Top 25 "It" products of all time: #9 -- The Wii

I am the benchmark. By the time a consumer electronic product makes it into my hands, you know it's become a cultural icon. And so it is with the Wii.

Because I'm not playing. I don't care about TV, video games, electronics or being at all hooked-in to today's world. I'd heard of Wii, of course. But I wasn't interested. At. All. I didn't care how many accolades I read, how much hype was thrown at me. I would not have anything to do with Nintendo's Wii.

As is always the case with these things, however, it's the younger generation that bring us along, kicking and screaming.

My kids got their first taste of Wii at friends' house (everyone else seems to have one already.) And by the time our neighbor brought hers over for the kids to play, you'd have thought she'd offered them free Disneyland passes for life. After watching them play Wii bowling for an hour, I let myself be talked into trying it myself. And normally I don't even like bowling.