Times and styles change. But wanting to look cool or following the latest fashion is the wrong reason to get any kind of animal. Shelters still occasionally get calls from people who bought a pot bellied pig during the craze of the late 80s and early 90s. Their cute little piglet has now turned into a 100-150 pound pig and is acting like one as well. Most shelters (the Panhandle Animal Shelter included) won’t take exotic animals, so at that point many people find their own less humane ways of "getting rid" of the problem.
These pet fads aren’t limited to types of animals, such as iguanas and pot bellied pigs either. Certain breeds of companion animals come into and go out of style as well. After Disney released 101 Dalmatians, shelters were inundated with lots of cute spotted dogs. Most people who got the dogs didn’t understand the special needs of Dalmatians or weren’t aware that the breed is predisposed to certain genetic defects such as deafness, so they ditched them at the local pound. These dogs were dumped not because there was anything wrong with them but because their previous owners based their decision to get the dog on fictitious information.
When you follow styles and fashion, you are basically catering to someone else’s view of what you should look like and how you should think. This blind acceptance is basically harmless when it comes to clothing, but cruel when it involves animals. People who get a pet to be "in" aren’t judging the animal on its own merits. And animals that don’t live up to the marketing hype (animated spotted puppies don’t pee on the carpet) are just thrown away like the bellbottoms of yesteryear.