- The happy happy children's toy,
buy it for your kids, they'll sleep well!
(laughing)
Sometimes companies need to shake it up a little bit
so they come up with some amazing new products.
The phone that changes all phones
or maybe a new fashion trend.
But not all ventures are successful.
Sometimes so much has been put into a new product
and it fails so badly that it literally
almost bankrupts a company.
(office noises)
Here are 10 failed products that almost ended big companies.
Number 10 is the Delorean.
There's a big difference between fame and success
and for proof look no further
than the Delorean Motor Company.
Founded on October 24 1975, the car manufacturer
only sold one vehicle in its short existence.
The Delorean DMC12 Sports car.
An automobile that took the standard car door design
and threw it out the window
in favor of a winged vertical style.
Almost from the start the company was in over it's head
with constant design problems with the DMC12
and issues with the power it was able to harness
being incredibly low.
Which is really ironic if you've seen Back to the Future.
Plus to save money the assemebly line was built
in Belfast Northern Ireland,
the local workers knew little about car building.
The car flopped in the American market
and Delorean closed in 1982 only to become famous
due to the Back to the Future trilogy.
So in this case the failed product
actually did end the company,
which is too bad because let's be honest,
we'd all like to be riding around in a Delorean.
Number nine is the Edsel.
Named after the son of Henry Ford
who founded the Ford Motor Company in 1903, the Edsel
was the car that was supposed to help the company
catch up with GM
in the American automotive market in the late 50s.
Design for the automobile began in 1955
and it was revealed to the world on September fourth, 1957.
For nearly a year before launch,
Ford was making grand claims,
leading the public to believe
they would soon be staring at the car of the future.
But when the company confidently unveiled the Edsel,
many were left disappointed, claiming it was the same style
as many other vehicles and overall boring.
A car named Edsel that's boring?
What?
After overindulging on advertising
and the Edsel selling extremely poorly,
Ford was left with a loss of over 250 million dollars
and a clear lesson of how not to market a product.
That's like if you had a daughter named Beula
and you started a fashion line.
Hey everybody, wear the Beula.
No thanks.
Number eight is the Touchpad.
Hewlett-Packard used to be the name in home computing
with systems in millions of homes,
and while the company is still seeing profits,
they're reputation took a huge dive in 2011
with the incredibly awkward release
of the Touchpad tablet computer.
HP threw a big event on February ninth 2011
called Think Beyond, where they unveiled the tablet
to an excited crowd,
however, no price or shipping date was given,
leaving people confused.
Instead of launching at the event,
HP executives decided to hold off
and work on the operating system some more.
When the Touchpad was finally released on July first,
Apple's iPad two had already taken over the market.
Only 25,000 tablets were sold,
leading HP to shut down the web-os division
and sell off their stock at a loss.
Okay, okay guys I just developed this thing
it's a touch screen phone.
You know Samsung and Apple phones
are on like their 10th version, right?
You're a little late.
You're stupid.
Number seven is Trendy Fashion.
What started as a jean store in Baltimore, Maryland in 1968
grew to be one of the most iconic clothing stores
in the United States through the 70s and 80s.
But trying to maintain that fast growth
is what ultimately led to Merry go round
closing the doors to hundreds of stores.
Though the company had numerous failures,
it's biggest was how it lost touch
with it's customer base.
As the early 90s brought in the grunge look,
most retailers began doing market research
and adjusting specific locations
to sell what the area was looking for.
But not Merry go round.
Fixating on flashy, colorful clothes
worn by rappers like LL Cool J,
the company tried to set the trend in areas full of people
in torn jeans and t-shirts.
Fast forward and after filing for bankruptcy in 1994,
Merry go round closed it's remaining 536 stores in 1996
and liquidated all assets.
Well, I guess more than one company on this list
because of a bad product decision,
which is too bad because I would love to see neon clothing
come back, you know what I'm sayin?
Got me drippin in finesse,
I'm sorry, I'll never do that again.
Number 6 is the Dreamcast.
Released in Japan on November 27th 1998
and North American markets on September 9th 1999,
the Dreamcast was a video game system developed by Sega
that due to a number of issues
and horrible business decisions,
ultimately met an early demise.
The design and technology inside the consol was expensive,
meaning to compete with the Play station two,
each system had to be sold at a loss.
