What Are Our Most Regrettable Pop-Culture Purchases?

Yesterday, we asked the question “is Disney an affordable vacation,” and part of the comment thread split off into a mini-discussion of “can you believe we paid money for products featuring children’s characters posing in Calvin Klein underwear?”

With that in mind, today we’re going to look at regrettable purchases, in the category “but I thought it was cool at the time!” Here are some of mine:

1997: The aforementioned “Kermit wearing Calvin Klein.”

1998: Individual picture frames, so I could individually frame pictures of anime characters from Fushigi Yuugi that I printed on our home computer. (Should I make it worse by noting that these characters were all shirtless?)

1999: A glitter stick, with which to draw fake glitter tattoos on my body.

1999: A Lyte Funky Ones CD. (They like girls who wear Abercrombie and Fitch, which would have been a smarter purchase.)

2000: Those metallic posters that feature fairytale scenes and kinda look three-dimensional if you angle your eyes in the right direction. Um.

[then we go into a long period of time where I had very little discretionary income]

2011: Sing-a-ma-jigs.

2011: A plush, poseable Android doll, to publicly display my love of the Android operating system (which, by the way, I do not understand; I just have a HTC Evo phone).

2012: A pair of Hello Kitty over-the-ear headphones. Bright pink.

2015: I do not currently regret the Katy Perry Killer Queen perfume. But I feel like it belongs on this list anyway.

Your turn. Share everything. If you want, you can share the cultural ephemera you bought that you don’t regret, like the time I bought the novelization of My So-Called Life, or the time when I bought the Community T-shirt.

Also: what makes some pop-culture purchases more regrettable than others? Why am I fine with saying I bought a Community T-shirt, but a little embarrassed to note that I also once bought a House M.D. T-shirt?

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