how i went viral on tiktok with cool y2k items

[Music] hey welcome back to Planet clue I see you've noticed my aspect ratio rectangle well that's cuz today we're talking about Tik Tok I challenged myself to make a Tik Tok every single day of January with three very specific goals in mind one was to induce my creativity by releasing a video every day even if the video is small in scope it doesn't matter the thing that's important is giving myself the opportunity to make and release something very often as opposed to the several months it usua

lly takes me to release a video my second goal was to see if I could grow a Tik Tok account organically without connecting it back to my existing YouTube channel I wanted to prove it to myself that my YouTube success wasn't just a fluke and that I could do it all again if I wanted to so I never told my YouTube audience that I started making Tik toks and third was to clear my backlog of items that are interesting but I couldn't get a 10-minute YouTube video out of I'm grateful to say that this pr

oject was a success success in every possible regard all the goals I set for myself are met and exceeded I got more views on Tik Tok in one month than I've gotten on YouTube in years I learned a lot about myself as an artist from this experience I learned a lot about what people want from me and I want to share with you what I learned so think of this video as a glorified Tik Tok compilation right you'll get to see all the videos I made that I'm really proud of and you get to hear additional con

text occasionally so here's how I went viral on Tik Tok with cool Y2K items so so on Tik Tok I started a new show called shelf shorts where I pull interesting items off of my shelf and show them to you hi there welcome to shelf shorts where I pull interesting things off of my shelf and show them to you there you go I made 31 shelf shorts videos one for every day in January and we're going to go through them so here's shelf shorts number one hi there welcome to shelf shorts where I pull things of

f of my shelf that are interesting and show them to you today I'm going to be looking at PaRappa the Rapper items this is PaRappa the Rapper one for PlayStation 1 the Japanese version it comes with this gigantic poster it's super cool and has lots of beautiful beautiful artwork on it truly the world would not be the same without Rodney greenblat in it he is a huge inspiration to me anyway yeah let's fold that up carefully and look at the Japanese spine cover there it is and then we have an ad fo

r lots of merch that Rodney made it looks awesome I really want those shirts and there's the disc I absolutely love the presentation and now here's the back with all the gameplay screenshots now we're going to look at the sequel to PaRappa the Rapper also the best Parappa game that exists um Jammer Lamy this game focuses on another character in The Parappa Universe named lamby lamb she's the guitarist for a band called milk can this game is very hard but very very good I highly recommend it and

here's the Japanese version of PaRappa the Rapper 2 for PlayStation 2 although this game is very funny and has some good multiplayer it is unfortunately the worst Parappa game it diverged a lot from Rodney's vision and he doesn't consider it to be part of the main series being the worst Parappa game is still a pretty high honor and this game is still plenty enjoyable and here is a PaRappa the Rapper plush I randomly found this at Best Buy and it was so cute that I had to bring it home and here a

re some PaRappa the Rapper keychains made to promote the first game for Playstation 1 it has very yellowed I'm pretty sure the figures aren't yellowed but the plastic that's covering them definitely is and here's my Parappa shirt that I wear all the time it's in this beautiful mustard yellow color I don't know where it came from it was a gift I have one of these totaku Parappa figurines somewhere but I looked everywhere and I can't find it thank you for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the

next one so shelf shorts number one I made using the Tik Tok mobile editor the one that's built into the app you know I gave it a fair swing I did the filming editing and voice over all on my smartphone it wasn't really the thing itself that was cool as much as it was really cool to see how accessible video editing is to the average person now but overall I wasn't happy with the audio quality and it took me a really long time to do so whatever anyway in shelf shorts 2 I edited the video on my co

mputer like I normally would and did the voice over with my usual microphone instead which sounded a lot nicer hi there welcome to shelf shorts where I pull interesting things off of my shelf and show them to you today we're going to be taking a look at some Team Fortress 2 items this is a 2007 retail copy of the game which is completely outdated and doesn't work anymore downloading the game from the internet would have taken a long time back in 2007 so it was nice to have the option to install

it off of a disc and here's a figurine of the Scout I left it in the Box because it's one of those things where the box is kind of cooler than the thing itself like I love that it has the plastic hanger on top implying that it was sold in a store at one point it's a really cool display piece I absolutely love this thing and next up we have a prima or Prima I don't know which it is official guide for The Orange Box as much as I love halflife 2 and portal I got this book because of the TF2 in it i

t's so weird seeing print media try to capture TF2 cuz it's a game that's constantly in flux so all of this information became outdated like immediately case in point here's another book doing the exact same thing I got this one because it has pus on the cover I just couldn't help myself I started playing this game when I was 12 years old I'm almost 25 now and I still play it my TF2 phase never ended and I never wanted to this game is truly a Timeless Masterpiece thanks for watching shelf shorts

I'll see you next time so because my Tik Tok account had pretty much no one looking at it these shorts started off being very self-indulgent I felt free to talk about stuff that I really loved when people usually wouldn't care if I talked about it on my YouTube channel like if I made a tf2 video on my YouTube channel I it probably wouldn't do well I didn't anticipate that the kids on Tik Tok would care about TF2 either but this short ended up getting 25,000 views overnight and that gave me a pr

etty good indicator as to how this whole Tik Tok thing was going to go so I kept on trucking hey there welcome to shelf shorts today we're looking at some Taco Bell items not sponsored I just really like Taco Bell you can tell because most people don't own one Taco Bell shirt let alone three this Baja Blast shirt is my favorite it's actually employee exclusive and I got it from working there also from being an employee I got this hat and a bunch of pins mild sauce Chalupa Baja Blast and then you

