The product was invented in 1996 by French paediatric nutritionist André Briend and food engineer Michel Lescanne. The idea was sparked, improbably, by Nutella. [Ed: “Inspired by Nutella” are three words that I never imagined I would be writing.]

Briend observed that Nutella had several ideal properties: it was calorie-dense, shelf-stable and required no preparation. By swapping hazelnuts for peanuts – cheaper and more widely available in regions affected by famine – and fortifying the mixture with milk powder, sugar, vegetable oil and essential vitamins and minerals, the pair created a powerful therapeutic food. The product was commercialised by the French company Nutriset.

Plumpy’Nut became the leading example of what is known as a Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), now widely deployed by organisations such as UNICEF and Médecins Sans Frontières. Each 92-gram sachet contains roughly 500 calories along with a full complement of nutrients, enabling rapid weight gain in severely malnourished children.

According to a 2012 NPR analysis each packet of Plumpy’Nut delivers: the calories of two McDonald’s hamburger patties, the protein of half a chicken breast, the calcium of three cups of milk, the vitamin C of an orange, the iron of a bunch of spinach, the folic acid of nine asparagus spears … and more.

What made Plumpy’Nut revolutionary was not just its nutritional content, but its product design. It requires no water, which is critical in areas where clean water is scarce, and it does not need refrigeration, with a shelf life of up to two years. Packaged in small, single-use sachets, it is hygienic, portable and easy for caregivers to administer (the paste is sucked directly from the packet). Most importantly, it enabled a shift from hospital-based treatment of malnutrition to home-based care, allowing far more children to be reached.

In structured programs, recovery rates for the acutely malnourished can exceed 90 percent. Production has increasingly shifted to local facilities in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, helping reduce costs and support local economies. In Ethiopia in the early 2000s, Plumpy’Nut played a central role in a shift toward community-based management of acute malnutrition. A few years later, during the 2007 food crisis in Niger, large-scale distribution of Plumpy’Nut by UNICEF and its partners demonstrated that mass treatment of malnutrition could be delivered efficiently at the community level.

Despite its impact, Plumpy’Nut has also been the subject of controversy. Nutriset patented the formulation and production process in many countries, giving it significant control over supply. Critics, including Médecins Sans Frontières, argued that these patents limited competition and kept prices higher than necessary, potentially restricting access in emergencies.

Over time, the company has introduced licensing agreements that allow approved local manufacturers to produce the paste, easing some of the tension. Moreover, most of the patents have now lapsed.

Today almost 9 million children a year are treated for severe malnutrition with Plumpy’Nut

Random Fun Postscript
On 7 April 2026, Nutella received viral attention when, during a live stream of the Artemis II moon mission, a jar of the spread was seen floating around the crew space of the Integrity vehicle.

REMORANDOM 7

Plumpy’Nut will feature in print in REMORANDOM 7. Subscribe HERE to receive RR6 immediately and RR7 in October 2026.

The vibe around tipping has changed somewhat with the arrival of what, for many of us, is an increasingly cashless society. In the old days you could leave some coins and crumpled notes on the table of a restaurant, safe in the knowledge that it wouldn’t be counted until after you’d gone. But these days, with the proliferation of tip screens in point of sale systems, you’re more likely to have a device brought to the table by your server with suggested options for the tip – 10%, 15%, 20% or even 30% – the final option being “No Tip”. It’s hard to press “No Tip” in front of the person who has been serving you all day/night, even if you don’t feel it’s deserved. It turns your exit into a walk of shame.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, new layers of complexity impacted the tipping debate. Many service industry workers faced job insecurity during lockdowns, and many people sympathised by increasing their tips. It’s hard to put that genie back into the bottle.

The custom of tipping has a history that winds through social hierarchies, economic practices and evolving norms of hospitality. While its precise origins are debated, historians generally agree that tipping finds its roots in medieval Europe, where it emerged as a gesture among nobility. In the feudal system, landowners would provide small monetary gifts, called “vails”, to their servants as a token of appreciation for their hard work. Over time, these “vails” became institutionalised, and guests visiting noble households were expected to leave similar tokens for the staff who attended to them. This practice gradually moved from private homes into public establishments such as inns and taverns.

