The recent iPhone launch got me thinking – not about the iPhone but about what seems to be a relatively new concept of waiting in line for 24 hours to get your hands on a product.
It is bound to be my age, but growing up during the late 60’s and the 70’s and going through college in the early 80’s I am not aware of one product launch that people waited in line for.
I am vaguely aware that a kids toy called a Transformer was all the rage in the UK in the mid 80’s and that parents were known to be worried about not getting them for Christmas, and I can certainly recall the Windows 95 paunch when everything in the world seemed to be blue.
In later years the PSP and Xbox 360 seem to have caused near hysteria, but again I couldn’t say for sure.
Concert tickets I discount – they have always incurred this hysteria and always will, it is the gadget, the toy, the latest ‘my world will end without’ products that I am interested in.
So what I would really like to know is what if anything you have waited in line for, in what country and would you do it again. Having heard that people were paying people to wait in line for them overnight I am considering this as a career move, so your feedback will be invaluable!
I waited in line for the iPhone and slept at the theatres for StarWars 1. It is more about the experience of being around others with similar interests. If you are super excited about a product or idea and you know others also feel as strongly about it, you naturally want to be around those people.
The iPhone for me marked a product that is really going to change social type media as people like my wife will now have these social sites with them at all time and can find information that much faster in its real context. This excites me, and I knew others were excited also, so I wanted to be with them. To share the experience with others and to have a good time. It is almost as much for the experience as it is for the actual product.
I can see how that appeals. I also now recall the ‘hype’ around the Star Wars films (I guess you mean IV rather than I?) – or maybe that is my age again 🙂
So would it be fair to say that for you the experience comes above the product? I can agree that the iPhone has the potential you mention but the next release(s) will be so much better surely?
hehe, I do mean episode 1. I was not alive for episode 4, and I am more than sure that the next iPhone will be better but I am also sure that the third one will be better than the second, etc. I figure that the first one will be good enough to get my feet wet, and I just realize that I will buy the others to come.
That is how I ended up with 9 iPod’s I guess!!!
I’ve never waited in line. Not even for non-product-specific stuff (Black Friday).
I’m with Devin. Never waited in line. I got more important things to do, and coming from Poland during the 70’s and 80’s I have a natural aversion to standing in line for anything. Even supermarket checkouts annoy the hell out of me.
i love to see new product launches because i am addicted to shopping both online and offline.’`-