A growing technology sector had finally made the big shift toward catching the interest of the greater consumer market. More people could afford the necessary devices and services to join in, and the sector promised to change the way people got their news and information, so media companies fought to find a way to tie into this new thing that they barely understood.

One of the biggest media outlets at the time, a vanguard of the old print world, tried to shake things up with a categorically weird new product that revolved around this burgeoning new tech. Knowing that novice users might not understand or even want an unfamiliar media-consumption device, the company tried to curry favor with a giant giveaway and shipped millions of freebies to newspaper subscribers.

That's the story making the rounds this week thanks to a partnership announced on Tuesday between The New York Times and Google Cardboard. On the weekend of November 8, over one million Times subscribers will get a Cardboard-branded makeshift virtual reality kit tucked into the weekend newspapers that land on their doorstep—which they'll be able to use, along with a compatible smartphone, to watch a short VR film co-produced by The New York Times Magazine.

But it's also a story from the turn of the millennium, back when "VR" meant Lawnmower Man and clunky head-mounted displays. Back then, instead of Google Cardboard, the tech being given away was an animal-shaped gizmo that time nearly forgot: the CueCat. And that time around, things ended on a pretty sour note for the publisher doing the giveaway. Will the current big-ticket partnership play out the same way? Will millions of VR novices embrace this maturing tech after trying a free taste of a junior-sized version, or will they pitch their Google Cardboard in the trash can?

Let's take a look back so we can guess at how things are going to end up.

Here, kitty, kitty

Of course, the city of Dallas will never forget the CueCat. According to a a report from the time, the city's biggest publishing company, BELO Corp, invested somewhere between $37 and $40 million into the white, kitty-looking device and then slipped one million of them into subscribers' copies of The Dallas Morning News for free. (Full disclosure: I was a freelance contributor to the DMN at the time—though, sadly, I never got a CueCat.)

Thousands of subscribers to Forbes, Parade, and other publications also received free CueCats, along with instructions on how to use the things. The bar code scanners, designed to work on both Windows and Mac, plugged into home computers via a PS/2 port—it included a passthrough PS/2 cord as well, so users could still connect their keyboards or mice—and then required an install of the awkwardly named :CRQ software.

Once set up, users were encouraged to carry their favorite print publication over to the computer, load the :CRQ app, and press the CueCat scanner onto any barcode they saw in the newspaper. This would load webpages with "more information" about whatever the code was next to. The trouble was that, most of the time, CueCat barcodes simply loaded Web versions of the same story as opposed to actual supplementary content or breaking follow-up stories. The device's support ended in 2001, and by then, the CueCat's few participating outlets didn't have regularly updated websites.

CueCat could also scan UPC bar codes, and if the scanned product was in the company's database, :CRQ would load a webpage for the product in question. But that database was spotty and wildly incomplete compared to the wealth of bar codes out there, and the CueCat's scanner sometimes needed a few swipes before registering the code—especially if the code was printed with smudgy newspaper ink.

Worse, enterprising users quickly confirmed that the app was transmitting private user data, including e-mail addresses and search histories, to the device's manufacturer, Digital Convergence. (Major CueCat funder RadioShack later offered a $10 coupon to anybody affected by an eventual private-data leak.)

VR is cool; Cardboard, not so much

CueCat and its investors made some bold moves that tried, and failed, to connect the dots between old print media and new Internet publishing methods—and put a lot more faith into a free giveaway than they probably should have. It failed to deliver an out-of-the-box experience that convinced its users that a slow, cumbersome scanning process was any easier than typing things into a search engine, and most users tossed the CueCats into the trash. (Still, in spite of the company's quick implosion, its long defunct hardware has lived on thanks to hobbyists' efforts.)

As such, the Times' push for VR film distribution may face similar pushback: Why not just watch the video on a flat, non-VR screen? Now, we've tested a lot of VR systems in the past year, and some of them offer very compelling answers to that question. When video content delivers on the promise of virtual reality—when viewers feel a sense of presence through elements such as head-tracking and surround sound audio—the experience can feel transformative. But our Google Cardboard tests have not felt that way in the slightest.

The Google Cardboard system, which requires users to stick a smartphone into a cardboard headset contraption and then hold the whole thing up to their face to view VR imagery through custom lenses, differs from other major VR solutions in a few key ways. For one, the field-of-view is significantly smaller; some estimate that Cardboard reaches about 60 degrees compared to other head-mounted VR devices reaching roughly 100 degrees.

The bigger issue is that the Cardboard headset lacks a stable way to keep the view anchored to your head. Google's version of Cardboard lacks head straps, and its paper construction allows a noticeable amount of wiggle, so as users move their heads, the smartphone display isn't always lined up consistently.

Combine those issues and you wind up with a moving image that looks more like a high-tech ViewMaster than a legitimate VR headset. The lenses do a good job of shoving your smartphone's pixel-rich image right up to your eyeballs, but every time you move your head, the rig fails to match the moving imagery in kind, so the transformative feeling is dashed (and often makes users feel dizzy). This isn't helped by full-motion video that typically lacks a sense of depth; even when used with content created with 3D cameras, most Cardboard video apps and demos deliver images that look like giant flat panoramas wrapped around your head.

This wide chasm between the best VR experiences and the one the Times will tuck into subscribers' newspapers is no small issue. It could be more damaging to VR's reputation and uptake than Oculus founder Palmer Luckey's dorky Time cover photo or other mainstream stories. The VR gold rush has begun in earnest, and it will be a shame if media companies' rush to VR relevance makes people sick of VR—literally, thanks to wonky Cardboard demos—before they get a taste of the best that modern VR tech can offer.