Forgotten Fads and Fabulous Flops by Paul Kirchner

A compendium of trends that didn't make it off the ground. As bizarre as they were, you won't find Pet Rocks or Garbage Pail Kids here because both met with tremendous success, albeit temporarily. Here you'll find TV shows that didn't make it past one entire episode, sodas that fell flat, and clothes that just didn't fit in anywhere in popular culture. 

The book reads like an encyclopedia going from A-Z. I recently had surgery. So I appreciate the abbreviated nature of the entries as I've not been feeling up to reading something long or heavy. 

One downside to this book is that it's over 20 years old. Published in 1995, there's tons of stuff that failed to make a lasting impact on pop culture that isn't in this book. Pepsi Clear, John Travolta's Battlefield Earth and the Facebook Phone are just a few failed entries ripe for a volume 2. 

While author Paul Kirchner does not seem to have created a sequel, he does have a couple more books about failures that look quite interesting. One thing that Kirchner did fairly well throughout his commentary was be funny. Sometimes when a writer tries to entertain while educating, they miss the punchline badly. And while not every joke was a winner, the author did one of the better jobs at being informative and funny in a book such as this.

Forgotten Fads has long since gone out of print (But affordable copies can still be found on Amazon.) It was published by Rhino Books, a division of Rhino Records. In the 90s, with CDs taking the place of cassettes and vinyl, crafting box sets was a clever way to get people to fork over their cash for something that they had already bought in two other formats previously. Adding a book filled with interesting facts and breathtaking color photos was an incentive that sweetened that pot. In order to keep those presses from running idle, Rhino starting publishing large books about pop culture. However, it seems that Rhino Books was to become another one of the 'fabulous flops' of the 20th century as the publisher went defunct before the year 2000.

 Perfect if you are a fan of Mysteries at the Museum. Especially because I have seen several of the items covered in this book on that show! I wonder if the producers use this book as their idea story bible?! An entertaining read, if you can find it.

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.