The consumer technology industry is brutal. There is an Amazon Fire Phone or HP TouchPad waiting to explode for every huge success like the iPads and Galaxy phones from Samsung and Apple. Since we are constantly bombarded with the newest and greatest, it can seem like a fever dream to consider products from a few years ago. I recently found a number of these modern relics by digging through an old box of gadgets. Devices that were once highly touted have now been forgotten. Take a journey with me down this road of blink-and-you-missed-it technology. Long-time enthusiasts will likely still have a fondness for at least a few of them.
This device started as a crowdfunded project, which was common for devices of the time. The widespread implementation of EMV chips, which rendered any credit card without one obsolete, was the issue that the Coin Card encountered. I used the Coin Card for a few months before a cashier refused to accept it, saying it looked like some kind of counterfeiting device.
In 2016, Fitbit acquired Coin’s wearables payment platform as it worked toward what would eventually become Fitbit Pay. (That was later replaced by Google Wallet after the search giant bought Fitbit in 2019.) The Coin card, however, ultimately fizzled out.The original MoviePass service was fairly straightforward. You paid $30 to $50 per month, which let you watch one movie per day. However, at least according to 2026 standards, purchasing a ticket was slightly more complicated. You first reserved your showtime using the MoviePass app on your phone. After that, when you got to the theater, you used a MoviePass debit card to finish the purchase and get your ticket from the kiosk. Naturally, there were some people who tried to abuse that system, such as getting a free ticket through a promotion and then using their MoviePass debit card to buy something at the concession stand. However, that was a good way to get kicked out. MoviePass eventually imploded after an ill-advised shift to a $10-per-month model. It came back a few years ago with significantly fewer options for watching movies, and it is now getting into gambling. However, virtual credit cards are now used to purchase movie tickets.