#326 – Pet

I’m too young to remember the pet rock craze of 1975. It’s interesting though how marketing can get us to do things that we wouldn’t have done before. I still remember how hilarious it was when bottled water started to be mass marketed. “Who would pay money for a bottle of water?!?” Now we can’t understand how we could ever have lived without it.

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51 thoughts on “#326 – Pet”

  1. Michael says:

    I have a pet rock. such a waste of a dollar.

  2. Alex H says:

    What always cracks me up is people will scream about paying 90cents or whatever for a litre of gas and then happily pay a 1.75 for a 500ml bottle of water.

  3. Micah says:

    I bet if he feeds it more, it’ll become Mt. Biff.

    1. Antsan says:

      And when he finds a wife then there’s Mr. Biff, Mrs. Biff and Mt. Biff. 😛

  4. Drak says:

    Shoot. I have friends that have all sorts of inanimate pets. But bottled water? I dunno. I must have not been around when it first came out, but yeah, bottled water is nice to have.

  5. pieman says:

    what is a pet rock?

  6. Jolser says:

    Ha, that one was pretty good.

    I’m glad I am a child of the 80’s (although worse things have come from the 80s), I had to use wikipedia to find out exactly what a pet rock is.

  7. Imaginary says:

    Isn’t it obvious? It’s a little rock that comes in a cardboard cage box and is sold as a pet for people (for varying reasons) who can’t own something living and would rather not own something dead.

    Hehe, it’d be cool if they actually grew like that.

  8. Imaginary says:

    As a side note, I’m a 90’s baby. >>;; But my aunt had a pet rock and it stayed at my grandmothers house, thus, I know what it is…

  9. SEA says:

    I guess the pet rock eats alot doesn’t it…
    I have never seen a pet rock before,and seeing one now won’t make a difference,lol

  10. KungKong says:

    I always had a Furby or a Tamagotchi myself growing up in the 90’s and all.

  11. Charlotte says:

    My mother bought both my sister and I little pet rocks that had googely eyes stuck to them from a craft fair as Christmad presents one year. They didn’t have cages but had birth certificates so you could name them.

    I’m just glad they don’t eat anything, mine’s sat next to all my computer games.

  12. A Captain says:

    Every time I buy a bottle of water, a little part of me dies. I absolutely hate the stuff, but, yes, it *is* convenient. At times. Doesn’t make me dislike it any less. >:-[

    As for pet rocks, I’d probably kill mine off through negligence. I had some fish for a few months, but I didn’t rinse the bowl thoroughly enough when I washed it and they died of Sunlight poisoning, I think. 🙁

    I’m surprised my dog is as old as he is. 😉

  13. Dr. Doom says:

    My parents wouldn’t trust me with rocks or furbys, so I started talking to my pencil in school. They tried to put me through therapy.

  14. Bullet Fiend says:

    I have always hated the pet rock concept, even if I wasn’t around to “enjoy” it. I always figured: What a waste of: Money, time and dignity. I apologize if anyone here liked it though.

    I mean really,……Pet….Rock…?

    Who came up with this and why?

    I might have liked this comic better if the rock was bursting out the side of the house.

  15. Yakboy says:

    I was suckered into buying a pet rock in grade 4. Also, I actually still don’t see the point of bottled water.

  16. Gobbledegook says:

    Mount Biff… hehe… Good one, Micah.

    I never had inanimate pets, but after a while all of my pets eventually stopped moving… Does that count?

    P.S. – a “while” means their natural life span… I’m not THAT psychotic.

  17. Trip Hazard says:

    I once had a rock garden. Three of them died. — Harper, “Andromeda”

  18. Jerowaka says:

    my best guess is that pet rocks were made up by a certain briliant person,that found a way to sell ordinary rocks, at a way too high price

  19. Kanki-chan says:

    Meh, I remember the Furby and Tamagotchi craze, but my school kept confiscating all of the little Tamagotchis, so anyone who had one in my class had to start over everyday, until eventually the little batteries died off. I never did see what happened if you let the little suckers live…

  20. Hanii Puppy says:

    why does bottled spring water that has “trickled through rocks for centuries” have a sell-by date?

  21. Seraphine says:

    haha Biff’s pet rock is getting boulder and boulder.

  22. John Gardner says:

    That is going to teach Biff not to take his pet rock for granite!

  23. Paul says:

    I love bottled water but only a certain kind called zephyrhills I think you can only get it here in florida, but it is delicious. It kinda helps you buy bottled water when the tap water tastes as bad as it does.

  24. SpriteMeister says:

    Agh! Seraphine’s pun, it has killed me! *dies exaggeratedly*

    Anyway, I would like to know where to get some rock chow. So far I’ve been feeding mine rock candy, and it probably has diabetes.

  25. Green says:

    Bottled water is that new? Come to think of it, I couldn’t really imagine bottled water being popular any time before the 80’s..The stuff really keeps me going at school. You just throw in a buck, and out pops a nice bottle of cold, clear, filtered water. The alternative is sticking your head in a hole in the wall that wreaks of mucous, hair, and bubble gum. Call me posh.

  26. CojoinedCows says:

    Friends of mine at the university keep complaining about having to carry sixpacks of 1,5 litre bottles of water. Sometimes female friends ask me to carry it up the stairs for them. Once I told one of them I had a surprise for her. I came into her appartment with the bottles, threw them into a corner saying “You won’t need those anymore.”
    Then I went into the kitchen and turned on the tap. “SURPRISE! I had some contractors build a pipeline carrying fresh, clear drinking water directly into your kitchen. And it’s almost free!” She wasn’t amused and threw me out.
    Meh, who needs water. I just drink beer anyway.

