You actually don't want people thinking your product is cool, because then you're a fad.
Can a controlled experiment explain why people like Kewpie dolls in one year, Beanie Babies in another, and American Girl dolls this year? Yet social scientists are asked to answer analogous questions. We economists and perhaps psychologists shouldn't overreact to the derision. That is, we shouldn't try to overlay a false sense of precision on our admittedly squooshy work.
Some years I'm the coolest thing that ever happened, and then the next year everyone's so over me, and I'm just so past my sell date.
Generally, successful fads have some kind of play value, like the Frisbee, Slinky, Silly Putty, my Wallwalker. They're generally inexpensive items, impulse items. They tend to be rather useless items, too. They provide a few minutes of amusement.
I remember pogs and sticky hands. I remember both. I wanted to get into pogs. I remember it was, like, all of a sudden it was here, then gone.
There is a shop close to where I live, outside which, on certain nights of the month - I've no idea if the transit of the moon determines precisely when - fans of designer skateboards queue from early evening in order - well in order, I presume - to be among the first to jump on a skateboard when the shop opens in the morning.
There's never really been a time when vampires weren't so over that you would be crazy to write a vampire book, or so huge that you would be crazy to write a vampire book. I'm not sure there's ever going to be a time. We went from Anne Rice to Buffy to 'Twilight.'
You see something happen to a population whereby everyone adopts something that's just preposterous in a way that makes it normal instantly. If any one person prior to the rash of puka shells, for example, was seen wearing puka shells, he would look like an idiot. But when everyone is wearing them, it instantly makes them normal.
Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
Most people who have had big fads have turned out to be just like their products: one-shot deals.
Science goes through fads, and there are big ups and crashes.
Any brand that attempts to live off a retro appeal is only going through a short second life cycle.
When things become too popular they are always fading away for something else.
I think there is always an ebb and flow in Hollywood about what is current.
When a popular phenomenon reaches the cover of 'Time', it is already out of fashion.
As long as there are teenage girls, there will be boy bands. It's a question of how long it takes them to get their music together to come out.
