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Shimano reels are the best I dumped Penn and switched everything over. I’d like to add a Talica to the collection.

I love their group sets and a 1x11 blew my mind during covid. I was always used to 3x setups and I don’t think 1x’s were around when I was a kid.

1x11 is a fairly recent thing. Came out in the last ~8 years, really. I was hesitant about going 1x, but did on my gravel bike (1x12) and it's a nice way to cut complexity, weight, and improve maintainability. That's not to say the era of the front derailleur is over -- I think they've still got their place on road bikes.

Came out in 2012 with SRAM MB group (XX1). The main invention was the narrow-wide chainring, before that there was no any advantage in 1x as you still needed a chain retainer in the front in lieu of the front derailleur. So it's fairly recent but not 8 y.o. 1x12 is already 10 y.o.

I love that they share product names between cycling and fishing (e.g. the mid-priced range of reels and cycling groupsets are 'Ultegra')

They started with reels! Bikes came after.

IIRC, they specifically started with freewheels because they arent that different from a reel in how they work.