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Pre and Post iMac G3 uses of Translucent Plastics
- Thread starter mectojic
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Of course there were many of them...
LEGO had transparent bricks starting from 1950s.
More interesting info here:
Trans Clear LEGO Thru the years...
Many of you have noticed that trans-clear LEGO elements have changed colors over the years. This is partly due to the fact that modern trans-clear (and other trans) elements are not made of ABS plastic. Reason for that is that ABS in its natural state is a milky white color, and therefore you can...
www.eurobricks.com
Y’all can harp on all you want about translucent plastic products, but I miss letting go of my hecking land line phone given as a gift in 1990:
Then again, after over twenty years of use, mine was worse for wear cosmetically — with a long-loose internal piece banging about in the base (that gold-hued plate near the cord receptacle) and the coiled cord being replaced with a working, but ugly tan replacement (because cats like to chew wires). But it worked flawlessly otherwise until the last time I took a call on it.
The only pic I have of it is one as my friend was using it on a call, in which the green glow from the handset illuminated the side of her face. The base, when ringing, flashed in orange. It was a good phone, and the call sound quality was better than every digital mobile phone I’ve ever used.
Then again, after over twenty years of use, mine was worse for wear cosmetically — with a long-loose internal piece banging about in the base (that gold-hued plate near the cord receptacle) and the coiled cord being replaced with a working, but ugly tan replacement (because cats like to chew wires). But it worked flawlessly otherwise until the last time I took a call on it.
The only pic I have of it is one as my friend was using it on a call, in which the green glow from the handset illuminated the side of her face. The base, when ringing, flashed in orange. It was a good phone, and the call sound quality was better than every digital mobile phone I’ve ever used.
Even Intel jumped on the translucent bandwagon, with their kid-targeted Me2Cam (webcam) and USB Microscope (circa 1999/2000):
Here are those binders. I didn’t bother with digging out the recipe box, CD rack, and scissors, but I have those, too.
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Hey nice! They look authentic to the era. I find that modern ones have a different/ more muted colour palette. Usually the bold fruit colours and presence of curves/blobs is a giveaway.
Yah. At the time, Target only sold these in the five “fruit”-themed hues. I passed on the pink-red “strawberry” binder and still don’t regret doing that. I went, instead, overboard on their other “grape” offerings since that was a hue family I really loved at the time.
It’s worth mentioning how Target (the U.S. Target, I mean, not the Oz one) never really delved into selling graphite or bondi-themed office supplies. They also didn’t bother with the second round of Apple hues like ruby, sage, and indigo, but one could buy incidentally bondi-hued appliances — such as electric irons, upright vacuum cleaners, and the ubiquitous vtech cordless phones (which I do remember also being sold in at least grape and strawberry where I was). Target even sold, for a time, the Epson 540 ink-jet printers in tangerine and blueberry (I used to own a secondhand unit in tangerine).
Around 2003 or so, the translucent fruit hues in products being sold at Target began to dwindle as they began to merchandise more post-modernist signature stuff from Michael Graves (I bought two of the Graves laptop cases they sold, and I still have one of these to this very day; it’s where my first clamshell iBook lived when on the go). Target even sold a short-lived Philippe Starck collection of houseware products (I still have a 2003–04-era Starck soap dish in a translucent chartreuse hue). His housewares were a far cry from the austere, high-contrast stuff from the Starck Club days, but it was still unmistakably his minimalist, highly creased, inorganic style.
Still waiting for one of the board repair YouTubers to pick one of these up for a righteous April fools joke livestream.
Hey, that was my phone from 1989 till around 98 ish?Y’all can harp on all you want about translucent plastic products, but I miss letting go of my hecking land line phone given as a gift in 1990:
Then again, after over twenty years of use, mine was worse for wear cosmetically — with a long-loose internal piece banging about in the base (that gold-hued plate near the cord receptacle) and the coiled cord being replaced with a working, but ugly tan replacement (because cats like to chew wires). But it worked flawlessly otherwise until the last time I took a call on it.
The only pic I have of it is one as my friend was using it on a call, in which the green glow from the handset illuminated the side of her face. The base, when ringing, flashed in orange. It was a good phone, and the call sound quality was better than every digital mobile phone I’ve ever used.