've got the Crunch Wrap Supreme taco supreme and a five layer burrito all right let's get these shirts out of here and take a look at the fiery Doritos Locos Tacos retail sign fiery was the best Doritos Locos Taco they ever made and I will never forgive them for getting rid of it all right it's time for us to go back to 1997 with Yoko Taco Bell there was this huge huge ad campaign focused around this Chihuahua this thing is actually a plastic coin purse you stick your coins in there and that way

you don't lose them they also used to do toys of Yoko Taco Bell unfortunately I had to get the gloves out for this one because o yikes look at that thing oh my god let's just surgically remove the ghost of smarty's past and get this thing out of there this figurine is very silly you press a button and he opens his little mouth but yeah I like this thing it's really cute but we got even more we have this one here thankfully this one doesn't have any Smarties packaged into it so this one's pretty

safe so let's pull that thing out of there this one is just a figurine it doesn't have any special features or anything but it's really cute I love the sculpt on this one I have some dupes that I will leave in the packaging anyway yeah look at this Taco Bell talking Chihuahua he says you are getting hungry very hungry let's open it up and take a look at it it definitely looks like it's been in a bag for over 20 years I wonder if this would be recognizable as a Taco Bell thing if you were to rem

ove all of the Taco Bell branding from it or if people would just be like what's this what's this dog plush this thing is from 1997 of course the batteries are dead I've never performed surgery on a Chihuahua before but who am I to pass up the opportunity yep The Talk box totally doesn't work so let's open it up and take a look at it unfortunately the batteries are so corroded that theyve fused together and ruined all the circuitry unfortunately this doggy will never talk again thanks for watchi

ng shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so I'm making these videos entirely unscripted which is a privilege I'm not used to having I don't often work with videos that are so short that I can just kind of work at it linearly until it's done but of course that does lead to some mistakes I said unfortunately twice in a row unfortunately the batteries unfortunately this doggy I didn't mean to I I don't I don't know if anyone even noticed but I noticed anyway on to the next one hi there welcome

to shelf shorts where I pull interesting things off of my shelf and show them to you today we're going to be looking at hestar Runner items if you need a brief introduction to Home Star check my profile for exactly that otherwise this is the fan gamer talk and strong bad plush he's posable and he can say 15 different phrases someday I would love to get a kick the cheat plush but it's very expensive I also have the entire first series of figurines here they are we've got Homestar Runner himself W

e've Got Strong Bad strong sad Strong Mad the cheat pom pom bubs marzipan and Coach Z every time I have guests over and they go to the restroom they have to look at my Home Star Runner shower curtain easiest purchasing decision of my entire life oh yeah I can't forget about my very real no loafing sign that's in my office right now so now on to the media this is my childhood copy of strong bad email. EXE the first 100 Strong Bad Emails you can tell it was very well- loved the cardboard is very f

rayed they put so much effort into the presentation they made like unique art for every disc and everything it's so cool I never ended up getting the other half of the first 200 I only had the first 100 but I still got a lot of use out of this DVD collection I used to bring it to like slumber parties as a kid put it on the TV for everyone to watch this one came out more recently this is everything else volumes 1 through 3 this is a re-release that came out in 2021 it's a collection of everything

else on the website aside from just Strong Bad Emails easily the best way to watch teen girl squad and this is a collector's edition copy of strong bad school game for Attractive people any homestarrunner fan would tell you that these games are a masterpiece the brothers chaps love doing these fake handwritten labels it's a really cool aesthetic obviously there's no source code on there and here is the 2020 re-release of Strong Bad Emails 1 through2 200 it doesn't have quite as much personality

as the originals but it still serves its purpose my HomeStar DVD collection would be complete but I'm missing one that's really rare it's this spale 50 greatest hits DVD all of these hestar DVDs are now discontinued Unfortunately they said they were going to do Blu-ray if they do Blu-ray I will buy them instantly anyway so here's the last thing I have to show you it is strong bad sings and other type hits It's a CD that they made a while back it's got a limousine sticker and hey look there's th

e hand label thing again they love their fake handwritten labels don't they man 2003 really was a long time ago thank you for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so you can tell at this point that I'm going about making these Tik toks in a very youtubery way it's very personal and calm and I talk about lots of things in one video and it just didn't speak to Tik tok's user base and it performed very poorly as a result obviously at this point I didn't care because I just wanted an e

xcuse to talk about homestarrunner even if no one watched But as time goes on you can can see that these videos become more experimental I shift my tone to see what will actually resonate with Tik tok's user base hey there welcome back to shelf shorts today we're going to be looking at my vinyl record collection Vib ribbon is going through a bit of a cult Resurgence right now so here's my Vib ribbon vinyl this soundtrack is nothing short of a masterpiece and this vinyl even includes some songs t

hat were previously unreleased every single time I listen to Rainbow I cry uncontrollably and next up we have the hypnospace outlaw vinyl the way that hypnospace manages to capture an abstraction of what '90s internet was like is so masterfully done that it almost feels like stepping into a time machine for a soundtrack as nostalgic and culty as this one it just belongs on vinyl and next up we've got mother 2 also known as Earthbound in the west you can start to see that my vinyl collection is p

ainting a picture of the kind of person I am and the niche things that I love if I had to summarize mother 2 I would phrase it as believable characters in a very normal world with bizarre sci-fi happenings gradually ramping up and getting more insane the first first disc is gold and the second disc is silver it is such a nice touch and here's the soundtrack for gimmick the NES game in which the soundtrack should have been impossible but they put an extended sound chip inside of the NES cartridge

for the game just to prove how capable the NES was even when the Super Nintendo was already out absolute Chad game just like this one Friday night funkin they did a Kickstarter a long time ago and one of the rewards for backing it was to get this vinyl soundtrack and so I have it here it is I can't think of anything that repres presents the spirit of new grounds better than fnf I don't think I would be where I am as an artist today if it hadn't been for the influence of new Grounds For Better o

r For Worse it really felt like anyone could truly make anything and that unfiltered Nature Made It Feel Within Reach for me to make something and put it out there for people to see so yeah shout outs to fnf and new grounds I'm looking forward to the full game so these next few vinyls that I have aren't very interesting so I'm just going to do a bit of a lightning round Back to the Future Monsters Inc Rick Roll Pac-Man Donkey Kong Pac-Man I already made like a 30- minute video on YouTube about t

hose ones if you want to know about those just watch that Bugs Bunny ARS Revenge Ronald McDonald's Space Jam and fures thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so at this point in time I'm using my computer to edit the video and do the vo I would render it out and then copy it to my phone and then I used the Tik Tok app to generate the captions and then I would upload it but with this one I started making my own captions which are a lot contrasti and more on brand so Tik Tok