The term “tip” itself may have arisen in 17th-century England. Some suggest it originated as an acronym for “To Insure Promptitude”, although this claim is likely apocryphal. A more plausible explanation traces the word to the thieves’ demand “tip”, meaning to “hand over”.

In some languages, the term translates to “drink money” or similar: for example, pourboire in French, Trinkgeld in German, drikkepenge in Danish, drinksilver in Middle Scots and napiwek in Polish. This comes from a custom of inviting a servant to drink a glass, paid for by the master, in honour of his or her guest.

By the 18th and 19th centuries, tipping had spread across Europe and begun to take hold in the United States, where the end of slavery saw employers, especially in hospitality and rail service, leveraging tipping to justify low or unpaid labour. Newly freed Black Americans often worked as servers, porters and hotel staff, jobs that depended heavily on gratuities. This legacy fostered ongoing debates about the morality and fairness of tipping as both a social expectation and a substitute for fair wages.

Meanwhile, tipping expanded globally with the growth of international travel and commerce. Customs vary by country, with some cultures embracing the practice and others, such as Japan, largely rejecting it in favour of inclusive pricing.

Today, tipping remains a socially polarising topic. Proponents argue it rewards good service and incentivises excellence. Critics, however, point to its inconsistencies and potential for exploitation.

REMORANDOM Chapter

Melanie and I attended the very moving tribute for ABC radio host, jazz musician and friend James Valentine at the Sydney Town Hall last Friday. It was a truly memorable event – full of love and life. Our heart goes out to James’s family – and especially his wife Jo and children Ruby and Roy.

A highlight for me was the eulogy delivered by Roy. I feel that it is probably one of the most extraordinary speeches that I have ever had the privilege to witness.

Watch it HERE on Roy’s Instagram page if you can.

Roy began his eulogy with a simple question, repeated for emphasis:

“How do you want to LIVE?”

Not: “What do you want to BE?” or even “What do you want to DO?”

It struck me as being a very powerful idea – not necessarily a new idea, but one packaged and presented in a very appealing way amidst very real circumstances.

Because “what do you want to be?” is a question that assumes that life is a process of arrival, that meaning sits somewhere ahead of you – waiting to be achieved; that happiness is conditional upon completion. James didn’t buy into that premise. And that refusal reminded me of some older voices, so I did some research.

Marcus Aurelius, writing to himself nearly two thousand years ago, kept circling the same idea from a different angle. That life is not somewhere else. That the only thing you ever actually possess is the moment you are in, not the future you are planning for, not the past you are reliving – but the act itself, unfolding now.

Stoicism, at its core, is not emotional suppression. It is attention discipline. A way of refusing to let the mind abandon the present in favour of imagined outcomes. [Ed: I have been guilty of the latter on more occasions than I would like to admit to.]

Roy’s eulogy, without ever naming it, sits very close to that idea. Except here it’s not an emperor writing in private. It’s a loving son speaking in public about a man who, apparently, understood something similar without ever needing to formalise it.

A life made of conversations, music, radio, swimming, bush walks, cooking and laughter. Not as “leisure activities” – but as the actual structure of meaning.

The present tense as a way of living, not a philosophical position.

Work Backwards

And then there is work. Or rather, the refusal to let work define the shape of a life.

Roy describes his father finding a version of radio that allowed him to work “about an hour a day” in spirit, even if not literally. More importantly, work that did not become identity. Work that sat inside life, rather than life being structured around work.

This is where something like Tim Duggan’s 2024 book Work Backwards becomes a useful comparison – and tension. Tim’s model is elegant in its own way: imagine the life you want, then design backwards from that imagined endpoint to inform the kind of work that will deliver the environment and resources you need for that life. Treat life as a planning problem. Make decisions now that serve a future version of yourself. It is essentially a philosophy of forward control via backward design.

But Roy’s eulogy exposes the limit of that framing in and of itself. Because it suggests that even a well-designed life is still only ever understood in motion. That you do not actually experience your “designed life”. You experience: Tuesdays, random chats, doctor’s waiting rooms, the taste of soup – or driving in a car with someone you love.

