people who are physically fit most of their lives have a much easier time returning to it after putting on weight, compared to people who were overweight their whole lives. (And I say that from a mechanical standpoint, not just from a 'habits' standpoint). This has been shown to be pretty much true... In fact, it's a 'trick' many diet and exercise products marketing use... The 'before' and 'after' pictures of people (that are genuine) for such products are like the guy above... fit most of their life, then they put on extra weight, take a 'before' pic, then easily get back to 'normal for their 'after' pic.
as for Crispy's link, i got it to work. There's a space there between 20081 and 223 in the link, and when copy-pasted, the copy-paste function tends to add the characters '%20' inplace of the space, which messed things up. so it you pater it in your address bar, make sure that it showes '20081223' as one unbroken string. in otherwords:
technically, this may be 'the oldest' video game preoder *that went* unfulfilled. I'm sure the actual oldest preorder was fulfilled (which woudln't be news).
Of course, there could also be an older one, but if so, it seems there's no blog about it! :P
I really think it was an 'early 20th centuray' american thing. Like 1920-1960ish? I'm just guessing though (I was born late 1970s, but the Archie comics seems to be set in the 50s or 60s. Also, I thought that hat was exclusiveto Jughead).
http://download.introversion.co.uk/mirror/introversion/blog/20081223/test2.avi
There are MANY thinks such an item could be used for. I guess it all depends on what that writing tells us what to think....
Of course, there could also be an older one, but if so, it seems there's no blog about it! :P
I dunno, running from a big monster in a giant forest/swampland in the middle of the night with no givilization around would be pretty scary too.