has this thing where you can make a video that's a reply to a comment so I decided to feature someone being nice in my comments with this next video hey welcome back to shelf shorts so this nice comment are referenced an eye dog video that I made on YouTube about 3 years ago so because that video went super viral and people on Tik Tok have been so awesome I'm going to show you guys my eye dog stuff so this is the 2005 Hasbro eye dog the one that was the most common in America aside from just a

little bit of yellowing on the ears it's held up excellently and here's the Japanese Sega toys eye dog which actually predates the American eye dog this this one has held up even better there's like no yellowing anywhere on this thing it looks pristine for those that saw my original eye dog video you know this one's my favorite and here's the eye dog pup it's super tiny and super cute I love this thing the ears and the sides of its head are a little bit golden little yel oh my God he's missing h

is tail no the eye do Pub is pissing his tail uh I did try to find it immediately uh I went looking for its tail I couldn't find it I'm so sorry I dog pup I lost your tail oh well you know here's the eye dog amped when I got this one it was really yellowed already so honestly this just looks exactly like how I remember it looking it was it was very sunburnt yellow it was almost certainly left in a window sill for like a year and that was enough to tint it harshly gold anyway here's the eye dog d

ance the chunkiest eye dog they ever made um little bit of golden on the back a little gold on the ears but yeah not so bad I really do wonder if like retr briding these things would do anything or if it's too new retr Bri only works on specific kinds of old plastic 2005 might be a little late for that it would definitely be nice to have the option to make these things shiny and white and pretty again you guys like frutiger Arrow here's the iish the iish is easily the funniest of the eye dog fam

ily because that look look it's Wiggly also when you power it on and it's listening to music it like spins really fast and Tangles itself up in its own cable it's very funny look it's the eye dog clip the smallest eye dog ever made I do actually Wonder like how many cosplayers and modern scene kids I convinced to buy one of these just to add it to their outfit I hope it's a non-zero amount and here's a Halloween Burger King IAT in this weird glow stick yellow color this one used to light up but

the battery is dead and it's not replaceable my eye dog collection used to be much larger than this but I have since given away a bunch of them to friends and family anyway yeah thank you so much for watching thank you for all of the love you guys have been giving me on Tik Tok it really really means the world I've been uploading every day so hit that follow button so I can see you again on your for you page so this is this was around the time when I discovered that people in the Tik Tok Communi

ty are really nice like comments in general are really kind and funny I mean at least that's the energy that people were throwing at me and I wanted to bounce it back I don't often get to directly respond to comments let alone with a video so I took the opportunity and I don't regret it anyway the next shelf short is about Quake hey there welcome back to shelf shorts today we're going to be looking at some Quake items for those un aware Quake released in 1996 as the first 3D firstperson shooter

it was hugely influential on the gaming indust industry and is widely considered to be one of the best video games ever made what you're looking at right now is a box set from 2002 called the ultimate Quake box set not only does it include Quake 1 but it has Quake 2 and Quake 3 Arena as well even though Quake is nearly 30 years old the influence of it on the gaming industry is still felt to this day we are in the midst of a boomer shooter Renaissance so many games are wearing their influence fro

m Quake on their sleeve here's a strategy guide for Quake 1 these guide books make for excellent display pieces I love them I love seeing the effort they put into the map diagrams it's really amazing amazing near the end of the book they describe how multiplayer networking works and like how to set it up on Windows 995 now every kid on earth knows how to port forward a Minecraft server well I say that but I'm getting old I don't know what kids are educated on nowadays yeah this book rocks it's t

otally sick and here's a prima guide for Quake 3 Arena my favorite Quake game the other day I wasn't sure if it was Prima or Prima it is prima this one's in full color and has so many screenshots and beautiful imagery anyway yeah that's a great Book for a great game I probably should have showed this in the TF2 Tik Tok but I forgot so here it is right now it's my big box halflife 2 another one of the greatest video games of all time halflife 2 still looks and feels amazing the only complaint tha

t I could possibly have about it is that it's pretty linear you're usually going from point A to point B and that is the video game uh counter- Strike Source how I love thee counter- Strike Source is the reason I built my first gaming PC let's take a look at the contents we have this quick reference card for how to install the game and here's the controls on the back look at this card okay so this this is telling you about a bug that if you don't select Counterstrike Source the installation migh

t fail I love that they had all the discs produced and then they found that error and they couldn't fix it so they just put in a little card saying hey here's how you avoid that bug all right yeah here are all the discs they are completely useless now because all these discs do is install Steam and then cache files that steam can use internet speeds are fast enough now that you just don't need this at all thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so with this next Tik Tok I w

as trying to make something quick and snappy in an active attempt to make something more viral take a look gaming devices that are completely impractical to use because they're so tiny starting off with the pocket Sprite Which touts itself as the smallest functional Game Boy ever made they set out to make a Game Boy so small that it takes away all potential enjoyment you could have had from playing Game Boy the gimmick of it being tiny stops being fun as soon as you get a hand cramp but living l

ife on The Cutting Edge means you have to sacrifice some practicality the pocket Sprite is indeed a technical Marvel that will will sit on my shelf Gathering dust for another 4 years and here's the game gear micro which is equally unfun to use it's almost like retro collectors will buy anything they'll sell you on a concept that's really cool but completely impractical and then dorks like me will buy them and then stick them on the shelf and never use them I'm not trying to be a cynic I love Col

lectibles and things like this all I'm saying is to keep your collector shelves interesting and practical don't just stuff it with gaming devices that are completely impractical to use because they're so tiny starting off with the pock so Tik Tok videos they Loop right and you can chain your last sentence into the first it's a little gimmick I've seen people do before and I wanted to give it a try anyway this video did not go viral in fact it vastly underperformed and I'm not 100% sure why maybe

it's because I was kind of mean to the devices but I was trying to ham it up and be dramatic I thought that's what people would like so I tried again to make something short and viral and snappy so here you go this innocuous $2 DS game holds a dark secret when you load up this copy of The Biggest Loser on a DSi it will dump a string that can be used to decrypt the nand and install pirated games onto your DSI same goes for this innocuous 3DS game freaky forms Deluxe when you boot up the game and