You experience the present, not the plan. [Ed: Cue John Lennon]

When you are inside your life – not imagining it, not designing it, not remembering it – what are you actually doing with it?

So, the question is not only: how do you want to live? – but also: are you there and fully present while it is happening?

Travel Hopefully

My own epiphany in this space (sort of) happened on the ferry that connects the town of Bayshore with the beachside communities of Fire Island just east of New York back in 2001. On that day I had a lot of reasons not to be feeling this way, but I remember feeling optimistic. (It’s a long story. You can read it below.)

Not only do I remember feeling optimistic, but I also remember coming to the realisation that this feeling of optimism was probably more important than whatever was going to happen. A feeling of optimism about the future, thankfully shared by Melanie, was delivering us a very high quality of life in the present. The outcomes of our endeavours were actually irrelevant to the quality of the lives we were living!

A few days later I spoke of this personal epiphany over the phone with a friend in LA who rewarded me with this sage quote from Robert Louis Stevenson:

“To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive, and the true success is to labour.”

Ever since, I’ve tried to live life with this liberating truth very much in mind.

Bonus Video

James and Roy Valentine playing together in the Django Bar at the Camelot Lounge in Marrickville on 5 October 2024

Book Chapter

This post will not appear in printed form in REMORANDOM 7. However, my story about “travelling hopefully” on the ferry to Fire Island in 2001 appears as a chapter in my 2014 visual memoir General Thinker. Browse and order it HERE.

Where’s Wally? (Where’s Waldo? in North America) is a series of children’s puzzle books created by the (reportedly very shy) English illustrator Martin Handford. The books consist of a series of detailed double-page spread illustrations depicting dozens or more people doing a variety of amusing things at a given location. Wally is identified by his red-and-white-striped shirt [RR2:71], blue jeans, bobble hat and glasses. Readers are challenged to find Wally and his friends hidden throughout the pages.

The idea was commissioned. In 1986, Handford was asked by his art director, David Bennett, at Walker Books in London, to develop a book of detailed crowd scenes – inspired by Philippe Dupasquier’s Busy Places series. Bennett also suggested the inclusion of a recurring character to tie them together. To that end, Handford invented “Wally” as the visual thread connecting the chaos.

The first book, Where’s Wally?, was published in the United Kingdom in 1987. It presented 12 large, bustling double-page scenes – from beaches and sports stadiums to medieval feasts – each hiding Wally among hundreds of other figures. The challenge was straightforward but addictive: find Wally in every scene.

Handford works for eight weeks at a stretch to create each two-page Wally spread. As he works, he listens to the Bee Gees, the Clash or old Sergeant Bilko tapes. The pictures are drawn to the same scale as in the books, with each spread containing 300 to 500 figures.

The concept quickly proved exportable. In 1987, the US rights were acquired by Little, Brown & Company, which launched the series under the Where’s Waldo? name in 1988. Other localisations followed, with Wally’s name changing across territories:

Wally (United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa), Waldo (United States, Canada), Charlie (France), Walter (Germany), Wōrī (ウォーリー, Japan), Wēilì (威利, China), Văn Lãng (Vietnam), Valli (Iceland), Ubaldo (Italy), Holger (Denmark), Willy (Norway), Wolli (월리, Korea), Vallu (Finland), Уолли (Uolli, Russia), Hetti (India – Hindi), Effy (Israel – Hebrew), Hugo (Sweden), Ali (Turkey), Valas (Lithuania) and Evert (Netherlands)

By the early 1990s, Where’s Wally? had become a pop-culture phenomenon. The books sold tens of millions of copies worldwide, and Waldo himself became a recognisable global icon.

The brand crossed into television, with an animated series in 1991–92 and later adaptations, as well as video games, merchandise and interactive website versions. Schools and libraries adopted Where’s Wally? for activities promoting observation skills, visual literacy and attention to detail. Artists, advertisers and activists have inserted the figure into murals, political cartoons and social media campaigns to comment on everything from surveillance to celebrity culture.

