# Things that started out very, very small and became HUGE **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 2, 2010, 1:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636 "2010-06-02T13:25:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/61 "2010-06-03T18:17:32Z")
[Isn’t this little guy just adorable?](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQOFRZ1wNLw) 2 billion screaming tweens apparently think so. Shit, Justin Bieber actually _can_ sing. Hunh. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/62 "2010-06-03T20:56:27Z")
> [@Zeldar](#): > > Kudzu in the South. It seemed a good idea at the time. # No lie: I have actually _seen_ kudzu grow, by which I mean it grows fast enough it is visible to the naked eye. Don’t kangaroos emerge as lima bean sized joeys before they transfer to the pouch? ---
**Author:** ![Rrose\_Selavy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bcef8e/32.png) [@Rrose\_Selavy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rrose_Selavy)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/63 "2010-06-03T22:34:57Z")
1. Martin Goodman, seeing the success of NPC’s Justice League , asks Stan Lee to do a “superhero team” comic book. Hewlett Packard started in a garage. ---
**Author:** ![LadyJane84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@LadyJane84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LadyJane84)\ **Post date:** [June 3, 2010, 11:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/64 "2010-06-03T23:01:30Z")
> [@Equipoise](#): > > [My Big Fat Greek Wedding](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0259446/). In its [opening weekend](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=16&p=.htm) it made $597,362, playing in 108 theaters, and was ranked #20. > > By the start of its [10th week](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=25&p=.htm) it had only made a total of $14,541,150, playing in 444 theaters, and was ranked 14th (it had [made it to 10](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/?yr=2002&wknd=20&p=.htm) one weekend in which everybody involved probably jumped for joy, before it slid back out of the Top 10). Since the budget was $5 million, that’s not too bad a theatrical run. Most low-budget light romantic comedies, hell, most movies, would have been out of the theater and on their way to a decently healthy life on DVD. > > But something very strange happened. Good word-of-mouth kept spreading from the Greek community to movie buffs to the general public, and the movie continued to play in the theaters, and play, and play, and play. > > [My Big Fat Greek Wedding](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=mybigfatgreekwedding.htm) ended up being in release for [51.4 weeks](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekend&id=mybigfatgreekwedding.htm), playing in 2,016 theaters at its height. Its final domestic total was $241,438,208, and the final _worldwide_ total was $368,744,044. > > All that, and it never was #1 at the box office. It made it to #2 for 3 weeks in a row. > > Say what you will about the movie, but it was a rare phenomenon that still makes people, including me, and I loved the movie, shake their heads in awe and wonder. > . It’s so funny you should mention this because in 1999 my father spent a few months working on “some shitty movie of the week” (his words) He’s a set builder and spent time making a Dominion Supermarket look like a Greek restaurant. He finished the movie and then…nothing…So we forgot about it. Then a year later it came out. We thought it would just end up another small movie. It was pretty exciting to see something that we never expected to go anywhere to suddenly be everywhere! ---
**Author:** ![Bartman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/779978/32.png) [@Bartman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bartman)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/65 "2010-06-04T00:55:27Z")
> [@MPB\_in\_Salt\_Lake](#): > > 25 years back, who would have suspected that bottled water would become a 17 trillion dollar per-year industry in the USA alone??? Given that the total USA GDP is around $15 trillion, I can honestly say that 25 years ago I wouldn’t have guessed that bottled water would account for 113% of the USA economy. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/66 "2010-06-04T02:53:04Z")
> [@Tibbytoes](#): > > [The Rocky Horror Picture Show](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_Horror_Picture_Show). Generally panned by the mainstream press, the cult following didn’t start until 6 months after its US opening in September ‘75. Never pulled from its original release, it has the longest-running theatrical release in film history—playing some theaters for decades at a time. This is what I was going to mention. It was epic fail at first-release, then became a _huge_ cult classic. I’ve even introduced my two older daughters (aged 23 and 19) to it. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/67 "2010-06-04T13:17:36Z")
Oprah Winfredy. You’re going to give an overweight black girl a talk show that is going to put Phil Donohue out of business? Yeah, right. Peanuts. A simple comic strip becomes as huge a commodity as The Simpsons later would. Doonesbury–started out as a strip in the Yale newspaper. A political cartoon strip that became an indusry. CATS–You take a 40 year book of poems about CATS with no real plot. You have a cast and production crew with little to no track record. The show is financed by over 1,000 individual investors putting up a quarter, the composer mortgaging his estate for a quart, and the theatre delaying the other half. The show features one junkyard set and really cheesy costumes. It opens to tepid reviews… …and ends up playing in every US state and almost every country, trasnslated into over twenty languages, winning a butt load of awards, and making the production crew world famous. ---