load a specific QR code your 3DS is now hacked and you can load Homebrew and pirate as many 3DS games as you could possibly desire not that I would ever pirate Nintendo games or anything that would be stupid so this video got double the views of the previous one but it still didn't get far I think because I had to vastly oversimplify in order to even talk about this topic I don't know these experiments didn't work so I went back to my old formula of self-indulgently talking about things I loved

today we're looking at some items from the game series postal here's a postal dude plush he can say a bunch of different phrases when you squeeze him listen hear him speak man what these game developers won't do for a buck at least it's profitable amazing and next up we have the postal documentary book it was signed by Vince and Mike but unfortunately one of the signatures has faded I read the first half of this book like a year ago and I still have not finished it and here's postal XX the 20th

anniversary edition box set as soon as you open it you're greeted by the 9 million cards that I have from Vince and Mike every time you buy something from the Running With Scissors online store they include those cards and so I just have a bunch of them here's a sealed keychain that I'm tempted to unseal and use here's a 20th anniversary collector's towel and a running with Scissors popsocket I love popsockets whenever you're about to check out in the Running With Scissors online store they ask

if you want to throw in some stickers to your order they don't cost very much so I did that and now I have what I believe to be a complete collection of stickers or at least was a complete collection of stickers at the time I know that postal subversiveness didn't age the best but honestly I'm not really in it for the political incorrectness it gives the game its identity and its unique flare but I think where postal really shines is in its setting and its Gunplay and those attributes haven't a

ged a day and that's why postal 2 is still considered to be such a masterpiece and here we've got an art book with lots of beautiful beautiful artwork I definitely think that satire is very important to the postal formula I think them moving in a more comedic Direction with it I think gave it so much more iconic of a presentation like postal one was played pretty straight and postal 2 was played more comedically it was more exaggerated almost cartoony I think pretty much everyone agrees that tha

t's when post tool is at its best and here's the disc case that has the actual games on it and here's the card that has the steam keys on it they included a separate postal 3 key so you didn't have to redeem it and here's the disc which looks totally sick I sincerely think that postal 2 and postal 2 Paradise Lost are must playay video games especially if you like Boomer Shooters thanks so much for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one every single Tik Tok I had made at this point fe

atured three three four sometimes six items in a row but what I learned is people on Tik Tok don't want a story in five parts they want a story in one part so in that postal video I'm sure most people watched the first item and as soon as I brought out the second one they're like they're already gone they've already swiped it away so I tried something new I just showed one item and that was it so take a look Hey look it's a boring old phone case just kidding it has a freaking Game Boy on the bac

k of it you don't see that every day I found this at a thrift store for $5 and it was just interesting enough that I had to take it home but it wouldn't turn on and my Tik Tok was ruined it was fully charged so I just started prying it open to see what was wrong and all of a sudden it sprung back to life right before my eyes I don't know what I did to fix it but it's live now and you can play pirated NES games to your heart's content so if I cram my smartphone into this case you're telling me I

can be at the bus stop flip my phone over and have access to a million different 40-year-old video games for $5 sign me up although I couldn't find what Smartphone fits in this case I only have one iPhone and it didn't fit so I I don't what this is for comment below if you recognize this phone case shape let me know if you know what Smartphone fits in it thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you next time so this video was my first major success on Tik Tok it reached 450,000 views overnight

and now it has almost 800,000 that's because it focused on one interesting item it was short and I posed the question that people really wanted to answer there are hundreds and hundreds of comments of people trying to guess what phone fits in the case and no one can agree so I still don't know the answer to the question I don't know so I tried to recreate what made that Tik Tok a success and tried to do another one like it what is this thing it looks like a siren if found return for reward well

I hope they're not too upset that somebody put this in the thrift store for $6 it appears to have a speaker on the bottom that's covered in like a white powder I was terrified to plug this thing in I really thought I was going to plug it in it was going to go and and like scare the hell out of all my neighbors so I covered my ears turned it on and thankfully it didn't make any sound at all it's just it's just like a spinning party light look at it I love this thing it's so funny sorry Boomerang

it you can keep your reward because I'm never returning this so I started the video being like what is this thing it looks like a siren and that got people so angry in the comments like it's not a siren it says on the bottom it's a party light you're stupid for not knowing what it is I had to film and edit the video I know it's a party light why why are there so many people just like dude how does he not know what it is I just thought posing a question at the beginning would make the conclusion

more interesting and the funny thing is I was right like this video performed great it got like 400,000 views this new format was doing so well that I gave it another shot with my next one what's this weird transparent thing oh it's a prison TV the reason it's transparent is so that prisoners can't hide Contraband inside of it it would cost prisoners about 120 bucks to get one of these behind bars I mean for that price that's not terrible the viewing angles aren't the best because it's a very ch

eap LCD you have to look at it dead on or else the colors will be very washed out or very dim viewing angles aside it doesn't look so bad it's 1080p it's nice and crisp it certainly does more than just get the job done I don't really have a practical purpose for a monitor like this I just saw it and I thought it was kind of cool so I grabbed it like can you blame me look how cool the transparency is it's it's so neat I'm sure Jay Bailey has been out of jail for a long time now but um I hope you'

re doing all right I'm wishing you nothing but the best so this video did really well really well it got around 750k in views it did well for the same reasons as the prior to and now for the worst Tik Tok I've ever made here it [Music] ISS so let your game back in 2009 I remember that I really wanted this toy it's basically Simon but with more hand waving level ready follow this nice back when Loops was on TV and in toy stores I remember going to a friend's house to play with their Loops only to

discover that this is a very boring toy it's not interesting it's not engaging and you run out of stuff to do after literally 5 minutes how many of you out there still have a Loops that's Gathering dust in your basement this one happened to be rotting at a Good Wheel nearby the battery compartment has so much corrosion damage that I'm surprised this thing still [Applause] [Music] [Applause] works thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one I thought it would be cool to open th

e video with the sound effect of the device turning on but that was heavily banking on people recognizing the device or the sound which totally didn't work I'm sure people watched the first 2 seconds of the video and didn't understand what was happening and then swiped away it also didn't help that the conclusion of the video is built on how uninteresting the toy is so it's not a surprise that this is my worst performing Tik Tok ever old karaoke machines have these fascinating monochrome display

