Bofors toothpaste1968-1971In the 1960s, the Swedish weapons manufacturer Bofors tried to branch out and start making so called ‘peace products.’ Like toothpaste, artificial sweeteners and caterpillar tractors. The toothpaste contained plastic beads as a mild abrasive. In 1971, unfounded rumors started about how the plastic beads were toxic. This quickly killed the peaceful toothpaste.
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TwitterPeek2009-2010TwitterPeek was supposed to be a single-use device for Twitter. For $200. The main question here is ‘Why did this product ever exist? Didn’t all heavy Twitter users already have a smartphone? The other issue was that the device didn’t even tweet very well. The screen only displays the first 20 characters of each message, and reading an entire tweet involved a lot of a
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Millennium Dome1999-2000An amazing £789 million was invested in the Millennium Dome project, planned to be a glittering achievement for Tony Blair's government. It was supposed to be a spectacularly innovative building and exhibition, hoping to attract 12 million visitors in the year 2000. This turned out to be hugely overestimated, with only half of that number visiting the exhibition. N
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Sony Betamax1975-2002In 1975, Sony launched an innovative home video tape recorder called Betamax. When JVC released the competing VHS format a year later, it started a decade long videotape-format war. Betamax was higher quality than VHS, but it was also more expensive. The VHS could record a full movie, whereas the Betamax was initially limited to only one hour. While Sony refused to li
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Rejuvenique1999-1999This beauty mask tones facial muscles with electricity. According to the instructions, the mask should be strapped onto the face for 15 minutes, three to four times a week. Linda Evans, the woman on the package, is an American television star known from the Dynasty series. In Rejuvenique’s instructional film, she congratulates the owner for their exciting purchase and
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Segway 2001 This is a first-generation Segway, and it was a marvel of technology. Since Segways are still being sold, you may wonder what the Segway is doing here at the Museum of Failure. A failure is defined as a deviation from expected and desired results. The expectations for the Segway were huge: ‘Segway will be to the car, what the car was to horse and cart.’, ’Segway will be the fa
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Ford Edsel1957-1960Ford hoped that the Edsel would be the car that everybody wanted. The car had several technological innovations, like an electro-mechanical Teletouch transmission - with the buttons in the middle of the steering wheel. With an extensive and expensive marketing campaign, expectations were enormous. The advertising campaign teased consumers with silhouette glimpses of the
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Nokia N-Gage2003-2005Back in the year 2000, many people carried both mobile phones and handheld game consoles. Nokia combined these two devices into one unit and launched the N-Gage in 2004. The N-Gage was not a failure of ideas - it was a failure of implementation. The device had to be disassembled to change games. And to use it as a phone, the user had to hold the phone sideways, with i
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Kodak DC-401888-2012Kodak was a successful early pioneer in the development of digital cameras. The DC40 released in 1995 was among the first consumer digital cameras sold. When Kodak created the digital camera in 1975, management’s response was ‘That’s cute – but don’t tell anyone about it’. It was dropped for fear it would threaten Kodak’s profitable film printing business. Kodak even d
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10/25
BIC For Her2011The French company BIC is best known for their ballpoint pens, which have been produced since the 1950s. Bic for Her are pens designed to ‘fit comfortably in a woman’s hand’ with pastel colors and glitter, ofcourse. The launch was an instant flop. Consumers ridiculed the product in terrible reviews. On her talk show, the comedian Ellen DeGeneres made fun of the pens ‘Over t
