I remember when I was younger, and everyone had Pogs for a while, then everyone had a Tamagotchi, and then a few years later the younger kids were obsessed with their Furbies. A few years ago my younger sister had a Tickle Me Elmo, but got bored of it in a week. There are probably many more examples like this that different generations from different countries can remember.
These were all fads, and none lasted as long as the Wii has.
But then you have the problem of console lifespans. Even this abnormally long generation (and it is important to remember that this generation is an anomaly compared to all those prior to it) is a short period of time in the grand scheme of things, and then when the next set of hardware is released, we move on and mostly leave the previous hardware behind. That does sound a lot like the examples above.
I'd say that when you consider that, it's pretty easy to label every console ever released as a fad, but picking one out of them all and labelling that one alone is rather silly.
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