s on them which would generally be used to show the lyrics to the song you were singing but it has composite inputs on the back so you can just plug your video games into it but yeah this thing is tiny it is 5 in easily the smallest CRT I have ever seen the benefit to playing video games on a karaoke machine like this is that the audio sounds really good if I had one of these when I was a kid it would have been my favorite Gadget in the world having something like this to plug my Nintendo 64 int

o would have been a game changer for me I also have this other karaoke machine made by Memorex the contrast is very weak so you can't even see what's happening on camera it just looks completely white thankfully it has this contrast pot on the back that you can adjust to get the picture to come in sorry for the choppy footage in this video recording CRTs is very hard thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so I thought this one was going to pop off because it had a 100 gex

reference in there and also because there're such unique gadgets but I think since I put a retro gaming spin on it that might have alienated people I don't know I mean it did okay but I wanted this one to perform better when you're uploading every day you can just kind of take an L occasionally and it's fine Plants vs Zombies is one of the greatest video games of all time with a core design so appealing to such a large audience it's no surprise it became such a cultural phenomenon unfortunately

it marks the end of the Casual gaming generation but at least it went out with a bang and here's a plants versus zombies guide book although it's more like a lore book these sorts of things are always worth looking at just because they have so much beautiful original artwork in them it's always cool to see multimedia content like this for video games I also have some bootleg plushes here's the peash shooter I would have bought real plushes if they existed here's the sunflower who sings the iconi

c song Here's a walnut he's a very happy boy and here's the sun shroom who is looking exceptionally oooo today I don't care if EA ruined the PvZ franchise I will love it forever so for this one you can see that I went back to my old formula and it performed about average at the time but this one is particularly interesting because a day after I posted this video Plants versus Zombies 3 was announced I managed to spawn Plants versus Zombies news after years of drought just with my Tik Tok uh if I

have this power then uh TF2 update um uh can can we have a tf2 update uh Team Fortress Team Fortress 2 update please all right so take a look at this next one I really like this next one I bet you've never heard of this Nintendo Gadget it's a pocket Pikachu the buttons on this one didn't seem to work so I had to open it up thankfully the only issue was that the button membranes needed to be cleaned that's 25 years of dirt right there and now the buttons work great now it should be no surprise t

hat the pocket Pikachu is a Pikachu virtual pet and he has lots of silly funny animations but the thing that differentiates the pocket Pikachu from say aagi is that the pocket Pikachu counts how many steps you've taken when you walk you generate Watts that you can give to Pikachu so I shook the device around a little bit and generated a few watts and I gave them to him he seemed a little disappointed probably because I only gave him four of them so I did what I do best and played some dance game

s while wearing the pocket Pikachu so I played infection half 9 and Pump It Up Pro two and I got a full combo so hopefully that will be good enough for the pocket Pikachu that I was wearing the entire time as it turns out no he was equally disappointed this pocket Pikachu is a greedy little thing I assume the thing wants me to like walk around for an entire day and then feed him the Watts I also have the pocket Pikachu color and you're never going to believe what's different about this one it's

really cool to see one of these old School LCD screens with color but it looks so bad they use some polarizing trickery in order to get the colors to work but getting it at the exact right angle to make it look good on camera is so difficult and it still somehow looks better on camera than it does to the naked eye anyway so I gave this color Pikachu 16 watts and I just bored him well I can tell when I'm not wanted thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you guys in the next one real soon I rea

lly thought this one would do well but I fell into the same old Pitfall I always fall into because I kept changing topics and talking about more than one thing my YouTuber instinct is to say oh if I pop it open and clean it on camera it'll make the video more interesting right and in my opinion it did but because the topic straight I think people just started leaving Midway through and then I started talking about another pocket Pikachu so even more people probably started leaving like those kin

d of shifts are very okay almost anticipated in a 10-minute YouTube video unacceptable for a one minute Tik Tok if I could do it all again I would just skip the whole part of me cleaning it skip the color pocket Pikachu and condense it down to just talking about the main unit how it works feeding him a lot of Watts after walking with it for a whole day but because I was making them every day I just didn't have time so anyway that's that's what came out of it I'm still proud of it I think it's a

really cool video I think it works better on YouTube than it does on Tik Tok so I don't know next up is the Guitar Hero LCD game this is the Guitar Hero LCD game from 2007 as you can hear it looks and sounds amazing with three songs and three difficulty levels for each song it offers an incredibly High quality gaming experience you can just throw your Nintendo directly into bin you don't need it anymore you have the perfect Guitar Hero experience right here right in front of you highly recommend

ed so this is around the time where I was trying to do more funny stuff I thought the idea of yelling over the loud guitar noises was funny so I played into it it did okay it doubled the views of the pocket Pikachu one but I I take the comedic tone even further with the next one not because this was such a rousing success but just cuz I found it really fun to make you guys like Windows 95 well have I got some Windows 95 for you today doesn't get any more Windows 95 year than this it's got Window

s 95 written all over the dang thing in fact of all of the things I could show you that have the potential to be Windows 95 this is quite literally the windows 995i a lot of you have been asking for me to show Windows 95 on my Tik Tok and I'm sure there'll be plenty of people in the comments like that's not Windows 995 enough you know I put so much time into trying to make my videos as Windows 95 as possible it's never good enough for you I get 40,000 emails on my Gmail account every single day

from people asking me to make my content more windows 995 I've been punched in the face by windows95 enthusiasts 95 different times to the point that I'm running out of faces for them to punch admittedly I don't even like Windows 95 all that much in fact I'm just doing it because people won't leave me alone I'm putting this video out there to let people know how I really feel this has to stop stop asking me about Windows 95 Windows 98 is already out I think it came out like 98 days ago and Windo

ws 2000 came out 2,000 years before that so yeah get with the times people window 95 is not even that cool guys the Microsoft Bob fandom is dying where all the Bob heads at so I realized after I filmed the video that no one is interested enough in a boxed copy of Windows 95 to watch an entire Tik Tok about it so I made that the joke and I just kept getting more and more insane and surreal as it went this video didn't perform beautifully but I loved coming up with the weird humor so much that I k

ept going in that direction what is this thing huh is this like a reference to something huh huh huh all I need to know is can it be killed I think I am killing it oh no never mind it's fine oh well I'll defeat you in battle later who's this other guy get him out of here it's you again kind of embarrassing but I heard this guy almost got killed earlier you know I'd be a lot more intimidated by this guy if he had some small cups oh my God I'm going to need some backup these are the smallest cups