Since the 2000s, Where’s Wally? has also inspired real-world gatherings in which thousands of people dress as the character, attempting to set world records. These events, held in cities from Dublin to Tokyo, underscore the figure’s enduring visual appeal and its function as a unifying, playful challenge.

Videos

REMORANDOM Chapter

The Pussyhat Project was initiated by screenwriter Krista Suh and architect Jayna Zweiman, two friends and activists based in Los Angeles. They wanted to create a visual symbol that would be easily recognisable and could be worn by participants in the Women’s March on Washington that took place on 21 January 2017, the day after the presidential inauguration. Suh was initially just looking to knit something that would keep her Southern Californian head warm in the DC cold, and then realised that it could also serve a bigger symbolic purpose.

The name “pussyhat” is a play on words, combining “pussy” as a reference to the infamous “grab them by the pussy” comments made by then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, with “hat” … instead of cat. The pink colour was chosen because (and even pre-Barbie movie, there’s no denying this) it continues to be associated with femininity and is a colour that is often used to represent women’s issues.

Suh and Zweiman worked with Kat Coyle, the owner of a local yarn store called The Little Knittery, to come up with the original design. The project launched in November 2016 and quickly became popular on social media with over 100,000 downloads of the pattern to make the hat. You can still download it HERE.

In response to this call, crafters all over the United States began making the hats. Even if they weren’t able to attend the march themselves, they could be there in spirit by providing a hat for one of the marchers. Those hats optionally contained notes from the crafters to the wearers, expressing support. They were distributed by the crafters themselves, by yarn stores at the points of origin, carried to the event by marchers, and also distributed at the destination.

Said Zweiman at the time:

“I think it’s resonating a lot because we’re really saying that no matter who you are or where you are, you can be politically active.”

On the day of the march, National Public Radio in the US compared the hats to the “Make America Great Again” hats worn by Trump supporters. Both represented groups that had at one point been politically marginalised, both sent “simultaneously unifying and antagonistic” messages, and both were simple in their messages. Pussyhats were later featured on the fashion runway, on the heads of various well known people, and on the covers of both Time and The New Yorker.

Pink pussyhat has become a potent symbol of women’s activism, solidarity, and resistance against various forms of discrimination and inequality, and has been used in protests and demonstrations to advocate for women’s rights, gender equality and social justice.

REMORANDOM Chapters

Few cities are as intimately tied to their taxi drivers as London. For more than 160 years, becoming a licensed black-cab driver in London has required mastering one of the most demanding memory tests in the world: “The Knowledge”.

Officially known as “The Knowledge of London”, the system was introduced in 1865 by the then head of London’s Metropolitan Police, Sir Richard Mayne. Dismayed by the number of complaints from visitors to the Great Exhibition of 1851 that London cabbies didn’t seem to know where they were going, Mayne eventually made it a requirement that anyone seeking a cabbie’s license be an expert on the city.

At the time, and indeed still today, London’s streets formed a tangled maze of alleys, crescents, mews, and squares. Authorities decided that drivers should prove they truly knew the city before being granted a coveted cab driver’s licence.

Today, drivers aspiring to earn their “green badge” must learn roughly 25,000 streets within a ten kilometre (six-mile) radius of Charing Cross, traditionally regarded as the centre of London. They must also memorise thousands of landmarks: hotels, theatres, hospitals, embassies, clubs, parks, railway stations and historic buildings. The training revolves around 320 standard routes known as “runs,” connecting important points across the capital.

The process is famously gruelling. Students – often called “Knowledge boys” or “Knowledge girls” regardless of age – spend years crisscrossing London on scooters or small motorbikes, maps and clipboards attached to their handlebars. They learn routes street by street, reciting them aloud repeatedly until the map of London becomes embedded in memory. Most candidates take between three and four years to qualify, though some take much longer. Only one in five go on to successfully complete The Knowledge. (To put that success rate into perspective, the percentage of people who successfully complete The Knowledge is roughly the same as that of candidates who make it through the training to become a U.S. Navy SEAL.)

