Popularity is a fickle thing, just ask any One Hit Wonder in music history. You ride high for a while, then crash and burn. It’s often easy to tell how popular something is — when a Marvel movie makes over $1 billion at the box office, you can bet a lot of people saw it. But there are other things throughout history that have been surprisingly popular, even if it’s not so obvious that they would or should have been.
10. The Perfect Angler
No matter how popular books like"Harry Potter" or "The Lord of the Rings" , it’s hard to even compare them to the Bible. After all, the book has been around for about 1,500 years. And we’ll never know how many times it’s been printed because no such records exist, but Guinness estimates that at least 5 billion copies have been printed. So yes, the Bible is the most popular book in history. But oddly enough, The Compleat Angler is hot on the Bible’s heels.
Published in 1653 and last revised in 1676, it was a guide to fishing as well as a treatise on nature and man's place in it. It was and remains so popular that only the Bible,Pilgrim's Progress " and some of Shakespeare's works have had more editions in English. The 1886 reprint alone sold 80,000 copies. Ten editions were published in the 18th century, and a staggering 117 editions in the 19th century.
9. Veronica Lake's Hairstyle
If you're a fan of classic Hollywood, you'll recognize actress Veronica Lake, who became famous for her roles in films like The Blue Dahlia and I Married a Witch. Lake was a popular femme fatale, and her hairstyle may have been even more popular than she was. It wasn't all that unusual, but one side of her long hair cascaded down the right side of her face, covering one eye.
The look was so popular that women all over America were doing their hair the same way, and it became such a problem for the US government that they forced her to change her hairstyle.
During World War II, women at home were fighting as laborers, but the hairstyle was considered problematic. Working in a factory with hair covering one eye was dangerous. Plus, as a film made at the time showed, it was a waste of time. If you kept pushing your hair out of the way, you were distracted from your work.
Lake agreed and changed her hairstyle to what became known as the "win list," and it is said to have had a real impact on reducing workplace accidents as a result.
8. Dragon Quest
If you’re into gaming, you know that there are as many urban legends about games as there are about everything else in the world. For years, there’s been a widespread myth that Square Enix, the creators of popular games likeFinal Fantasy , were forced to sell Dragon Quest on weekends because it was so popular that kids skipped school to buy it, and the police forced them to stop making it during the pandemic. week. So is it true? Yes and no.
The story sounds like great PR. "Our games are so popular that we have to release them on weekends so as not to disrupt the lives of schoolchildren!" But there is some truth to this story, it's just that the mythical version distorts the meaning a little.
Has the government ever forced the company to stop selling the game on weekdays? No. But there was a request. According to game producer Yuu Miyake, games used to come out on Thursdays. In the past, physical copies were always in short supply and sold out. So kids would skip school to get a copy.
The police told them it was a problem and asked them to do something about it, so they agreed, releasing the game on Saturdays instead.
7. Guillotines
If you ever need a reason to believe that things weren't better back then, just look at what used to amuse people. Public executions were fun for the whole family, and the guillotine, which was used to execute thousands of people, was a popular tool not only for chopping off heads in real life, but also for cutting things up at home.
In the 1790s, a home version of the guillotine was available to children. They could chop off the heads of their dolls or even rats, because some people thought it was normal and not scary at all. It wasn’t just children who had fun. There were new versions of the device used by upper-class people who wanted a painful way to slice bread and vegetables. Try to imagine having a small electric chair in your kitchen today for grilling cheese.
6. Ted Seth MacFarlane
The film was released in 2012 "Ted" written and directed by Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane, it follows a teddy bear who comes to life and then becomes foul-mouthed. It made over $200 million and had mostly positive reviews, with a 69% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also spawned a sequel, which fared less well at the box office, with critics making $81 million and a 44% score on Rotten Tomatoes. But the movie review aggregation site is by no means universally popular.
In 2016, after the release"Ted 2" , a Ted-themed restaurant has opened in Japan. Considering how many restaurants have opened in honor of movies, which you can probably count on one hand, if you can count at all, that's pretty remarkable.
