I had every one of these items including a transparent teal pager. i didn't have many friends nobody ever paged me but if you were trying to fit in you thought it might help.
I did like the conair phones though I took the one pictured in the op image and turned it into a lineman's handset (thanks 2600!). They were doing construction across the street and I snuck over there in the night, hooked my handset up to the service drop and called 1-900 sex lines to troll the gals. Only they were getting paid and did not give a fuck they were happy to keep 13yo me on the line. I screwed something up and caused a huge spark and small boom and never went back because i was worried i had damaged something and they would be looking for me.
I love the idea that a product was created to prevent prisoners from smuggling heroin, but then someone said "You know, I bet that would sell great at Sharper Image."
Welp, that's enough dystopian reality for me today. I was actually hoping to have these for repairability and easier chip identification, but nope, built for prisons you say...
Yeah. They are often very locked down and lack features you would normally expect - especially connectivity and configurability.
There's a Youtube vid where a guy gets hold of one and the hoops he had to go through to install his own OS and get it to run some games... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRoRPiDOtUg
Most clear things will look bad after a short time of use, if you have to touch them. They will get scratched or greasy and dirt will become visible in hard to clean areas.
Had none of that with my clear gameboy pocket, that boy was plugged into a wall socket most of the time because of how much pokemon i played on it.
But tbh i wasn't really a greasy kid, i remember friends controllers which were sticky af and made me not want to play because of how gross it made me feel.
I had an atomic purple gameboy at one point and I miss that thing dearly.
I really enjoy seeing the components of a thing and most of my mechanical keyboards have translucent or semi-translucent cases.
They’re not high-tech, but “demonstrator” editions of fountain pens also hit this vibe.
And if anyone is curious, I’m pretty sure the watch in this image is a Swatch JellyFish (or an imitation). Swatch still makes watches like this, but this style is called Clearly Gent now.