It seems you may be misremembering. From Wikipedia [1]:

> Past versions of RealPlayer have been criticized for containing adware and spyware such as Comet Cursor. ... PC World magazine named RealPlayer (1999 Version) as number 2 in its 2006 list "The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time", writing that RealPlayer "had a disturbing way of making itself a little too much at home on your PC--installing itself as the default media player, taking liberties with your Windows Registry, popping up annoying 'messages' that were really just advertisements, and so on."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RealPlayer

Ah, I was not a windows user at the time.

Regardless, from what I remember it was never as annoying as being screamed at to buy a minivan.