The late 1990s and early 2000s consumer electronics industry's industrial design was collectively the fucking demoscene of injection molding.
silver plastics!
@coryw Like, this came up in an IRC discussion with @tsundoku about this keyboard, the Microsoft Optical Desktop Elite, about how things got so ridiculously curvy, with translucent plastics, and superfluous features.
Another example I can think of, the late 90s/early 00s HP Pavilion desktops - the pictured example was pretty low-end, but had lots of curvy translucent and transparent plastics covering things up, and lots of doors and such.
@bhtooefr @coryw @tsundoku I think these trends map pretty closely to the introduction of features in popular CAD programs. Take a look at this feature history for SolidWorks; you can almost connect the dots: https://forum.solidworks.com/thread/36278
@coryw Not just silver, but compound curves, translucent and transparent plastics (so you can't hide your defects), extra pieces to make more complex shapes, etc., etc.