Unpopular opinion: Making shit out of translucent plastic was the single fugliest way to make a product, and I'm glad it's gone.
this post was submitted on 23 Feb 2024
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Nostalgia
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I hold a grudge against the translucent plastic fad.
Once upon a time the Linux workstation at my desk at $CHIP_COMPANY was built into a noname transparent teal ATX case. For that reason I gave it the hostname "fugly".
We had excessive field failures with some of our chips, and I was tasked with coming up with a way to identify those bad parts at customer sites. My solution was a bootable Linux CD that would run a test and tell the customer if they need to contact us for a recall. The test relied on a modified Linux kernel, so it couldn't be distributed as an application. I used "fugly" to develop and build the test, patched kernel, and CD image.
The test was deployed, the first few customers were pleased, and I got a wood plaque and bonus for my efforts.
A few weeks later, my manager called me into her office looking uncharacteristically pissed off. She asked why I put a message saying "fugly" into the CD. A customer complained about it, saying they saw "fugly" on the screen when the test was running, and while it did it's job it was unprofessional. A split second of confusion before I realized what happened: at boot time the Linux kernel prints the name of the machine it was compiled on, in this case fugly.team.company.com . It scrolls past quickly on boot, so neither I nor my collaborators ever noticed. Somehow the customer latched onto it.
I ended up with a slap on the wrist, being put on PIP for 6 months and having to change the hostname because higher-ups needed their pound of flesh.
Coincidentally, a week after this incident, Toyota posted a billboard at a major intersection near our office advertising the Scion xB that read "Funky? Or Fugly?".
A 6 month PIP for A NAME?!? Yes, we’re going to improve your naming conventions over the next 6 months. You better improve! Obviously it’s so a manager could tell another manager that “it won’t happen again.” But, fuck that.
My manager was understanding after I explained that it was unintentional. But it made support and sales look bad in front of the customer, and in a cascade of finger pointing the director of our department decided that would convince everyone that justice had been done.
Yeah, definitely just a bunch of fluff. Still ridiculous that we live in a world where that happens. Then the sales manager went to the customer and goes “LoOk ThE eMpLoYeE wAs RePrImAnDeD. Still give money?👉🏻👈🏻”
Gross.
I agree with you, except for the atomic purple Gameboy Color. That was the shit
I believe that history will remember the atomic purple GameBoy color as the apogee of 20th century design, practicality and classiness.
You know what? I'd agree but it's probably for a different reason. Back then I thought this shit was the ugliest thing. Looking back now I kinda miss it but I think it's the nostalgia from it.
It's not even that for me, it's just that now everything looks the same which is boring.
Cars too. In most parking lots, grey, black and white account for 95% of the car colors.
In the US.
I believe that colorfulness directly correlates with happiness.
Also, most of it was japanese AFAIK.
Colour was awesome, but the translucent stuff with pcb showing through just looked trashy to me.
As a tech inclined person, I find it pretty cool that you can "feel" electronics that way.
Serious question, how were these enclosures made? Is it resin? Is it plastic? How were they shaping the plastic?
I imagine that the technology used to make plastics like these isn't super-complicated. You just need oil, then you can form it into shape.
I'm pretty sure it's just injection molded plastic like the uncolored or"normal" consoles.
It might be interesting to get scans of this and try 3d printing them.
Be attentive though, that 3D-printing commonly creates "hollow" structures with just a little bit of support material. If this was transparent, it would look totally weird as a consequence. You need to make this solid on the inside.
Automobiles seem to have lost color, too, with various shades of grey in the standard offerings.
What happened to green colored cars? Seems to only be red, blue, white and black now. And when was the last time you saw a yellow colored car?
