Feathercoin - Fast transactions, the algorithm has changed from Scrypt to Neoscrypt to make it GPU-friendly.
Unobtanium - Very rare, merge mined with BTC.
Peercoin - Pretty sure this coin was the first staking coin.
Terracoin - Another staking coin, now with masternodes.
Each one of these coins is still around and active. Don't be caught up in the hype of new coins without looking at some of the old coins.
Peercoin, yeah the first staking coin as far as I can remember, but the price seems to be down over the years except for few highs and the price is not pegged at $1.xx. I guess everyone is really jumping the bandwagon of any hottest "technology' or project for pure profit and get out when they make a lot of money. They don't care how the project evolves throughout the years. If they see something new and the opportunity is there, then expect that everyone will make the dreaded excuse of pump-and-dump scheme.
Correct, a lot of opportunity and everyone is taking advantage of it to make a lot of money. Most of the coins coming out are just a copy of previous one, but the original just die, and the new coins take over until another duplicate and similar coins appear and the cycle continues.