Examinations are oral and intensely detailed. A candidate might be asked to travel from the Savoy Hotel to Buckingham Palace, and must instantly describe the shortest legal route, naming every street and turn in sequence. Hesitation can mean failure. In the days when a direct route was marked with push pins and thread, being “on the cotton” was being able to work out the route that stayed closest to the thread.

The Knowledge has fascinated scientists because of what it appears to do to the human brain. A famous 2000 study at University College London led by Eleanor Maguire found that qualified taxi drivers had enlarged posterior hippocampi – the part of the brain associated with spatial memory. The longer they had driven taxis, the more pronounced the change appeared to be. The study became one of the world’s best-known examples of neuroplasticity: the brain physically adapting through intensive learning.

Over the years, The Knowledge has become woven into British culture. It has appeared in documentaries, novels and films, and is often regarded as a symbol of discipline and working-class expertise. During World War II, London cab drivers were valued for their navigation skills during blackouts and bomb damage, when normal street orientation became difficult.

The rise of satellite navigation and ride-share apps has sparked debate about whether The Knowledge is still necessary. Yet many Londoners continue to trust black-cab drivers for their uncanny ability to navigate traffic, closures, protests and obscure back streets without relying on technology. In 2014, in a test to prove this point, London’s Guardian newspaper pitted a cabbie against a Sat-Nav-equipped driver from Uber. The Uber driver did the run from the newspaper’s office in King’s Cross to Big Ben, in Westminster, in 22 minutes; the cabbie did it in 18, by taking a slightly longer route he knew to be quicker.

In a city constantly changing, The Knowledge remains one of London’s most extraordinary living traditions.

Video Snippet

Do you remember Tony from the 7 Up Series? His original ambition was to be a jockey, but he didn’t pursue that for long. Driving a cab was his next choice. By 21 he was “on the knowledge” and by 28 he was driving his own cab.

REMORANDOM 7

The Knowledge will feature in print in REMORANDOM 7. Subscribe HERE to receive RR6 immediately and RR7 in October 2026.

The phrase “jump the shark” originated from a specific moment in an episode of the longrunning American TV sitcom Happy Days (season 5, episode 3, originally broadcast on 20 September 1977) wherein the central characters visit Los Angeles, and a water-skiing Fonzie (played by Henry Winkler) answers a challenge to his bravery by wearing swim shorts and his trademark leather jacket, and jumping over a confined shark. [Ed: Are you old enough to know what we are talking about here?]

Vanity played a role. The stunt was created as a way to showcase Winkler’s real-life waterskiing skills, but the scene was widely seen as a desperate act to keep the show fresh, marking the moment when Happy Days began declining in quality.

The term gained traction in the late 1990s after radio personality Jon Hein popularised it on his website JumpTheShark.com, which cataloged TV shows that had peaked and were now in decline.

Comparable to “Jumping the Shark” is the phrase “Nuking the Fridge”, a reference to the film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), where Indy (played by Harrison Ford) survives a nuclear blast by hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator. Fans saw this as an absurd, credibility-breaking moment, similar to Fonzie’s jump, and Time magazine defined the term: “to exhaust a Hollywood franchise with disappointing sequels”.

Eventually, the phrase expanded beyond film and television to describe any moment when a person, brand or trend takes a gimmicky, over-the-top turn, signalling its decline. Ultimately, “jumping the shark” is about the moment something stops being fresh and starts feeling desperate.

Away from the world of entertainment, in May 2021, CNBC news anchor Carl Quintanilla proposed that Elon Musk had “jumped the shark” with his advocacy of cryptocurrencies instead of focusing on Tesla, Inc., as it began to lose market share and stockmarket value.

Finally, and interestingly, although not nearly as well known, “Growing the Beard” refers to the opposite of jumping the shark, i.e. when a show dramatically improves in quality. In the series Star Trek: The Next Generation the second season is considered to be better in terms of storytelling than the first season. This shift coincided with character William Riker, who was clean-shaven for the first season, growing a moustache and beard that he retained for the second season and beyond. [Ed: Now, can you see what REMORANDOM is teaching you?]

