

I saw this too, but don't think it is quite the same. As far as my (armchair) research went, there was plenty of interest in "clear" products, such as soda, furniture and fashion items. But colourful plastics seem to have not existed to in serious extent before 1998.

 

[pakra]

Forgot to mention some things...

The original Wacom Graphire

SmartDisk VST USB Floppy Drive

Logic 3 ScreenBeat Sound Station SP30001B

As a visual artist, I find the philosophy behind the translucent color choice really interesting. From what I recall, the original iMac was designed this way to convey a much more exciting, but also personable design (pick your own color!) but also to demystify the contents of the large beige/gray cases of the time.

This is what translucency helps with: letting you see the complicated guts of the machine, hiding away the electrical components with a color shade but also offering a sense of depth inside the machine. The candy styling also helps with the friendliness, and it's not just the different colors: if you look closely, there's a lot of smoothness created by shades of white throughout the design that even uses the depth of transparent pieces. Because of this, a lot of things look round, squishable, or even glossy. The pinstripes also helps adding decorative variation to an otherwise smooth shell, emphasizing it even more, and to top it all off, the handle at the top is a clear invitation to hold the computer. Absolutely brilliant design that lets you get close and personal with the computer.

 

[B S Magnet]

And then there are the Macintosh Color Classic/Color Classic II engineering prototypes from circa 1992–93, which were assembled with a mix of clear and day-glow green moulding and all-day-glow green moulding.

 

[Amethyst1]

The Radius Artica, an SGI 1600SW recoloured to match the B&W G3.

 

[Amethyst1]

This is what translucency helps with: letting you see the complicated guts of the machine,

I'm just happy they did away with that godawful beige (*shudder*) colour that computers and peripherals had in the 1980s and 1990s. It might have been OK in an office setting, but was terribly out of place at home. Even worse is the yellowing, which turns godawful into just gross.

 

[B S Magnet]

Who could forget IE5 for Mac?

 

[mectojic]

Who could forget IE5 for Mac?

View attachment 1821841

Pinstripes!
It did bother me that the whole design looked great, but then they couldn't apply a nicer, anti-aliased font to the URL bar. A little remnant of OS 9?

 

[Amethyst1]

It did bother me that the whole design looked great, but then they couldn't apply a nicer, anti-aliased font to the URL bar.

Office v.X is the same - the font used in the status bar, some dialogues as well as in documents isn't "(quite)" anti-aliased.

 

[B S Magnet]

Pinstripes!
It did bother me that the whole design looked great, but then they couldn't apply a nicer, anti-aliased font to the URL bar. A little remnant of OS 9?

The Microsoft Mac production team probably found it less cumbersome to lean on pre-existing carbon libraries, given how they were making IE5 simultaneously for OS 9.2 and OS X.

Likewise, this is probably the same motivating decision underlying the deployment of Office 2001: because it was being sold for both OS 9 and OS X users, it was probably easier to work with a carbonized code base descended from Word 6.0 and even Word 5.1 for the development of Office v.X.

 

[mectojic]

Reading old newspaper articles helped me find possibly the oldest colourful translucent plastic digital device- from 1994 (or 1995?)- the Motorola Memo Express. I believe this was designed by Herbst LaZar Bell of Chicago.

Any additional information would be helpful!

 

[mectojic]

Adding the George Foreman translucent grills, because these are hilarious. Apparently with their clamshell design and indoor-electric grills being new to market, some people mistaked these in stores as new Apple laptops!

Looking online, it seems that there were grills in blueberry, tangerine, ruby, indigo, yellow, purple and clear. Clearly the inventor was a huge fan of iMacs! I wonder if the idea was to grill your hamburger next to your computer desk...

 

[pakra]

@mectojic Those grills look funny as hell, I wouldn't mind owning one lol. Been trying to grab translucent stuff for over a year now.

I have a few updates - managed to find a Epson Stylus 740 sold locally in pretty good condition, no yellowing or brittleness. Not sure if it can even print (came with empty ink tanks) but mechanically seems to be doing alright. Might try to get an ink cartridge and try it out. (Yeah, I got that table to match the Macs. lol)

And aside from the Macally products, I found a lot of products that Macsense did that were translucent themed. A gorgeously designed keyboard called UKB-600 (also sold under other brands such as Strong Man, see this link), FunStick and FunPad, iParrot (??? A speech recognizing headset) and various other accessories. I decided to get the keyboard because the Macally iKey felt way too rubbery for my taste.



Another thing I picked up last year was the Apevia 500W Power supply (ATX-AS500W-BK). Not especially Mac related but clearly influenced with its see-through shell and vibrant (almost neon) colors. I suppose this was at the end of the clear craze when metal started to combine with glass like Apple did.



Kingston seemed to have done translucent USB sticks as well, got two of them myself. Similarly, they combine colorful plastic with a metal cover. Interesting stuff.

 

[mectojic]

Those grills look funny as hell, I wouldn't mind owning one lol. Been trying to grab translucent stuff for over a year now.

I have a few updates - managed to find a Epson Stylus 740 sold locally in pretty good condition

Nice to know there's another like me, collecting these things!

I can see we're walking a similar path right now. I've just ordered one of the blueberry grills, AND have also ordered that same Epson 740i in blueberry too! Apparently these printers have problems with the printhead getting clogged. I've ordered some ink (it was extremely cheap), and hope I can get it working again – apparently 10-50 cleaning cycles with a fresh cartridge can actually do the trick. Let me know how you go with yours.
The Epson 740i is going to look awesome next to my LCD 15" B&W Apple Studio Display. I see you've got one of those too.

I personally use the MacAlly iKey as my main keyboard, but admit it is not perfect. However, I appreciate love that it has a power button – the ability to turn on my G4 Sawtooth without reaching down is the pinnacle of computer elegance, if you ask me. Still, that Macsense keyboard does look neat, and I hadn't seen it before – did you actually get it recently? Must've been rare.

Thanks for digging up those old pages, some discoveries I had no idea about.

Along the lines of strange iMac-related creations, it was pointed out to me recently that Asian countries can still get hamster cages in brightly-coloured translucent plastics today. Strangely, this trend never took off in the West. It's cool because you can see your pet more easily, and enjoy the fun colours – but I think some recent research suggested that the colours might not be psychologically good for the hamsters...

 

[mectojic]

An interesting modern find, and in fact a rather rare one now:
Samsung, as part of its 'touch of color' series, released some pretty nice translucent HD monitors back in 2014. The aesthetic pinnacle of these was probably the S24E361HL, based off the S24E360HL. The 360 was black with a very subtle translucent indigo frame and base, whilst the 361 was white with a lighter blue, which I think was attempting to attract the Mac fanbase, who preferred white rather than PC-black back then.

The moment I saw it, I thought that this 24-inch 1080p HD monitor would be a perfect match for a B&W G3 – it's got a very similar blue, and accepts a VGA input, so it's compatible too.

 

[Amethyst1]

[…] this 24-inch 1080p HD monitor […]

Should have gotten a 1920×1200 panel.