Hey, that was my phone from 1989 till around 98 ish?
I let go of it after 21 years when I moved intercity to where I live now. It amounted to dead weight, and with the loose weight bouncing around in the base, if I really wanted another one for nostalgia, I could just find a used one in less worn condition. Still, the one I had went with me a lot of places, and I do miss it.
My GF managed to find an index of Sears/JCPenney catalogs with various translucent offerings around the millenia.
Some more discoveries:
The world's first "gaming mouse" (i.e. mouse designed explicitly for gaming), was the Razer Boomslang, in 1999. And sure enough, the high-dpi version was translucent. (It's a super rare collector's item now.)
Also, I've been searching recently for any translucent devices that would match the red of an iMac G3 Ruby. It seems that once Apple swapped from fruit-colours to jewel-tones, and simultaneously scrapped the colour-matching keyboard and mouse, most 3rd-party manufacturers gave up on colour-matching anymore; hence, not many Indigo, Ruby and Sage peripherals were created.
However, I have found some – the George Foreman grill, as mentioned earlier, and the Epson Stylus 777i – nice job to them for colour-matching the cable, and even recreating Apple's style of power cable too!
And also, while clearly not meant to match Apple, here is a translucent red PS/2 Yahoo internet keyboard:
The "Cherub" company is still known for manufacturing high-end mechanical metronomes. Now that everyone can get a metronome app, I expect they're not selling much anymore. But back in the day, even they made a translucent variant:
And something else for fun – the ORIGINAL Apple Watch. Yes, it was officially Apple.
The world's first "gaming mouse" (i.e. mouse designed explicitly for gaming), was the Razer Boomslang, in 1999. And sure enough, the high-dpi version was translucent. (It's a super rare collector's item now.)
Also, I've been searching recently for any translucent devices that would match the red of an iMac G3 Ruby. It seems that once Apple swapped from fruit-colours to jewel-tones, and simultaneously scrapped the colour-matching keyboard and mouse, most 3rd-party manufacturers gave up on colour-matching anymore; hence, not many Indigo, Ruby and Sage peripherals were created.
However, I have found some – the George Foreman grill, as mentioned earlier, and the Epson Stylus 777i – nice job to them for colour-matching the cable, and even recreating Apple's style of power cable too!
And also, while clearly not meant to match Apple, here is a translucent red PS/2 Yahoo internet keyboard:
The "Cherub" company is still known for manufacturing high-end mechanical metronomes. Now that everyone can get a metronome app, I expect they're not selling much anymore. But back in the day, even they made a translucent variant:
And something else for fun – the ORIGINAL Apple Watch. Yes, it was officially Apple.
That Apple watch would have looked dazzling in key lime.
I remember, that there were many Compact Flash and other type of memory card readers on the market, some of these were from Lexar in green and blue colour.
The later models in the late 2000s were more premium.
www.cnet.com
Some of these are still being sold:
www.bechtle.com
And interestingly the Chinese are still doing these USB 2.0 microSD card readers:
www.dhgate.com
The later models in the late 2000s were more premium.
Lexar Professional UDMA CompactFlash Dual-Slot Reader review: Lexar Professional UDMA CompactFlash Dual-Slot Reader
Most users won't need Lexar's Professional UDMA reader, but if you're already deep in the high-capacity, high storage flash market, it's a great buy.
Some of these are still being sold:
Buy Hama USB 2.0 SD/microSD Card Reader (00091092)
Discover Hama USB 2.0 SD/microSD Card Reader now and enjoy easy B2B shopping at Bechtle.
And interestingly the Chinese are still doing these USB 2.0 microSD card readers:
Wholesale Cheap Sd Card To Usb & Sdxc Card Reader - Buy in Bulk On Dhgate.com
Bulk buy sd card to usb online from Chinese suppliers on DHgate.com. Get deals with coupon and discount code! Source high quality products in hundreds of categories wholesale direct from China.
The Japan only Super Game Boy 2 only came in a transparent blue shell. Released Jan. 1998. I also somewhat take issue with the whole "iMac G3 inspired products" and putting later Game Boys in there when Nintendo had already been doing it years prior...
Also seems to be missing the transparent GBAs, Glacier and I think a pink one whose name escapes me.
Also seems to be missing the transparent GBAs, Glacier and I think a pink one whose name escapes me.