Can you think of a brand, product or trend that feels as though it may have jumped the shark? The Segway [RR3:72]? WeWork? NFTs? VR Headsets? The COVID-inspired bumping elbows greeting?

REMORANDOM Chapter

I wrote this piece for RR1 in 2023. In robot years, that’s a long time ago. What has changed since even a few years ago is that AI (also the name of a modestly successful 2001 Spielberg film) is no longer hypothetical. We are now living with generative AI systems in everyday use, autonomous agents are emerging and real governments are talking “alignment” and “guardrails” and introducing AI regulation. So this post is not so much retro sci-fi history any more, as it is a commentary on current reality.

The “Three Laws of Robotics” have pervaded science fiction and popular culture, and are referred to in many books, films and other media. More recently, they have impacted thought on the ethics of artificial intelligence.

But, where do these so called “Laws” come from?

In his 1942 short story, Runaround (published in the magazine, Astounding Science Fiction), renowned Russian-born American science fiction author (and biochemist), Issac Asimov (1920–1992), set out what he described as “three fundamental Rules of Robotics – the three rules that are built most deeply in a robot’s positronic brain”.

“Positronic brain” was a term coined by Asimov. The positron (aka the antielectron) was a relatively recently discovered subatomic particle at the time Asimov was writing. (The technical details of how this robot consciousness would actually work are a little hazy.)

The rules had been implied in earlier Asimov stories but this was the first time they had been spelt out. The three rules, taken from the “Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.”, were:

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

Hear them explained by the man himself HERE or at 14:50 in a subsequent and longer 1975 interview from a significantly more mutton-chopped version of Asimov HERE.

In later work, Asimov introduced what he called the “Zeroth Law” (yes, it’s a word), preceding the first three rules in terms of priority, which stated:

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

In a 1975 interview, Asimov, said the laws were originally proposed to avoid the “Frankenstein motif” that was popular in science fiction writing at the time … stories about robots destroying their creators, which is very much on people’s minds right now.

Asimov’s Three Rules, and his writing in general, has been influential in pop culture, the tech industry, and amongst people thinking through the ethical, legal and practical challenges presented by various forms of AI. Alternatives and modifications have been proposed to address the rules’ limitations and ambiguities. How would you program the rules, written by Asimov in English, into a language understandable by machines? One update to the Rules has been offered by US legal scholar, Frank Pasquale (2020). Rule One of his New Laws of Robotics states that “robotic systems and AI should complement professionals, not replace them”. But go tell that to the chat bots.

As a concluding treat, listen HERE (or watch below) to New Zealand duo Flight of the Conchords describing a time in the “distant future” where the robots have dared to break a couple of these key rules.

Videos

REMORANDOM Chapters

The story begins in 1934, when Adolf Hitler commissioned engineer Ferdinand Porsche [Ed: Yes, it’s the same guy.] to design a Volkswagen (literally “people’s car”) that would be affordable, reliable and practical for ordinary German families. The result was the initial prototype of the Beetle: air-cooled, rear-engined and built to cruise the autobahn at 100 km/hour.

World War II interrupted production, and the Volkswagen factory in Wolfsburg was repurposed to manufacture military vehicles. After the war, the British Army took over the bombed-out plant and restarted production, partly to keep local workers employed. By 1946, the factory was producing thousands of Beetles – mostly for use by occupying forces. So, against all odds, what started as a Nazi propaganda project was about to become a symbol of postwar prosperity, peace and individuality.

In the 1950s and ’60s, the Beetle found traction across Europe and especially in the United States. Americans, surrounded by oversized chrome-laden vehicles, were charmed by the Beetle’s small, rounded shape and functional simplicity. Its reliability and affordability – coupled with solid German engineering – made it a hit with students, families and counterculture types alike.

Volkswagen’s advertising agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), played a critical role in the Beetle’s cultural ascension. Their groundbreaking 1959 “Think Small” campaign turned traditional car advertising on its head. Instead of boasting about power or luxury, the most famous ad from the campaign featured a tiny Beetle surrounded by white space, celebrating its modesty. This honest, self-deprecating tone resonated deeply with a growing segment of Americans tired of corporate spin. The ad, the hero image from what is still the most famous automotive campaign of all time, sparked a marketing revolution – one that influenced generations of advertisers.

