30 products that haven’t been around for as long as you’d think

The first loaf of automatically sliced bread was produced by Otto Rohwedder in Chillicothe, Missouri, in July 1928, according to History.com. Rohwedder was a jeweler, and faced criticism by bakers for his idea; they thought that sliced bread would go stale too quickly.

The pull-tab top on cans became standard after removable tops were deemed a health hazard — they could be accidentally swallowed or cut people’s feet on beaches, Slate reported.

Fraze patented his idea in 1977 but had designed the mechanism about a decade earlier.

Arthur Fry was a new product development researcher at 3M when he learned of the adhesive microspheres that his colleague Spencer Silver had developed, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame, of which Fry is a member.

He then coated the adhesive to paper and the Post-it Note was created.

Huy Fong Foods founder David Tran created Sriracha in 1980.

Sriracha is the second-most-popular hot sauce in the United States, according to 2024 data from Instacart. It’s behind only Frank’s RedHot.

Car and Driver reported that one of the earliest iterations of a remote-entry locking system could be found in the 1983 AMC-Renault Alliance. Then, in 1987, Cadillac released the Allante car key, and by the early 1990s, the device was more widespread.

Olson was 19, living in Waconia, Minnesota, and dreamed of joining the NHL when he saw a pair of inline skates in a sports catalog and thought they’d help him train. Even though they were not a popular item at the time, he knew immediately they had potential — they just needed some updates to appeal to a broader audience.

He told Marketplace in 2014 that he didn’t invent the concept, only the product. “The inline skate started back before roller skates were even invented, back in the early 1800s,” Olson said.

Diet Coke was unveiled on July 8, 1982, and introduced in the United States on August 9, according to the company. It quickly overtook sales from the brand’s previous diet cola, Tab. 

Though there were earlier models of map guidance tools introduced as early as 1930, the Mazda 1990 model was the first that had a true GPS built in to a commercially available car. It took another 10 years after its release to become available in the United States, Popular Mechanics reported. The US military had to allow for its commercial usage, since they had launched the GPS satellites.

PlayStations revolutionized gaming, with graphics that were far more advanced than anything else on the market at the time.

Dina Campion, a Starbucks employee, helped launch the Frappuccino.

“It was the summer of 1993, and Los Angeles is very hot in the summer,” she said, according to Starbucks’ website. “We noticed there were some smaller coffee shops that did some sort of blended coffee beverage. A couple of store managers and I felt there was a huge opportunity for Starbucks.”

Frappuccinos were rolled out nationally in 1995, and vanilla bean and strawberry creme flavors were introduced in 2002.

It has certainly paid off for the chain. In 2023, Starbucks said 75% of its drink sales the previous quarter were for cold drinks. Even over the winter — between January and March 2024 — cold drinks accounted for 63% of drink sales, Starbucks reported in April 2024.

In 2021, an employee told Business Insider that Starbucks was becoming a “frappuccino factory.”

Febreze was invented by Procter & Gamble. The Washington Post reported Febreze and other similar sprays have ingredients called cyclodextrins that can actually trap odor molecules.

The McFlurry was invented by a Canadian franchisee, Ron McLellan, at his McDonald’s in Bathurst, New Brunswick. 

“I never expected that my creation would circle the globe with countries mixing together their own unique flavours,” McLellan told CTV News in 2015.

Flat-screen TV technology was pioneered by two University of Illinois professors, Donald Bitzer and Gene Slottow, and a graduate student, Robert Willson, according to the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

However, their model was not suitable for commercial use, and it wasn’t until the 1990s that Panasonic engineer, Larry Weber, invented the modern flat screen we see in homes today.

In 1997, Warner announced its first 30 DVD titles, which included “Blade Runner,” “Casablanca,” and “Twister,” Variety reported.

Sierra Mist was rebranded to Mist TWST in 2015, when a Pepsi spokesperson told AdAge, “We are working to highlight the lemon-lime credentials of the product.”

In 2023, it was replaced with a new lemon-lime soda, Starry.

The first IBM USB was called the DiskOnKey, and held just 8 megabytes. However, within 10 years, the drive’s storage capacity increased to 256 gigabytes.

Razor scooters were invented by Wim Ouboter, a banker and amateur craftsman living in Zurich, Switzerland. He spoke to CityLabs in 2018 about how he came up with the idea.

“The problem is, if you’re a big guy and you’re riding such a small scooter, people will look at you weird. So you have to make it collapsible in order to bring it into a bar afterwards,” he said.

The car was first introduced in Japan in 1997. Today, Toyota is up to its fifth generation Prius.

Excel Dryer released the Xlerator in 2002, and they were marketed as being able to dry hands in about 10 to 15 seconds, much faster than other dryers at the time, which took about a minute.

Samsung’s phone with a built-in camera, the SCH-V200, was released in South Korea in June 2000. Its camera was capable of taking 20 photos, but had to be hooked up to a computer for users to access them, per Digital Trends.

The McMuffin was introduced in 1972 and was McDonald’s only breakfast sandwich until the McGriddle was released. 

In 2022, the number of iPhone users in the US overtook Android users for the first time. Globally, however, the Android operating system is far more popular, according to StatCounter data.

In 2019, Hershey announced Reese’s was taking over the Take 5 bar, and it became the Reese’s Take 5 bar. The company revealed that Reese’s peanut butter had been an ingredient in the Take 5 bar since its 2004 launch.

The drink, created by American businessman Manoj Bhargava, made $1 billion in retail sales in its first eight years, Forbes reported.

After its launch in 2005, the CrunchWrap Supreme became Taco Bell’s most successful product introduction. It was added to their permanent menu in 2006.

Stride was marketed as “The Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum.”

It’s hard to believe the gum hasn’t been available in the US for more than five years, when it was discontinued by its parent company, Mondelēz International. It is still available in Asia and Australia.

Though MacBooks are popular, Windows still takes the lion’s share of laptop sales.

There are more than 155 million iPhone users in the United States.

Krave was first released in the United Kingdom in 2010 and came in six different varieties: chocolate hazelnut, milk chocolate, totally chocolatey, chocolate caramel, chocolate, and double chocolate.

Alexa long led the way in voice-assistant technology but has slipped into third place in the US in recent years.

Google Assistant is pacing for 92.4 million users in 2025, followed by Apple’s Siri with 87 million and Amazon’s Alexa with 77.6 million, per 2025 eMarketer data.