**Author:** ![Telcontar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3bc359/32.png) [@Telcontar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telcontar)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 1:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/68 "2010-06-04T13:33:57Z")
> [@norinew](#): > > This is what I was going to mention. It was epic fail at first-release, then became a _huge_ cult classic. I’ve even introduced my two older daughters (aged 23 and 19) to it. (Rocky Horror) There are a handful of things that I enjoy that I would never directly introduce to my (hypothetical) children. This is one of them 😛 “Oh, and here is your mother the semester she was tranny mom.” I just couldn’t do it to them. > [@Wilbo523](#): > > The internet Damn you for beating me. It’s plainly the best answer ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/69 "2010-06-04T14:12:44Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Pixar. The company started out selling computer monitors for medical equipment. They designed some in-house animations to showcase the quality of the monitors. They found that people were talking more about the animations than they were about the equipment so they decided to form a department that would make promotional animations. This department obviously grew into bigger things. This is the kind of thing I find fascinating; when a side product or afterthought becomes bigger than the rest of the enterprise and eventually no one even remembers the main product. I like to call such things the “tail that wags the dog” although that’s perhaps not the correct use of the phrase. Another example is Flickr, which originally was developed as a tool for a MMOG. ---
**Author:** ![cmkeller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cmkeller/32/118_2.png) [@cmkeller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cmkeller)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/70 "2010-06-04T14:35:20Z")
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Started out as an independent, black-and-white comic book with a self-financed print run of 3,000 copies. It grew into a massively popular comic book franchise, with network cartoon shows, feature films (including a recent revival after the franchise’s heyday in the early 90’s) and the whole nine yards of merchandising. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/71 "2010-06-04T14:46:49Z")
[Avenue Q](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avenue_Q) wins the title of “most bizarre thing that started out really, really small and became huge”. It was a workshop that later went off-Broadway. I saw one of the first previews and remember thinking “This is either going to flop miserably or be huge.” One of the best Tony show moments was, after Wicked had taken a bunch of awards and was rhe hands-on favorite to win the top Tony, the announced said “And the winner for best musical is…Avenue Q.” There was a good 15 seconds of stunned slience, the Wicked team going 😕 and the Avenue Q team :eek: The show has translated well, despite questions of whether it would play well outside of New York. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/72 "2010-06-04T14:54:09Z")
> [@phreesh](#): > > Seinfeld, Cheers, Family Guy. All barely survived their first season. Family Guy was actually cancelled. > > Google, Facebook. Both spent a few years as niche sites. Now, both are ubiquitous. > > It’s a bit tough to limit, as everything HUGE was little at first. What we need is _ **this** _ thread: “Things that started out very, very HUGE and stayed very, very HUGE.” ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2010, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/73 "2010-06-04T15:13:00Z")
> [@Telcontar](#): > > (Rocky Horror) > > There are a handful of things that I enjoy that I would never directly introduce to my (hypothetical) children. This is one of them 😛 > > “Oh, and here is your mother the semester she was tranny mom.” > > I just couldn’t do it to them. Not saying you should. But to be perfectly fair, my kids were pretty much adults when I introduced them to RHPS. My 10YO, however, doesn’t know anything about it. Sometimes when she’s around, _Jango_ will start playing a RHPS song, and I’ll just forward through it. I _don’t_ need her asking questions about “Mom, what’s a ‘transvestite’?” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![pope\_hentai](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ee59a6/32.png) [@pope\_hentai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pope_hentai)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/74 "2010-06-05T00:42:52Z")
your mother. ---
**Author:** ![TBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c89c15/32.png) [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2010, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/75 "2010-06-05T01:01:00Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > Ultima: Richard Garriot sold the spiritual successor of Ultima (Aklabeth) in ziploc bags out of his garage. Precursor, not successor, and at the time, that’s just how computer games were sold. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > For that matter, the character of Jack Shepard was originally supposed to die in the first episode. He was also supposed to be played by Michael Keaton. > [@spark240](#): > > True, but no network television show is “very, very small.” Tell that to the CW! ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [June 7, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/76 "2010-06-07T17:52:54Z")
I’ll throw out the word “OK.” It started as a joke - an 1830’s version of l33t-speak - in a few papers in the northeast US. Now it transcends English - it’s one of the most understood words on the planet. ---
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/77 "2010-06-08T13:19:13Z")
Saturfay Night Live. A little show on late night TV at a time when Variety shows where not popular became a vehicle for some hugely successful careers. ---
**Author:** ![Drain\_Bead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e47774/32.png) [@Drain\_Bead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drain_Bead)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/78 "2010-06-08T13:24:40Z")
Buffalo wings. ---
**Author:** ![Shirley\_Ujest](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shirley\_Ujest](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shirley_Ujest)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/79 "2010-06-08T13:27:46Z")
You Tube. ---
**Author:** ![snoopygal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b487fb/32.png) [@snoopygal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoopygal)\ **Post date:** [June 8, 2010, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636/80 "2010-06-08T13:40:12Z")
Before he became ruler of the Soviet Union, Stalin spent many years not existing. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-started-out-very-very-small-and-became-huge/541636.md?page=5)