"I wish I'd thought of that!"

Have you ever read about some new product, shaken your head and said: "Now, why didn't I think of that?" You're not alone. Throughout history, people have been saying the same thing.

But inventing a new product and bringing it to market is no guarantee of success. Remember electric letter-openers? Freeze-dried banana cereal? Same-day Zap mail? No? Well, history is littered with failures. For every billion-dollar success story, a fortune is lost on something that looked like a winner and turned out to be a bust.

The inventions and products in these pages all began as somebody's crazy idea. Some of them, such as photography, seemed near impossible before they became a reality. All of them needed hard work, vision, determination and promotion before they caught on. What once seemed wacky are often today as normal as apple pie. At one time, however, Coca-Cola and Vaseline Petroleum Jelly were regarded as pretty bizarre. Other inventions that caught on in a big way, such as the Pet Rock and Lava Lites, still seem completely nutty! And what about Mickey Mouse - a two-legged, talking rodent in pants who has a girlfriend and hangs out with a short-tempered duck in a sailor suit? Whoever would have guessed he'd be such a hit?

In these pages, you'll find the old and the new, the practical and impractical, the weird and the sensible: all of them a tribute to the imagination and passion of their creators.