While CES 2026 Looked Ahead, In This CES Segment, We Look Back!
To contrast the new gadgets from CES 2026 we always look back at a gadget of a past CES and wonder: “Did it ever get produced? Is it still for sale?” Here’s a look at the Hackaball, a kid’s programmable LED ball. I saw it at CES 2016, exactly 10 years ago. Here’s the video of it and the post on our website about the Hackaball. And when you watch this week’s show you’ll find out about what happened to this device after the CES 2026 show. Here’s the Giz Wiz Show about Hackaball. There are lots of other gadgets from CES ten years ago too. If you just want to see the Hackaball demo start the video at about 22:57
https://www.gizwiz.tv/episode/1555
Letter of the week:
It’s from Ivan Hahn, not only a contributor to the show, but a creator of several of our videos and themew! Ivan emails us:
Hi Dick and Chad,
Last episode you spoke about the Kodak Super 8mm camera that is was $5000.00. Assuming you (Dick) had a film movie camera, which one did you have and how much was it? I know you spoke about filming “home movies” at the Match Game. Ivan Hahn
The Giz Wiz answers: Hi Ivan! On this week’s show you’ll get a bit of the backstage story of shooting 8mm film (yes, film) at the Match Game Show. I often asked celebrities appearing on the show to do a few seconds of something silly for the 8mm movies I made. That photo is a frame=shot from a video with Jayne Mansfield and lucky me. — And Ivan, thanks for various themes and videos you created for the Giz Wiz show! Including our latest Letters Theme!
