Touchscreens (in the end). In the beginning, it was seen as a nice gimmicky feature but unusable. Like AR glasses at the moment. -u/Positive-Vase-Flower

The Internet. In the early days when it stopped being solely for universities and government, people, media, etc. was unsure what to make of it and how useful it would be. -u/naxoxe

The Hitachi Magic Wand -u/Button_

Smartphones. Literally, the majority of people have them. -u/alemar2142

The miniseries Chernobyl. Just watched it again last night for the umpteenth time. -u/eleanor61

I was a kid with a Nintendo Power subscription reading about Ocarina of Time for a year. There was no internet for me at this time. I made my mom drive to all the stores to buy it for Christmas and it was better than the hype. Very few things have been like this. -u/RedshiftOnPandy

Iron Man (2008). "Alright, a movie made by Marvel, how bad could it be?" -u/Stephenburnett98

Lionel Messi. Every time when an Argentine young player comes up he is hyped to be the next Maradona. But many faded from halfway in their career. Messi was hyped way too much in that regard from the age of 17. Now almost at the end of his career, most of the football lovers and pundits consider him on par or above Maradona on footballing ability. -u/yhkesh

Bioshock. I still remember all the great trailers set to Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea" and how cool the plasmids looked and the flooded art deco aesthetic. Then the game turned out to be even better than expected. -u/kitskill

The Xbox. For a Microsoft product, it was actually pretty damn good. -u/robertlandrum

Windows 95. I remember all the advertising and training classes at work. Turns out it had a lot of good features, including the "start" button. -u/BaconReceptacle

F**king heelies. I saw a kid roll in with them the other day. I’m 23 and all I could think about was how much cooler this 11-year old was than me. -u/WntrTmpst

Spotify premium -u/GP-NC

The Lord of The Rings trilogy. -u/Lostmyjefflapassword

DOOM. Rip and tear. -u/solarft

The Dark Knight. I remember the hype train being like no other movie I can remember. Wonderfully orchestrated media really harnessed the internet in all the right ways. I started to think the movie was gonna be all hype and little substance. When the Joker put the pencil through that guy's head, it was all over for me. Within the first quarter of the movie, I was already declaring it the best superhero flick I ever saw (at the time) -u/chrishooley

Super Mario 3 -u/I_might_be_weasel

The iPod. Steve Jobs said it was going to revolutionize the way we listen to music and it absolutely did. -u/BeeEyeAm

Red Dead Redemption 2 -u/MK_fan_835

I would argue that Thanos not only met expectations, he EXCEEDED them. Josh Brolin gives this portrayal of a villain convinced that he knows what is right for the entire cosmos. He has his personal reasons for why he wants to kill off half of everything in the universe. No monologues about describing his scheme, just a simple plan of getting the Infinity Stones and knowing how to manipulate the Avengers into basically giving him what he wants. And it just f**king works. He has ungodly strength, yet he can f**k with his opponent without even raising a finger. -u/Wonder_Buster

Lebron James. He was hyped as the next Michael Jordan. ESPN was covering his high school games. It was said that if he didn't become a hall of famer then he's a bust. Not only did he live up to the hype, but he also exceeded it. He became 1b to Jordan's 1a. -u/JADlloyd

Arcane on Netflix, to name a recent one. -u/Cakehunt3r

Hamilton. Fully expected to be disappointed after all the hype. Blew me away!