Throughout the course of history there have been many things that looked and sounded ridiculous at first, but eventually went on to do rather well. I'm thinking of those huge black bricks in the eighties that yuppies called cellular phones, or the room-filling computers of the sixties. More contemporary examples of this phenomenon include the Xbox, the first console to be considered in terms of space consumption rather than quality of available software, and Peter Crouch (most Liverpool fans are currently hoping the lanky striker will evolve into a smaller, faster version before his contract expires).