That was the first thing that popped into my mind. It was the closest thing to instant communication we had then - turned your car into a rolling chat room!
I’d say Harry Potter is a big one. I like the books, but there is a lot of faddishness surrounding them. When you go to the young readers’ section these days, there’s nothing but wizards and dragons and so forth.
Internet stocks.
Perhaps not The Beatles themselves, but the whole “British Invasion” they were part of.
Fads I’ve seen…French braids and inverted ponytails, torn clothing from the movie Flashdance, tennis shoes/sneakers/trainers going from necessity to fashion, solar power, environmentalism (now gone mainstream), video games (now gone mainstream), jumpsuits and jogging suits.
I’m 37, so I don’t remember disco clearly (except the roller skates), but I do have first hand memories of Punk, New Wave, and Mod. Grunge and Goth are both after my attention span. Now that I think of it, the whole “vampire” fashion may be a fading fad.
35, from UK.
For me the biggest Fad I witnessed (and recognised as a fad from the beginning) was ‘sports casual’ style, and the so called casuals. This involved wearing Le Croc, and Kappa clothing. Kappa stuff especially was awful crap designs, and wearing it could make anyone look a prat. It is still the most conservative style statement that I have ever seen. It said, I’m young, I’m stylish, and I’m dressing up like a 50 year old gym teacher.
Baggy pants with underwear or butt crack hanging out. Please, let it end.
Star Wars. The Granddaddy of all tie-in merchandise.
Cabbage Patch dolls. How the hell could we be this far in and no one has mentioned Cabbage Patch dolls?
Preppie clothes and accessories in the early 80s, when I was dressing in my sister’s 60s hand-me-downs; let me tell you, I was popular amongst the pink and yellow trouser crowd…
I also remember when I was in high school, in the States (from 1979-83), clogs were so popular that they were banned from my school’s dress code (it was a Catholic school, but we had days when we could attend ‘out of uniform’), and that there were several stores in my small town that sold nothing but clogs.
Don’t really have any opinions on biggest fads, but I survived the stupidest fad.
My sophomore year in high school one of the guys learned how to do a choke hold and it became the “big thing” for guys to choke each other out in class. I’ve always had fairly thick neck muscles so I just got used to people jumping me and trying to strangle me into unconsciousness. :wally
The Internet. 
Combat aerobics or cardio kickboxing or Tae Bo, whatever you want to call it. Five years ago, even the corner laundry had a kickboxing class, it seemed. Now you might see one every now and then.
Yugos.
Granny dresses. Thank Og that one was short-lived.
Go-go boots.
The current fad that makes me want to yark up everything but my kneecaps is reality TV. Those shows suck so incredibly, incredibly bad.
No one has mentioned a fad I haven’t witnessed. To me, it was the hula hoops. The speed with which the hoops swept the country was truly amazing.
The choice of fad is clearly correlated with one’s age.
Early 1998 I worked as a bank teller. In the same shopping center was a hobby shop that didn’t open until 10:00 on the weekends. On Saturdays I would get to work at 8:00 to see a line out the door and around the block in front of that hobby shop. One time I asked someone what they were lining up for? His answer?
“Beannie Babies.”
:rolleyes:
I had the misfortune to still be working at McDonald’s when the Beanie Baby Happy Meals came out. I still don’t understand what all the fuss was about. They’re just stuffed animals! They aren’t even that cute! People acted as if it was a revolutionary new concept or something.
I had the whole set, which I promptly unwrapped and gave to the kid. If only I had known…
I’d still have unwrapped them and given them to the kid.
Well, along with the albums, singles and all the screaming at concerts, there were Beatle boots, rubber wigs in a Beatle mop, the whole “who’s your favorite Beatle?” thing and hundreds of garage bands who tried to sound like the Fab Four. Scads of Hofner basses, Rickenbacker guitars and Vox amps were sold because people wanted to sound like them. Their Christmas shows were watched by all and one may have helped end a war. Girls (my sister for one) painted their rooms to look like scenes from “Yellow Submarine”, and guys grew their hair out to look like J,G,R & P.
All this over four guys who sang songs. Sounds like a fad to me, but YMMV.
Converse high-tops. These have been around since when, the 20s? People are still wearing them.
Okay, look, if it just keeps going and going, it’s not a fad. Star Wars and the Beatles are/were not a fad. A lot of parents in the early 60s were hoping the latter were a fad, and the press was slap happy saying they were, but such was not the case.
It’s hard to say when the toy of the moment becomes a real fad. Somehow, Tickle Me Elmo doesn’t really make it, while Beanie Babies do.
I don’t know what the biggest I’ve seen was in terms of percent GDP. Davey Crockett, Hula Hoops, Super Balls, were the biggies of my younger days. Also, in the for-free category, The Twist and 50-mile hikes were a big deal in the Kennedy administration.
Super Balls, the Twist, and 50-mile hikes deserve some mention.
A couple of times there have been fads of people swallowing outrageous things (e.g., razor blades).