The Museum of Failure is a traveling, online museum that has existed since 2017 and celebrates failures. Especially the technological ones of the last decades, but also of another type. There are failures that have had serious consequences on the lives of many people and others that are funnier, which make you smile but which in any case have made some companies lose money and perhaps some managers' work. Each item contained in the collection, however, clearly serves as a reminder that “innovation needs failures”.
The failures collected are of a different kind: some have no excuses, others would have taken very little to become memorable successes. Some derive from a right idea that arrived too soon, others are linked to the development of an excellent product based on a technology that has suddenly become obsolete. Others even before becoming failures were great successes: such as Blockbuster (supplanted by Netflix, which will also make a comedy series on America's last Blockbuster) or the Segway (since, explains the museum, “any deviation from the expected result is a failure. and desired “). Everyone can be discussed (is the No Man's Sky video game really a failure?) And everyone can take some ideas and learn a few lessons.
The monoski
In the Eighties the monoski (a large ski in which you were facing the valley with one foot next to the other, as if on skis) have his moment. But then people who wanted something new preferred snowboarding, and people who wanted skis preferred traditional ones.
McDonald's Arch Deluxe
In the 1990s McDonald's feared to be perceived as a chain that mostly made burgers and fries for children, and therefore for families. He then spent about $ 300 million in analysis and research to develop a new hamburger for adults. He thought he had found it and organized a massive advertising campaign to introduce it to consumers. But they didn't like it at all. It was withdrawn from the market in 1997 and remains “one of the most expensive bankruptcies in the fast food industry”.
The Power Glove
In 1989 the Japanese company Nintendo launched on the market a glove that also acted as a controller for the NES: the Nintendo Entertainment System, one of its console for video games. At first it was liked and in less than two months over 500 thousand were sold. As often happens when you do one thing before the others, the glove was however cumbersome, bulky and imprecise: in short, it recalls that of the Marvel supervillain Thanos in the proportions, but not in the effectiveness. However, Nintendo was able to make up for it, among other things with the Wii, which according to the Museum of Failure is “a direct descendant of the glove”.
Juicero
It was the name of a press that cold-pressed special bags containing already cleaned and cut fruit, to make fruit juices without hassle. It cost several hundred dollars (first 700, then 400) and could connect to the internet, but it was a failure. It didn't help the price, and it didn't help the fact that those bags could also be squeezed by hand, which made Juicero totally useless.
– Read also: The hi-tech juicer that is useless
Rejuvenique
It was an electric beauty mask, introduced in 1999 and which according to the instructions “was worn for 15-minute sessions, three or four times a week” . The images of those who dared to wear it suggest horror films or some future dystopian scenario. Some brave who put it on his face wrote: “it's like having thousands of ants biting your face.” It also seems that the instrument had several safety problems.
Microsoft Zune
It was a portable device that allowed you to listen to the radio, play music and watch videos. It had 30 gigabytes of memory and was from a large tech company that certainly knew what it was about. But it came in 2006, well behind the iPod, and although it offered something more, it was much less popular. After all, Apple had gone badly with Pippin, its video game console marketed in 1995 and withdrawn in 1997.
Bofors toothpaste
At the end of the 1960s the Danish company Bofors thought about making a toothpaste to diversify its activities. It went badly and in 1971 the toothpaste was taken off the market, for two main reasons: the first was that the rumor spread that it contained harmful microplastics, the second was the distrust due to the fact that Bofors' main business was – and still is – the production of weapons.
Shared Girlfriend
In 2016, when everything seemed to become a “sharing economy” and apps and services for sharing objects and products sprouted like mushrooms, a Chinese company thought it might be a good idea to offer inflatable dolls for hire for a few tens of euros a day. They were ordered online or via the app and were delivered – and picked up the next day – at home. «Surprisingly» wrote the Museum of Failure «the service was suspended after only four days».
Heinz's Colored Ketchup
Between 2000 and 2006 Heinz thought about putting on the market colorful versions of ketchup: green, purple and blue, among others, in very colorful containers. “Those outrageous colors,” the Museum of Failure wrote, “presupposed rivers of dyes and sophisticated food engineering.” At first they seemed to work, then people got bored.
Boo.com
One of the many possible examples of the period of the Dot-com bubble, when – between the end of the 90s and the first months of the 2000s – many internet-related companies were overrated by analysts just for being internet-related. Boo.com had the right idea: to become a great site for the purchase and sale of clothing, which could be viewed in various ways online, among other things with the help of the virtual assistant Ms. Boo. However, the site was slow and complicated. Very slow and very complicated: a Swedish newspaper called it “a blurry version of hell”. When the Dot-com bubble burst, the company lost $ 150 million in just a little while.
– Read also: The worst promotional campaign ever
Among others, virtually wandering around the Museum of Failure you will find: the condom spray, the Facebook Gifts, the LaserDisc, the Apple Newton, the Olestra additive that wanted to make dietary foods that were not but that caused cramps and diarrhea, the board game about Donald Trump, the Crystal Pepsi, the New Coke, a very questionable massage chair, the Google Glass, Google Wave, Theranos, Microsoft Bob (from which the Clippy paper clip was derived), the We-Vibe vibrator, the Modo, the Pets.com site, Oakley's “glasses for digital music” and Nike's magnetic ones, the CueCat (a scanner that wanted to become a kind of new mouse), finger covers for smartphones, Atari's video game on ET (” the worst video game in the world “), the Amazon site for booking hotels (opened and closed in 2015 within six months) and the Vasa, the vessel that went down a few minutes after it was launched.