I've ever seen huh huh huh huh one of the small cups literally has a picture of me on it well these are unprecedented circumstances if he's got small cups what else does he have I heard he has these playing cards that make the video Loop oh no what is this thing huh is this like a so I filmed a several items video in a similar format to the early ones but because I was doing the vo after the fact I could just inject surreal humor into it while the footage Remains the Same it performed okay it go

t 125,000 views but this style of video was so fun that I had it all culminate into the final video I did in this style here are some plastic circles from 1986 this thing was never opened it still has the original seal on it it's time to do the pey and peel the peel off ah if only it were a 30-year money back guarantee let's free the plastic circles from their cardboard prison we got Georgia the Jungle the Ant Bully and toy store the manual politely requests that I use Windows 98 what are you do

ing here uh fine you can help but I'm not going to be happy about it I inserted the plastic circle into the plastic Circle hole I was jumping up and down and Blasting farts like a weby cushion while waiting for the loading bar to fill up um kind of awkward no joystick driver found he he I am literally going to make brownies if I don't put this in full screen right now look out you're going to hit the logo a so you play as a cowboy in a toy store but yeah basically this game is old and sucks this

does not keep with today's standards the graphics they leave much to be desired the game play average at best and don't even get me started on the soundtrack I give toy store a one out of five did that computer just start talking shut up idiot die so this video had me crying laughing while I was editing it Tik Tok people tend to to like the several layers of irony kind of esoteric humor and it seemed like it tracked for the most part most people were in on the joke and that made me happy it was

really nice but a lot of people seemed to not get the joke I made when I showed each CD and intentionally said the wrong names and that made me not happy the Ant Bully dude that's not the Ant Bully that's Bug's Life did anyone notied that he said George of the Jungle instead of Tarzan yes that was the joke I thought it was funny I swear people on the internet just like to dodge my jokes like they're a matrix bullet so this next Tik Tok was another experiment to see if posing a question without

an answer would bring up engagement what is this thing I'm genuinely asking you to help me solve this mystery cuz I don't know what this is because the traces and solder joints are so large this was almost certainly made by hand to what end I don't know it's got a big red LCD and some ic's on the board when you flip it over you can see the quick wire connectors on the back most likely for power and IO and here's another handmade PCB that came with it and that PCB has has a wiring harness coming

out of it I assume they go into the quick connectors I don't know and there's yet another PCB with yet another wiring harness once again I don't know what for maybe this is like a prop for a movie like they were trying to make a visually arbitrary electronic device so that the main character could diffuse a bomb or something but yeah I'm genuinely stumped Engineers of Tik Tok please leave your comments to tell me what the hell this thing is so I wanted to see if people would try to figure out wh

at the thing is because I actually didn't know but instead a few people made some jokes and the Tik Tok died it 60k views go figure I essentially just handed the commenters a chore to do of course they didn't do it so the next one is the culmination of everything I had learned so far and would be my first viral Tik Tok enjoy welcome to cube world this was definitely one of my Most Wanted toys of 2005 it's a little Stickman what does he do well I'll show you you can tip him all around and he obey

s gravity usually Stickman wouldn't concern themselves with such things but this one sure does he even got so dizzy that he barfed on the floor but that's not all the real fun begins when you click a a couple of them together and then they will interact and hang out one of them will go to the other one's house and then do whatever this is I don't know what he's doing you can add even more cubes to increase the amount of antics look they're throwing hands down there somebody better stop them befo

re someone gets hurt everyone I knew that had Cube World had like a million of them because you could link all of them together and it's just this cacophony of noise and visuals and there's so much stuff going on it's like an ADHD child's dream and I definitely did dream about these I really wanted this toy I also have these big cubes that you can attach to the cube Matrix but unfortunately these have suffered major corrosion damage so they don't work anymore it's a huge shame I would have loved

to show these off cube world has so much personality with its animations and everything I love this toy I think it's great thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one it has one topic that's interesting and funny and the excitement builds as more Cube worlds get added to the Matrix I brought up the Big Cube worlds that don't work and I knew people would leave comments telling me how to fix them this video has 6.2 million views I'm not even surprised I knew knew it would check

all the boxes when I uploaded it and I was right there were literally so many comments about people telling me how to fix the cube worlds that I made a video fixing them which I will show you now a ton of you asked me to fix my corroded Cube worlds your wish is my command a lot of you are being super helpful in the comments and I appreciate it but I'm already very familiar with the process of dealing with corrosion I release a Tik Tok every single day so it's not that I don't know how it's just

that I didn't have time anyway let's get to fixing these things so the first thing we have to do is open it up and see if the PCB is corroded it looks pristine I don't see any corrosion at all in here and that's a really good thing cuz it means that the only thing that's corroded is the battery compartment so I can close it back up and work on it externally I used a wet paper towel to clean up a lot of the dry battery leakage then I put some alcohol and a Q-tip to scrub the battery contact point

s then I went over with a dry towel to get rid of the alcohol so let's throw some batteries in and see if that worked nope still dead is a door nail won't do a thing I gave it the old one two reset still nothing the correct answer is for me to soak the battery compartment parts to dissolve the corrosion but I don't want to wait that long so we're busting out the soldering iron basically I'm using the iron to melt a ball of solder directly onto the batter battery contact and yeah that totally wor

ked this thing has been brought back from the dead we'll take a look at this guy in just a minute but we have one more that we have to fix put some batteries into it nothing NADA alcohol on a Q-tip and scrubbing the contacts conveniently the corrosion on this one wasn't anywhere near as bad as the previous one but that 3 minutes of scrubbing was enough to bring this guy back to life these big Cube worlds do a really good job of being Big Cube worlds they are very annoying the the sound effects a