An Eater writer couldn't get a reservation until 11 a.m. Wednesday. Crowds of people were taking photos with the life-size Ted. It was part of a trend called "co-op cafes," which take a theme and run with it, much to the delight of patrons who enjoy Ted-shaped pizzas and burgers with tacky quotes from the film painted on the walls.
5. Colombo
"Colombo" was a detective series starring Peter Falk that enjoyed a remarkably long, if sporadic, life on television. A pilot aired in 1968, and then another aired in 1971. If you think you remember Colombo from the 90s, not that long ago, you're right. It ran for most of the 1970s, and then again from 1989 to 2003. Despite running for about 35 years straight, there were only 69 episodes.
While the show had a solid fan base in North America, it was so popular in Romania that it actually caused a government panic. This dates back to 1974, when Romanians were first introduced toColombo And, damn, they loved it. When the season ended, citizens expressed their dissatisfaction and blamed the Romanian government.
At the time, Romania had entertainment quotas. They only allowed a certain amount of American content on TV. So when the season ended, they were afraid that the government would shut it down. To quell potential civil unrest, the Romanian government contacted the U.S. State Department. They, in turn, had Peter Falk record a message specifically for his Romanian fans, assuring them thatColombo will return.
4. Pac-Man Interactive Doodle by Google
These days, Google Doodle is a ubiquitous part of everyday internet life. The image on Google's homepage changes daily, and sometimes it's more memorable than others. When it's interactive, for example, it becomes a real standout. But the very first interactive doodle holds a special place in history because of how distracting it was.
In May 2010, Google released the first interactive doodle to celebrate Pac-Man's 30th anniversary, featuring a playable version of the game. It was only available for 48 hours, but during that time, 500,000,000 hours were played.
Based on how much time people spent playing the game instead of doing the work they were supposed to be doing, it was estimated that lost productivity cost around $120 million.
3. Mount Mihara in Japan
Like the guillotine, Japan's Mount Mihara is popular for very dark reasons. The active volcano has become a high-profile location for suicide.
Situated on the island of Izu-Oshima, the volcano is set in gorgeous countryside and was even used as a home for Godzilla in some of the older Toho films. Unfortunately, it also offered very easy access to the end of the road for those who wanted to go out in dramatic style. If one were to climb to the top of the cone and head to the right spot, it would be a simple jump into the crater itself. In 1933, 944 people committed suicide in just this way.
The suicide trend is thought to have started about 250 years ago and has picked up steam in the last century. Between 1936 and 1937, the number was pegged at 2,000. The government ended up building a fence around the volcano, and airlines won't sell you a one-way ticket to the island just in case.
2. Sanka Decaffeinated Coffee
If you've been to a diner in the last 80 years or so, you've seen at least two coffee pots behind the counter. One will have a brown or black handle, and the other will have an orange handle. That's just the way it is. Orange is decaf. It's like an unwritten rule. But even if it's not written down, there's a reason for it, and that reason goes straight to the heart of one of the most popular coffee brands in the world: Sanka.
Even if you've never bought a Sanka or even heard of one, it's big. Or it was, anyway. Sanka was sold in orange-marked cans from Germany beginning in 1923. In 1932, General Foods bought the company and sent promotional coffee pots to restaurants and coffee shops across America. The pots were orange. It caught on so well that wherever you go today, you know that orange means decaf, thanks to Sanka's popularity.
1. James Bond: Specter
Movie about agent 007"Spectrum" was released in 2015, and despite middling reviews, it managed to gross $880 million worldwide, so it did pretty well. One of the most memorable scenes in the film takes place in Mexico City during the Day of the Dead parade. The streets are full of people dressed as skeletons, there are floats, decorations, and music, and it seems like it's a hell of a time. At least until Bond almost gets killed.
What most people unfamiliar with the culture didn't realize was that the parade wasn't real. Mexico City had never had a Day of the Dead parade before, and that's not how the day is celebrated. The tradition, dating back to the Aztecs, was much darker than the big street party atmosphere in the movie makes it seem. Or wasn't, until the movie came out.
The parade scene proved so popular that the city and the Mexican tourism board brought it to life the following year. Thousands of people took part, and it became a tradition. The Covid-19 pandemic put the parade on hold, but it is back for 2021.
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