Hi, thanks for sharing that! I didn't know about that one.
Whilst many companies had made clear-plastic products through the 1990s, as my original thread says, not many companies used coloured translucent plastic before the iMac – the only major exceptions I could find were the Motorola Pager of 1994, and the Gameboy Pocket Japan-exclusive Clear Purple, which was released in Winter 1997... and now we can add the Japan-only Super Gameboy 2.
So, while Nintendo technically did come before Apple, they didn't really go really hard on the translucent designs (i.e. with the Gameboy Color/Advance), especially on the international market, until after the iMac was released.
Really interesting thread.
There was a translucent Game Boy in 1995 as part of the "Play It Loud" series. Nintendo also used colored translucent plastics with their "Funtastic" Nintendo 64 line, but that was in 1999 or 2000, after the release of the iMac G3.
edit: Sorry, I saw you already had this edition listed in your original post.
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I like that one! Yeah it was marketed as a 'skeleton' in some countries. It's clear plastic, but doesn't quite catch that 'frosted glass' look of the colourful products that came later.
As already written in the first post by mectojic, the interesting part of these translucent craze were also the computer mices
Many from macally (Optical Micro Mouse, iMouse Pro etc.), Logitech (iFeel, Wheelman etc.) and others like Dexxa, Genius, HAMA, A4Tech...
Some pictures here:
Mices with similar form to these above are still being sold by different Chinese sellers.
Some tests/reviews (in different languages) about these translucent mouses with pictures:
slo-tech.com
Here is an interesting unboxing of the Logitech iFeel Mouse with transparent/translucent bottom:
click on this link, because Youtube video cannot be embedded (the owner didn' allow)
Many from macally (Optical Micro Mouse, iMouse Pro etc.), Logitech (iFeel, Wheelman etc.) and others like Dexxa, Genius, HAMA, A4Tech...
Some pictures here:
Mices with similar form to these above are still being sold by different Chinese sellers.
Some tests/reviews (in different languages) about these translucent mouses with pictures:
Test Logitechovih glodalcev @ Slo-Tech
Here is an interesting unboxing of the Logitech iFeel Mouse with transparent/translucent bottom:
click on this link, because Youtube video cannot be embedded (the owner didn' allow)
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As already written in the first post by mectojic, the interesting part of these translucent craze were also the computer mices
Many from macally (Optical Micro Mouse, iMouse Pro etc.), Logitech (iFeel, Wheelman etc.) and others like Dexxa, Genius, HAMA, A4Tech...
Some pictures here:
View attachment 2036946View attachment 2036940View attachment 2036941View attachment 2036942View attachment 2036944View attachment 2036943View attachment 2036947View attachment 2036945View attachment 2036948View attachment 2036949
Mices with similar form to these above are still being sold by different Chinese sellers.
Some tests/reviews (in different languages) about these translucent mouses with pictures:
Test Logitechovih glodalcev @ Slo-Tech
Here is an interesting unboxing of the Logitech iFeel Mouse with transparent/translucent bottom:
click on this link, because Youtube video cannot be embedded (the owner didn' allow)
I almost feel like that clear Macally mouse with the red PCB deserves its own thread on transparent plastics, along side the summer 2000 line of Apple peripherals.
It's almost its own style, isn't it? There sure were a ton of peripherals made in that variety (some still are, if you include anything modern-transparent).I almost feel like that clear Macally mouse with the red PCB deserves its own thread on transparent plastics, along side the summer 2000 line of Apple peripherals.
The clear plastic aesthetic, post-translucent colours era, feels a lot like the early/mid 2000s.
Think of that taillight treatment on cars, post-Lexus IS of 2000 (this comes to mind mostly because the very first one I saw, and the very first time I saw taillights like that, was on a display model showcased inside Keflavik International Airport in April that year). This aesthetic carried on until, at least, the later aughts, when tuner kids would, anachronistically, slap on cheap, aftermarket taillights with that appearance on stuff from the ’90s.
Just had a realisation today. I had always thought that the Power Mac G4 was Apple's first use of its professional colour, "graphite" (to be later featured on iBooks and iMacs). Actually, that's not true. The first graphite product was announced a month earlier in July 1999 – the original Airport Base Station.
