My awesome modded Wii

Oh? What period are you thinking of? Off the top of my head, I recall transparent versions of:
- some Tiger LCD games?
- Game Boy (DMG, Pocket and Color)
- Neo Geo Pocket Color
- Saturn
- N64
- Xbox
That covers a huge timespan, but I think most of those had limited availability compared to their opaque counterparts, so I would not say that clear consoles were ever "the norm".

(And come to think of it, where's my transparent cell phones at? Most of them seem to be plain, boring black these days...)