The Beetle’s popularity extended into the 1970s, but its utilitarian design began to lose ground to more modern vehicles. Production in Germany ceased in 1978, though the car continued to be made in Brazil and Mexico for decades.

In 1998, Volkswagen released the “New Beetle”, a retro-inspired redesign aimed at nostalgia-driven buyers. A second redesign followed in 2011. Production finally ended in 2019, capping off an extraordinary run of over 21 million units sold globally – making it one of the best-selling cars of all time.

Culturally, the Beetle became much more than just a car. It was Herbie The Love Bug in Disney films. It was a symbol of 1960s freedom and rebellion. It was flower-powered, surfboard-topped and sticker-covered. For many, it represented a way of life – economical, individualistic and just a bit quirky.

Video

REMORANDOM Chapter

The Segway is a two-wheeled, self-balancing personal transporter that operates using a combination of gyroscopes and sensors. Developed at a cost of more than US$100 million, the vehicle is a complex bundle of hardware and software that mimics the human body’s ability to maintain its balance.

The Segway was also the most hyped tech product of the early 21st century.

Alternately codenamed “Ginger” (after actor and Fred Astaire dance partner Ginger Rogers) and “IT” during the secretive development period prior to it launch, the device engendered serious conversations among tech leaders and futurists about the ways in which it would transform our cities. It’s inventor and company founder Dean Kamen believed that it would completely revolutionise transportation. “I believe the Segway HT will do for walking what the calculator did for pad and pencil,” Kamen said in 2001, the year he unveiled it on the ABC News morning program Good Morning America.

Kamen was already a famous inventor. His innovations greatly influenced the medical profession. Inspired by his “iBOT” wheelchair, a six-wheel machine that goes up and down stairs, he claimed that his next product would be transformational. So without any information other than Kamen’s track record as a genius, the hype train began.

Segway had some heavyweight investors and supporters, all beating the same drum. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs predicted that it would become as big as the PC. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos called it “one of the most famous and anticipated product introductions of all time” even before the product first went on sale to the public – naturally on Amazon.com. [Ed: I remember when it was actually given real estate as part of the Amazon.com website header.] Legendary Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr speculated that it would be more important than the internet.

The satirical animated TV show South Park devoted an episode to making fun of the hype even before the product was released. Watch a clip of that HERE or below.

Needless to say, Segway didn’t conquer the world. While the vehicle became a fixture in law enforcement and tourism, it did not gain traction among the wider public. It wouldn’t be the first time a much hyped product or technology failed to cut through and make sense to the man or woman on the street (or in this case rather … on the footpath).

Segway Inc. was acquired by British businessman Jimi Heselden from Kamen in December 2009. Tragically, and ironically, he died a year later after plunging from a cliff into the River Wharfe while riding his (you guessed it) Segway and walking his dog. (He was reportedly giving way to a fellow dog walker.)

In 2015 Segway Inc. was acquired by Ninebot, a Chinese robotics company, and the brand’s product line was expanded to include electric scooters and other personal transport devices. In 2020 Ninebot ceased production of Segway, and laid off 21 employees at its New Hampshire plant who were working on the project.

Depending on who you ask, the Segway is either a cautionary tale about the tech hype cycle or an innovative product that was just too much, and too soon, for this world.

Story Idea: Bob Carey

Videos

REMORANDOM Chapter

I was reading about the Tones and I back story the other day, and how Toni Watson’s song “Dance Monkey” was inspired by her experience as a busker in Byron Bay repeatedly being asked by crowds to continue entertaining them — in effect, to “dance” again and again like a monkey on command. It became an unlikely global hit.

Some songs arrive with every commercial advantage imaginable: major-label backing, expensive producers, proven formulas and carefully engineered marketing campaigns. Others seem to succeed almost by accident. Here are 20 that became cultural phenomena for one reason or another. Listen via a Spotify playlist HERE. Please add your suggested additions to this list in the comments below. I will curate from the longer list for inclusion in the chapter for REMORANDOM 7.

