Hi, everyone! Happy New Year's Eve! 🥳
To ring in 2023, I wanted to do a fun post concerning a topic I've been disgruntled about for many years: Novelty NYE glasses.
What began as a simple tradition in the aughts has turned out some of the ugliest novelty glasses the world has ever seen.
And who picked up on this bizarre trend to mock it back in the day? Why, Bo of course!
Bo is clearly my kindred spirit here—why would you even bother with manufacturing these stupid glasses when you don't have zeroes for the eyes? Ugh
By the way, I found two replies to this tweet that freaked me out over how prescient they were.
Oh, KB, you have NO idea how right you are (cries in 2022).
Living in the future, huh pehelwaan? Haha
Anyway, seeing Bo's tweet from a decade ago reminded me that things truly are terrible for NYE glasses in the year of Our Lord 2023.
I found a couple articles about this ephemeral phenomenon (what do you even DO with the stupid glasses afterward? So wasteful), and I read a MEL magazine interview with the creators pre-2020 (even they realized that after 2009 there would be issues):
Finally, he decided 2009 would be his last year. Besides, he knew the designs would suffer: “2010 didn’t work well at all.”
Sclafani’s confident, however, that the remaining manufacturers will find a way to manage. “The same thing happened after 2010, but that didn’t stop them. People came up with a lot of different ways to get around it — for example, they just made it a big fat 1 with a hole in the middle. But they were nowhere near as pretty as ours were. Ours were so nice and symmetrical. So they’ll probably just put a big 2 with a hole in it — something like that, but it won’t look good.”
He's right—the symmetry of the aughts has been completely ruined due to capitalistic greed. And BOY did they decide to put a hole in the 2! Haha
Let's take a look at some of the absolute worst in celebratory spectacles for this year!
The year sits on top of the glasses
This has to be the laziest of all the options. Yes, I can clearly see the year, but these are just cheap frames with balloons attached.
Still garbage and low effort all around, but at least you can reuse them—you'll look like a festive Buddy Holly though.
While the year on top looks stupid, there are much, MUCH uglier glasses than these!
There is no second lens, obviously, so one of your eyes is blocked partially (or even completely)
This seems to be a popular trend this year—you can't see out of them well AND they are practically indecipherable (is it 2023 or 2003? The world may never know haha).
By the way, anyone telling you 2020 should have been the final year because of the zeroes is talking bullshit—this was a pair of glasses I kept on my phone since December 31, 2019 (yes, I have hated this trend for many, MANY years).
They didn't use the second zero, so big hole in a 2 it is (they still do this ugh)!
Doesn't the last one look incredible and not fake at all?
I also can't help but compare the young girl doing the goofy face to Bo in White Woman's Instagram!
But that's nothing compared to the travesty that is the worst of the worst in novelty NYE glasses:
Throw any old shit on cheap frames—the more outlandish, the better!
Happy 20203, everyone! (smacks head)
And this trend of numbers on top of each other is not necessarily new, judging by this 2016 pair (or is it a fancy 2018? Lol) and this 20109 look.
But the creme de la creme is this monstrosity that is the definition of "Ah, fuck it.": Let's add some lights to the sides so people don't notice how awful and poorly made it is!
It's so bad that Party City doesn't even include a picture of a model wearing this on their website haha.
I hope you've enjoyed this quick post about the stupidity of making NYE glasses past 2009.
Here's two bonus items from my 10-year-old daughter (she insisted lol):
The BEST 2023 glasses (look at the symmetry and the curve of the 3 for the lens!)
And the Worst—I have no idea wtfigo here. It's Christmas-themed, Santa is wearing a mask (I think?), you can barely see the three, and there's a roll of toilet paper instead of a zero. So confusing haha.
Thanks for reading, and Happy New Year!
