That anybody believed the media's claim that refrigerators had computers in them in the 1990s seems like a case of the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect[0]. Smart refrigerators didn't even exist until LG released one in June 2000 that was a commercial failure[1].
I remember the news telling us that all sorts of unexpected devices had computers in them these days and computer=Y2K bug risk. Microwaves certainly did so fridges would be an easy leap to make.