• “Axel F” – Crazy Frog (2005)
  Originally based on a mobile-phone ringtone character, the song became an improbable worldwide hit and perfectly captured the bizarre economics of the ringtone era.

• “Believe” – Cher (1998)
  Initially considered overly synthetic, its pioneering use of Auto-Tune helped redefine modern pop production and turned the song into one of Cher’s biggest hits.

• “Bohemian Rhapsody” – Queen (1975)
  At nearly six minutes long and structured like a mini opera, it broke virtually every radio rule yet became one of the most celebrated songs in rock history.

• “Come On Eileen” – Dexys Midnight Runners (1982)
  With abrupt tempo changes, folk influences and unusual vocals, it hardly resembled standard pop music — which may be exactly why it stood out.

• “Dance Monkey” – Tones and I (2019)
  Written by an Australian busker with a highly unconventional vocal style, the song became one of the most streamed tracks ever released.

• “Gangnam Style” – PSY (2012)
  A satirical Korean pop song unexpectedly became the first true global YouTube viral sensation and changed perceptions of online music culture.

• “Happy” – Pharrell Williams (2013)
  Built around relentless positivity and repetition, the song became culturally unavoidable and inspired thousands of fan-made videos worldwide.

• “Live It Up” – Mental As Anything (1985)
  Originally a pop hit boosted internationally by its use in the movie Crocodile Dundee, the song enjoyed an unexpected second life decades later when it was adopted by Glasgow Rangers supporters as a football anthem, with tens of thousands of fans belting it out in stadiums.

• “Macarena”[RR3:51] – Los del Río (1993)
  A Spanish dance track aimed largely at local audiences somehow evolved into a global party anthem with one of the world’s most recognisable dance routines.

• “Mambo No. 5” – Lou Bega (1999)
  Based on a little-known instrumental piece from the 1940s, the song revived mambo music for an entirely new generation. Featured in REMORANDOM 3.

• “My Sharona” – The Knack (1979)
  Raw, aggressive and minimalist, it emerged unexpectedly from the late-1970s power-pop scene to dominate international charts.

• “99 Luftballons” – Nena (1983)
  A German-language anti-war song succeeding in English-speaking countries was highly unusual at the time, helping prove that pop music could transcend language barriers.

• “Prisencolinensinainciusol” [RR6:63] – Adriano Celentano (1972)
  Sung entirely in invented gibberish designed to sound like American English, the song became a cult classic decades before meme culture and viral absurdity existed. (There’s a entire REMORANDOM chapter on this song in RR6.)

• “Somebody That I Used to Know” – Gotye featuring Kimbra (2011)
  Sparse instrumentation, awkward silences and emotionally restrained vocals made it an unlikely pop smash — yet it resonated globally.

• “Spirit in the Sky” – Norman Greenbaum (1969)
  Written by a Jewish songwriter inspired by gospel music, its unusual fusion of spirituality and fuzz guitar became timeless.

• “Take On Me” – a-ha (1985)
  The song initially failed multiple times until its groundbreaking animated music video transformed it into an MTV-era classic.

• “The Ketchup Song (Aserejé)” – Las Ketchup (2002)
  Featuring intentionally mangled pseudo-English lyrics and a simple dance routine, it became an international novelty phenomenon.

• “Tubthumping” – Chumbawamba (1997)
  An anarchist punk collective accidentally created one of the world’s most enduring sporting-event singalongs.

• “Video Killed the Radio Star” – The Buggles (1979)
  A futuristic synth-pop novelty song gained historic significance when it became the very first music video aired on MTV.

• “Who Let the Dogs Out” – Baha Men (2000)
  More chant than conventional song, it became an inescapable sporting and party anthem despite widespread critical confusion over its appeal.

Spotify Playlist

REMORANDOM 7

Unexpected Hits will feature in print in REMORANDOM 7. Subscribe HERE to receive RR6 immediately and RR7 in October 2026.

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