Where will we be in the year 2000?
October 10, 2013 11:46 AM   Subscribe

On the cusp of a new century, Hildebrand’s, a German chocolate company, produced a set of cards depicting the year 2000.
posted by frimble (36 comments total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Theater im Jahre 2000 isn't so far off.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:50 AM on October 10, 2013


Imagine negating a weather-induced bad hair day with a flick of a switch.

Wait, isn't that actually a cannon that fires cocoa?
posted by mittens at 11:53 AM on October 10, 2013


Hildebrand's doesn't seem to have predicted the link rot of double posts.
posted by zamboni at 11:54 AM on October 10, 2013 [4 favorites]


It is interesting to note the pervasiveness of "when high technology means railroads*, the future means RAILROADS* IN EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE!"

*or balloons
posted by chimaera at 11:55 AM on October 10, 2013 [5 favorites]


I absolutely love the people on the water shoes with the balloons tied to their shoulders. I kind of want to do that this afternoon.
posted by xingcat at 11:55 AM on October 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Sadly, prototype chocolate blimps were unable to overcome melting issues and the technology never made it off the ground.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:56 AM on October 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'm waiting for our posthuman descendants to look back on futurist visions from 2010 and saying, "oh, look, The Internet and Textual Social Data Everywhere. HOW QUAINT."
posted by bl1nk at 11:57 AM on October 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


The grim cannibal meathook future called, it want to know what an internet is and if it can be eaten.
posted by The Whelk at 12:06 PM on October 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


It was a chocolate company making shit up and look how much they sort of got right.
posted by clarknova at 12:11 PM on October 10, 2013



I predict that by the year 3000, we'll all be like the Dalek's, living permanently inside our "phones," which run on our own poo, and have the complete content of everything ever televised, recorded, uploaded, or written. And we'll still be bored.
posted by MoxieProxy at 12:16 PM on October 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Flying cars: check.
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:17 PM on October 10, 2013


Hildebrand envisioned a world where not even your home was shackled permanently to one place.

Um, hello?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:18 PM on October 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


getting pretty close to that last one.
posted by likeatoaster at 12:25 PM on October 10, 2013


Theater im Jahre 2000 isn't so far off.

Oh, that someone would invent this magical device to see and hear something happening a great distance away; the mysterious oculus repostus or tele-vision!
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:28 PM on October 10, 2013


Hildebrand envisioned a world where not even your home was shackled permanently to one place.

Um, hello?


But airstreams are so one-story. Hildebrand envisioned a four-story building on wheels!
posted by filthy light thief at 12:32 PM on October 10, 2013


Sadly, prototype chocolate blimps were unable to overcome melting issues and the technology never made it off the ground.

"Oh, the Charleston Chew-manity!"
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:39 PM on October 10, 2013 [7 favorites]


Bump all this, German Chocolate is the future. Or my future, at least.
posted by cashman at 12:40 PM on October 10, 2013


Perhaps they were running out of ideas but I have to wonder what exactly they thought the shoes of the walking on water people were going to be made of. They look wooden so why did they think these hadn't been invented already if they were going to be?
posted by biffa at 12:40 PM on October 10, 2013


I think it awaited the invention of a gas so light that something less than a cubic yard of it could provide appreciable lift for a person. So basically, negative mass, or in other words, antigravity!
posted by George_Spiggott at 12:43 PM on October 10, 2013


Hildebrand envisioned a four-story building on wheels!

What's it going to take for me to get you into this brang new motorhome today, friend?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 12:56 PM on October 10, 2013


I think it awaited the invention of a gas so light that something less than a cubic yard of it could provide appreciable lift for a person. So basically, negative mass, or in other words, antigravity!

Alternatively, we could try to extract lots of nitrogen and oxygen into the atmosphere to raise atmospheric pressure. Then lighter than air gases would provide more lift. We could even perhaps switch atmospheric gases into something heavier. More plausible than anti-gravity anyways.
posted by Authorized User at 1:02 PM on October 10, 2013


We could even perhaps switch atmospheric gases into something heavier.

Listen, a guy can eat just so many beans in one sitting, OK?
posted by The 10th Regiment of Foot at 1:05 PM on October 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


A woman who likes to cruise around on a batwing/alpenhorn hybrid doesn't need to be warned that Mr Overcompensating-piston-between-his-legs is moments away from negging her.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 1:07 PM on October 10, 2013


Looks like they accurately predicted Bioshock Infinite.
posted by the bricabrac man at 1:07 PM on October 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


Balloons is seems. I would have invested heavily in balloons.
posted by Mario Speedwagon at 1:53 PM on October 10, 2013


I hate Steampunk.
posted by Justinian at 2:14 PM on October 10, 2013


I bet we'd have that stuff now if Google had been in charge.
posted by jwhite1979 at 3:29 PM on October 10, 2013


I hate Steampunk.
note to self...
posted by mattoxic at 4:19 PM on October 10, 2013


And yet the clothes remain the same.
posted by IndigoJones at 4:24 PM on October 10, 2013


This future sucks.
posted by bongo_x at 4:48 PM on October 10, 2013


They didn't predict Bauhaus and its influences, for one. The architecture's still quaintly 19th-century.
posted by acb at 5:30 PM on October 10, 2013


Or Love and Rockets.
posted by bongo_x at 5:42 PM on October 10, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is soooo unrealistic. You can't smoke a pipe when flying your personal prop-driven fixed wing apparatus because the stall speed is higher than the "tobacco flare-up and blow into your moustache" speed. Who peer reviewed this?
posted by George_Spiggott at 5:50 PM on October 10, 2013 [1 favorite]


I love the mix of the radical with the quaint. That in 2000 your strudel factory could glide to Berlin--yet we would still wear corsets and bowlers and travel by buggy.

Nice find, frimble.
posted by applemeat at 6:19 PM on October 10, 2013


They didn't have a fucking clue.
posted by mazola at 10:40 PM on October 10, 2013


I absolutely love the people on the water shoes with the balloons tied to their shoulders. I kind of want to do that this afternoon.

In the year 2000, we won't have to click to a second page to see everything in a listicle!
I seriously did not notice the rather small "1 2" pagination at the end.

the future means RAILROADS* IN EVERY CIRCUMSTANCE!

EVERYTHING RUNS ON BOILERS! Including the weather machine and the house-moving machine.

‘Roofed cities in 2000’

Aren't there quite a few downtown shopping galleries in Europe that have glass roofs? I even have a 1960s proposal for our small Midwestern city that suggested this would revive the downtown, already suffering from sprawl and the migration to the 'strip' even before our first mall was built. (The entire thing is about as fanciful as these chocolate cards. What, your city hall faces a church? Why, demolish the next block over and build a diagonal street so your city hall has a "vista"!)
posted by dhartung at 2:25 PM on October 11, 2013


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