  27. guest says:

    I don’t really like the concept of bottled water,
    mainly because the companies lie and over-charge.

    Although in areas where the tap-water is just awful(like my grandmothers)I can understand why people buy it. Although it’d be better to just buy jugs of water.

  28. FWTrump says:

    I myself, would only buy bottled water only to store somewhere for emergency purposes, in case I was ever going to be trapped in my house for any reason and the water pipes wouldn’t work. Otherwise, just as everone else had already said, you are essentially buying purified tap water. I actually had to laugh when people started to sue and protest some bottled water vendors for not making this clear, when it seemed obvious to me, from day one.
    Another note, it surprises me that people are actually saying that they never head of the pet rock. I mean, I barely have recollection of the tail end of the 80’s and even I knew of the pet rock. It just seemed like obvious trivia for me.

  29. Goodguy says:

    I was only born in the late 80’s, and i’ve heard of a pet rock, and may have owned one at some point, but by then, they’ve evolved googley eyes

  30. Teela says:

    My dad says that when he was in grad school studying to be geologist that his roommate gave him the pet rock breeding kit, which was a box with two large rocks and a fair amout of gravel.

  31. NDDR says:

    i had a pet rock, mine had a tail, googly eyes n legs stuck on it, looked kinda like a rat, which was kool. but then it died so i had to bury it.

    i wonder if there are any home for abandoned pet rocks around?

  32. Aaron David Francis Atienza says:

    The only reason I drink bottled water is because usually since I’m outside I dont have any other way to transport water, and tap water tastes like blood so I dont use those refillable ones.

    My favourite are those water coolers for the house, because those taste fine and theyre pretty cheap to buy as well, and then I can use those Nalgene bottles instead and I save about sixty dollars a week.

    I was more in the Beanie Baby craze at the time so those furry little things were my pets.

    Nowadays Webkins are the “in” thing for lil children all around the globe

  33. Giga says:

    I don’t drink water at all – I’ve grown to dislike the taste of any type of water, bottled or not.

    I drink Sprite, if only for the taste. And milk because I grew up on it.

    But nothing else.

  34. Plumpy says:

    If you go around my high school, 3/4 of the kids have some sort of bottled water. I personally think it’s ridiculous. We have water fountains, and they’re not that bad.

    And soda. Good lord, the soda costs less than the water bottles at school!

    WHY WOULD YOU DRINK WATER RATHER THAN DIET COKE?

  35. dragonbrad says:

    pieman, how do you not know what a pet rock is, its a toy from the 70 or 80 era, to prehistoric to remember

  36. Radical Edward says:

    Let’s hope his pet rock is housebroken! (See Family Guy for more info)

  37. Neteeee says:

    I always drink tap water, I usually carry around a bottle of it when I go out. I only drink bottled water if I’m out and forgot to bring some. I usually don’t taste any difference, although the tap water in some places does really taste like blood, and I swear that once I drunk tap water that tasted like fish.

    Damn I want a pet rock. I would have kicked ass in the seventies.

  38. Neteeee says:

    Oh and by the way, the bottled water in our school is also more expensive than the sodas. It’s completely retarded, because right next to the soda machine you can just get water for free.

  39. ~SyM~ says:

    The water at my school tastes like metal. I think bottled water is so popular because it’s easy to believe it’s cleaner. The problem with storing bottles of water is the plastic slowly leeches into the water over time. That’s why I use glass bottles.

  40. Psymon says:

    I wouldn’t be old enough to remember the pet rock, but somehow I know what it is. I don’t buy water bottles; however, I do fill plastic bottles with filtered water and carry them around when I go out. It has almost the convenience of bottled water, and costs nearly as little as tap water—not to mention it has the added bonus that I know where the water has been and what’s in the bottle. You don’t know what might have gotten bottled with the water at the factory.
    I couldn’t use a glass bottle—I drop things too often.

  41. KZero says:

    I still live without bottled water. Because it is retarted.

  42. Marr965 says:

    Bottled water doesn’t meet EU regulations for tap water…

  43. Ansrit says:

    Who’d pay for a pet rock? I found cool-looking rocks in the schoolgrounds when I was around ten years old, and googly eyes are rather inexpensive. Also, I live without bottled water, it’s easy.

    I, too, was more of a Tamagochi kid, at least for a while. I got a spin-off penguin-shaped plastic little thing, as did my brother. Also, I got a POWER-RANGERS ONE as a present! The little plastic device was shaped like the Lost Galaxy Megazord, you could take the bird off from it’s back and connect it to another one to play VS battles and stuff. (My brother got another one too, but this one had a different color scheme).

    Sadly, we both lost them both. ;_;

  44. Amake says:

    Interesting tidbit: Before Vademecum was marketed, bad breath wasn’t considered a social blunder.

  45. Romano Giovanni says:

    When I was younger, I had a rock sanctuary. I would comb the beaches and the streets to find rocks in need of a good home and rescue them.

  46. Shadowlord9k says:

    I DUB THEE…Wang the rock

  47. SurveySays says:

    i was a 90’s child…we had little electronic pets on keychains that were harder than heck to keep alive. you had to do anything you could to keep it out of the vet b/c the vet just put the pet down and you’d have to find a toothpick to poke the tiny ”reset’ button on the back and do it again.

  48. Tech says:

    I used tho think that way. Then I found out they flouridate our water supply. It’s good for your teeth, but causes problems in the rest of you.

    1. Rik says:

      Yeah, there’s silt and God knows what else in my city’s water supply, due to earthquakes. Bottled water is nice to have, chlorine and silt don’t taste good.

  49. Marscaleb says:

    This page made me laugh out loud.

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