re so loud on these I'm lowering the audio and post but these are really loud they fill the room the high res resolution screen makes a huge difference this thing just looks awesome now they're all living in the same apartment complex together here they are thank you so much for all the love you guys have given me over the past few days I'm thankful that I get to entertain and make you guys laugh and seeing you guys bounce that energy back at me with your comments is has been awesome also I got

a ton of comments of people asking what happens when you remove a cube while someone's visiting so here's what happens they both get Thanos snapped and turned to dust and then the dust flies around for a while and then they reform in their respective cubes thanks for watching and I'll see you next time so immediately after the cube world video I got to work on my next one where I attempted to capture a similar vibe in the prehistoric Year of 2010 humans Ed the ancient form of currency known as s

illy bands children would wear them on their wrist as a status symbol the more restricted your blood flow was to your hand the cooler you were no but actually it was a real problem back then but they're colorful and they're fun and they come in a million different shapes such as Cat music seahorse uh banana peel woman Terrier [Music] I assume it's a bone electric guitar and a sheriff star and a football go that's upside down that one's a duck he go quink uh I don't know I don't know that one sil

ly bands are so good because it's like sometimes it'll be like that's a star and then other times it's like your guess is as good as mine rotate it all around I don't know what this is I don't know about you guys but my favorite silly band shapes are the huh and the uh what you guys don't want the silly band that shaped like a well fine there's more for me then I'm going to need every silly band I can get if I'm going to be the coolest kid on the playground no but actually if you want me to open

more of these let me know thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one this video got 4 million views it went so viral that silly bands themselves reached out to me and sent me a box in the mail so of course I made a video about that too silly band sent me a box in the mail this was a gift I'm not being sponsored a sorted heart themed pack SpongeBob pack pack and assorted shiny pack looking at that makes my brain Sparkle there's two sets of rock bands and a Yo Gaba Gaba pack an

d they included an entire bucket of more Angry Birds Marvel superheroes and these sanitizer bracelets I've never heard of or seen these before this looks like a rock bands pack but there's only three bands in there breast cancer awareness bracelets Troy Le silly bands so they're motorcycle themed dinosaurs sea creatures and zoo pet bands and then another assorted set in a cool bag and then there's a rad bands in youth size probably won't fit on me thank you silly bands for sending me a box that

is so gloriously 2010 so let's open up one of the assorted packs and try to guess what they are a look it is a sleeping wormus oh wait no that's just the letter G it took me a second but this is SpongeBob oh this is a baseball men about to throw a pitch this one is a pine and this one is a gecko but these ones are absolute Mysteries and you guys are just going to have to guess them because I don't know my collection has grown much larger thanks to silly bands themselves thanks for watching I'll

see you in the next one this Lake ain't big enough for the two of us this video performed poorly but that's fair it's a response to another video I made it makes sense but yeah the next Tik Tok I made I really thought it was a filler video that wasn't going to go anywhere and yet it also went viral so here it is this is the most absurd controller design I have ever seen it has an enormous arcade style joystick and a paw-shaped configuration of buttons If you flip the controller over it has this

switch which allows you to move the joystick to the other side I love to see the Southpaw inclusivity and here's the console in question it's a VTEC V smile it's a kids video game machine from 2004 and I have it loaded up with the best game game based on the best movie Shrek thei except this is actually Shrek and donkey's Pro Shrek border I've been waiting my entire life to see Shrek get on a skateboard and Shred if Shrek the Third had a skateboarding Focus plot I think that movie would actually

be a lot more enjoyable I also have another vs smile controller that has like a little writing pad built into it but I don't have the matching game for it so I don't have a way to show you how it works but yeah thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one 3 and 1 half million views what is happening I greatly underestimated just how recognizable the V smile was I thought no one had ever heard of this thing and I was wrong I was just wrong everyone knows what this thing is someh

ow a ton of people in the comments thought I was being mean to the V smile but I wasn't I think it's awesome I I'm really genuinely not sure why so many people were commenting you know like half ironically right but they were like no don't be mean to it stop stop being mean to it I don't know what I said that implied that I was being mean to or even disliked it I said that it was absurd but it is absurd it's super quirky look at this thing this is a weird controller do people think absurd is an

insult it isn't and this person even went so far to scream their lungs out at me about it design I have ever seen be nice I I left the comment that they were cool about it you know much love anyway let's look at the Sonic toaster back in 2018 I really honestly thought the Sonic toaster was a joke the concept of a machine that burns Sonic's face in Deer bread was so insanely stupid that I I didn't think it was real I put money down on their crowd fund not expecting anything but they called my blu

ff actually made it a real product so I put some delicious Martin's butterbread in there and we're going to see what happens will you guys believe me if I told you that this is the only toaster I have ever owned that's why it looks visibly used is because I've used it hundreds of times anyway our toast is done let's take a look at it ow it's too hot ow it's hot ow it's still really hot you can see it look there It Is Well time to have the same breakfast I have every day Sonic toast with assorted

Rusty screws if you can't tell I'm trying to get into the salty spatoon thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so this video did pretty well it got nearly 300,000 views you know I'll take it I was worried the rusty screws bit wouldn't land but enough people got the SpongeBob reference that I'd say it tracked anyway yeah cool next video here it is introducing the worst Dance Dance Revolution thing since Supernova it's the DDR DVD game yeah we love the DDR DVD game thanks M

om well they seem to like it let's see what all the fuss is about well there's the DVD in question and here are the dance pads which are paper flat vinyl plastic although it does say right on the back that they are only plastic training mats why bother developing a video game when you can just have kids use their imaginations you might as well open a YouTube video of someone else playing DDR and pretend you're playing it yourself of course I have a real DDR softpad right here for us to compare a

gainst the training mat doesn't even work well as a training mat because it is noticeably smaller this product is so so bizarre and so specific the fact that it exists at all is baffling to me I have tons and tons more DDR stuff if you guys are interested in seeing it but for now thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one if you guys really want to know why Supernova was the worst let let me know because there is so much lore behind that it could justify an entire 30 45 minute

1 hour YouTube video on its own aside from that one of the music producers for DDR saw that Tik Tok and left a comment and that was pretty cool anyway yeah here's the next video this 2006 laptop was designed to teach kids in developing nations how to code they were rugged and cheap and you could charge them with a solar panel every time you would buy one they would gift one to a kid in Africa the initiative was called One Laptop per child and you may have heard of them from the TV ads they did

