In 2009, the Barbie Digital Nail Printer was ahead of its time. That was the first thing I learned.

The second thing I’ve learned, in retrospect, is that if you wanted your videos to get watched in 2009, you should have been reviewing Mattel stuff.

Case in point: at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show, which I covered when I was with CrunchGear, the video above of me half-assedly demonstrating a product pulled in the second most video views – roughly 46,000 – of our entire time at the show.

The most views – at 126,000 – goes to the Mattel Mindflex video we did. It was some sort of game featuring a ball that you controlled with your mind. In 2009.

So that, plus a printer that printed designs directly on your fingernails. Both by Mattel. Both in 2009. Both way ahead of their respective times.

For a bit more context, we also interviewed Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine at the show. That video got 13,000 views. Mattel wins.

The Barbie Digital Nail printer, sadly, is no longer with us but you can take a closer look at an old one in all its glory on Amazon.

And just to underscore how ahead of its time this thing was, current digital nail printers on Amazon are asking in the high hundreds to low thousands of dollars.

This Barbie video itself is not great – poor sound, shaky camerawork – but it goes to show that you don’t need a perfect video to drive views.