10 of the worst product flops ever
From weird snack food ingredients to a poorly timed car, here are some ideas that should have been left on the drawing board.
Some products are classic hits. An inexpensive home carbonator that lets you make your own soda? Ingenious. A button in your car that opens your garage door? Amazing.Jell-O that tastes like celery? Aweso. . . wait a minute. What?
For every hit product, there are dozens of flops. Ideas that looked good on paper, but failed to catch on with consumers. Some products were good, but edged out by smarter competitors. Other products, like an early tablet computer from Apple (AAPL), were simply ahead of their time.
Perhaps no product is more closely associated with failure than the Edsel, the Ford Motor (F) automobile that lost hundreds of millions of dollars after it was introduced in 1957. Edsel was back in the news recently when its designer, Roy Brown Jr., died in Michigan at the age of 96.
But the Edsel is not alone in the product hall of shame. We asked around MSN Money and came up with 10 of the worst product flops in history. Click here to see them.
The HD DVD reminded me of the LaserDisc. Those sure weren't around for long.
How about the Yugo? After just a couple of years dealers were closing and practically giving them away. The same thing happened last year with the Think electric car.
Microsoft wasn't immune... remember "Microsoft Bob"? Back during the Windows 3 days it was supposed to be a more user-friendly GUI, but it was clumsy and hokey.
Among those dot-bombs was a company that used a sock puppet as its mascot. Advertised heavily, but for the life of me I can't remember its name or product.
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