15 years ago although the initiative was was heavily criticized at the time and in retrospect they did produce some very interesting Hardware look at this you can break its neck and flop it down and now it's a little tablet even though it's not a touchscreen I can't really think of any other laptop that's designed for kids to teach them how to code on Linux it's really unique so it earns some points for me just for being weird thank you for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one so t

his video got like almost a million views it got 900,000 views I do regret it being so short but I feel like the reason it got so big is because it was shorter like if I went into too much extraneous detail like it's a laptop right it's a Linux laptop I don't think it would have done as well if I had gone into the detail of what a Linux laptop does but I kind of liked this niche of talking about weird kids devices so I kept going with that Hey look it's a Leapster which is essentially an educati

onal game boy it's got a d-pad and buttons and a stylus for the touchcreen I bet these cartridges were worth their weight in gold when they were new so let's pop it in and take a look at what it's like I wasn't expecting these games to be full 3d they look on par with late era DS games these controls feel great too I'm very impressed for some reason I had it in my head that this thing is from like 2004 but this is a very late model the Leapster GS explorer came out in like 2010 so that explains

why the games look so good is cuz this thing's really late the reason I bought the Leapster GS Explorer is because the whole thing runs on Linux so some really smart Linux people figured out how to hack it and make it run emulators although I never got around to actually doing it but the Leapster already has a huge feature set on its own it can play games read books download apps kids can make their own animations it has a camera and a microphone so kids can can make movies the fact that this th

ing retailed for $70 is ridiculous that's just a good deal I would have been a little too old for it when it released but the kids that grew up with one of these they had it real good thank you so so much for watching shelf shorts I will see you guys in the next one so I really thought the Leapster video would go big in the same way the V smile video did but I think this thing was too late for most of the Tik Tok user base to be nostalgic for it got 65k views that's not bad but a lot of the comm

ents said that they had the Leap Pad instead so I have one I showed it off next hey check it out it's a Leap Pad it's an educational kids tablet that came out around 2010 it's unfortunate that they don't make these anymore because I think this would be a much better option than just giving a kid an iPad and letting them experience the dumpster fire that is the App Store it has lots of built-in creative apps too so kids can draw and make movies all of the cartridges for the Leapster Explorer also

work on the leap pad Explorer and my immediate thought was okay what about buttons there are some games that require buttons but yeah they totally thought of that you just turn the device sideways use the d-pad and then on the right side there are virtual A and B button honestly it works really well but there are games that are designed for the Leapster smaller screen so for games like that they just kept the screen small and then put a nice border around it because the Leap Pad came out later

I think the screen looks a lot better than the leapsters but later games would have two different screen modes a smaller one for the Leapster and a larger one for the Leap Pad so this My Little Pony game doesn't have a border it just runs in full screen but yeah the Leap Pad is a really really cool Gadget I dig it this and the Leapster Explorer have genuinely impressed me I didn't think they would be quite this good but yeah thank you guys so much for watching shelf shorts I will see you guys on

your for you page again real soon if I had sandwiched the Leapster and Leap Pad videos together they wouldn't have reached their full potential I think that's the biggest takeaway I can give is like give each topic its own video like spread them out it always seems to pay off for me this video got nearly double the views as the Leapster one so now we're going into the final video I made for the month of January 20q was everywhere in the early 2000s it was unavoidable and for good reason it's th

e classic 20 Questions game on a fun little device sometimes it look like this this sometimes they look like this and sometimes they even look like this but I can do you one better introducing the 20q party Deluxe I hope you have some C batteries sitting around because there is no power adapter you have to put CA batteries in it when I was a kid I used to call these kind of screens Holograms but they're actually called POV displays of course it looks better in real life than it does on camera th

at's just the nature of these kind of things but take my word for it when I say this thing looks great the idea was that you were supposed to plop the 20q orb in the middle of the table and IT project its display on both sides of the orb so everyone in the family can see it it also has a remote control so you don't have to rely on the buttons on the thing so it's time to put this thing to the test I decided to think of a sea lion one of those creatures that's just obscure enough that it might fo

ol it so I did my best to answer the 20 questions as accurately as I could and when I didn't know the answer I hit unknown and it incorrectly guessed wallus but the game's not over yet it has 10 more questions and then it actually got it right it did guess sea lion and I Was Defeated yeah you can gloat all you want you've earned earned it 20q is a really cool toy and the party Deluxe with its cool laser display is is just totally sick thanks for watching shelf shorts I'll see you in the next one

I know I showed multiple things in this video but I think they all perform the exact same function and are just different shapes of the same device like I feel like it's an exception and I mainly focused on the party Deluxe anyway I can't really say how this video performed because I only uploaded it yesterday as of the time of filming but yeah that's it that's all 31 shelf shorts videos I made all in all this experience has been amazing I've been surrounded by so much toxicity on YouTube and D

iscord and I've distanced myself so much from the internet over the years just because the weight of it all can be so much to bear sometimes I'd lost contact with the feeling of putting something out there and getting a response that felt tangible it all just feels like noise at this point but Tik Tok has this feature called Stitch where people can take your video and add their video at the end sort of like a video reply looking through all of the stitches people did made me so happy take a look

this 2006 laptop was designed to teach kids in developing nations how to code my God I never ever ever ever ever ever thought I would ever see one of those things ever again one of the coolest things I ever had the privilege of interacting with I bet you've never heard of this Nintendo Gadget it's a pocket Pikachu no I've still got one here it works too but the screen's pretty dim there's also a second one with a color screen that worked with Pokémon Gold and Silver like You' convert steps into

gifts in the game I had it way back but lost it running across the street one day to catch a bus it's a kids video game machine from 2004 that came out in 2004 I remember playing like a Cars game on it trippy bitter Nostalgia getting to see genuine Joy on people's faces as they unearth pleasant memories because of my videos reminded me why I make videos in the first place that kind of joy is what I want to package up and deliver to people so thank you Tik Tok for giving me the inspiration to ke

ep making cool stuff there's a lot coming down the pipeline I have really big plans for this year and this is just the beginning of it so goodbye Space Cadets I will see you [Music] soon