I had a couple including one USB one that I later modified to use to scan regular bar codes.
I pulled up Wikipedia to look up who created them, and apparently he changed his name after they failed. He was also on Curse of Oak Island searching for gold and was involved in ballot shenanigans in the 2020 US presidential election where he was notable for supposedly inventing a machine to find bamboo fibers on ballots.
I think it’s important to note why so many people remember these. Radio Shack was literally giving these away for free, so people scooped them up without any plans to use them for their intended purpose.
There were a ton of DIY projects modifying these to do all sorts of unholy things. It also got featured on Slashdot, which was highly relevant at the time. My personal favorite was the mini-blowtorch