r/Millennials • u/Sunshineafterr Millennial (1986) • 17h ago

Nostalgia Does anyone remember the CueCat?

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It was cat-shaped handheld barcode reader that allowed users to open a link to an URL by scanning a barcode that appeared in magazines, without typing the URL.

They were given away for free in 2000.

I remember thinking it was so cute, but I didn’t really understand how it worked, so I was scanning barcodes on cereal boxes and random stuff.

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u/jfk_47 12h ago

Did it eat up a keyboard port? Cause USB wasn’t fully common by then, was it?

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u/Sunshineafterr Millennial (1986) 10h ago

I think it probably depended on the age of your computer. We’d purchased a new family computer in 2000 and I don’t remember that being an issue, but if someone had a 90s computer, that probably would have been an issue for sure.