Additionally, third party support just wasn't there
as the system was difficult to develop games for
due to a flawed controller design and software issue.
On March 31st 2001, just after two years on the market,
Dreamcast was pulled by Sega and after 18 years,
the company announced it's exit
from the consol development business.
But today Sega still exists
and focuses on software development for other systems.
Ah, memories.
You know Sonic the Hedgehog was the sole reason
I wanted to get a little hedgehog.
Turns out they're spiky and kinda poop a lot.
Not the same.
Number five is DivX.
On June 8th 1998, Circuit City
and Zifran, Brittinham, Bronka, and Fisher a law firm,
released DivX, a new way to watch movies
that would compete with DVD rental businesses.
The idea was customers would purchase special DivX players
and hook them up to the internet via a dial up phone line,
yeah cuz everyone used to like dial up internet, the whole
eee-errr-ehhhhhh!
That was the sound it used to make, it was horrifying.
Then they could purchase movies for around $4-$5
from various stores
and watch them in that player for up to 48 hours.
If they wanted the film playable after that
they would have to call a hotline and pay an extra fee.
But DivX movies were much poorer quality than DVDs
and their players cost nearly twice as much.
The format was discontinued almost exactly a year
after it launched,
and DivX and it's parent company Circuit City
became the laughing stock of the consumer technology world.
Buy our player, it's got a cool name!
Terrible quality, but a cool name!
Number four is Jaguar.
Released on November 23rd 1993 the Jaguar was the sixth
and final video game consol under the Atari brand name.
Though a lesser system,
the Atari Panther, was supposed to come out first,
the Jaguar's development was far ahead of schedule
so Panther was scraped in order for Atari
to release the most advanced consol
on the market at the time.
And indeed it was!
A 64 bit system that put 16 bit consols like
Sega Genesis and Super nintendo to shame.
Or at least it would have
if the Jaguar would have been a success.
The hardware and software were difficult to navigate
for game developers, many of whom opted to make games
for competing systems instead,
leading to a library of only 67 games and abysmal sales.
Atari was forced into a reverse merger
with JT storage in 1996
and its assets were quickly liquidated.
Hey sometimes you just need to keep it simple,
remember pong?
Look at how fun that is.
Look at that, look at that.
It's so fun to watch.
Number three are Wow! Chips.
The only real downsides to eating all the junk food
that you want are of course
the upset stomachs you'll likely receive
and all the weight that you're likely going to gain.
Back in 1996, Frito-Lay, the maker of Fritos, Lays, Ruffles,
Doritos, and Tostitos, wanted to do something
about the latter downside and began offering Wow! Chips,
which almost had no fat in them!
But how did they accomplish this you ask.
Well they swapped in olestra, a fat substitute.
Launching all across the United States in 1998,
Frito-Lay saw sales rise over 400 million dollars,
and everything was great and they went on forever like that!
No, if you paid attention to the title of this list,
you know that's not true.
It was short lived, as the following year,
sales plummeted to less than half that.
Turns out eating too much olestra caused abdominal cramping,
diarrhea and a little side affect called anal leakage.
So, consumers turned away, which left the company scrabbling
to bring back the original chips.
Oh God sorry I just was thinking about what I just said
and it's really, really gross just enjoy regular chips folks
just in moderation.
Number two are Trump Steaks.
In August of 2006,
Donald Trump registered a US trademark called Trump Steaks.
Nine months later on May 8th 2007,
his line was officially launched,
offering top quality meat cuts, including burgers, sausages,
and the world's greatest steaks.
Trump was very proud of his new products,
promoting it on the show The Apprentice,
and even appearing on a home shopping channel.
But the steaks were a colossel flop,
barely selling any at all.
The reason for the failure,
Trump decided to only offer the steaks for purchase
at the Sharper Image, a consumer electronics
and lifestyle product store
where nobody shopped for fine foods.
So Trump Steaks were pulled from the shelves
less than two months after their launch
and the Sharper Image went bankrupt the following year.
Okay that sounds like a really really odd business decision,
who's gonna go into a store and be like
I want a blender
and I also want a oh a steak is a good combination.
And number one are mail DVDs.
Back in the year 2000,, Netflix was just a small blip
on the radar compared to the
online streaming powerhouse it is today.
And that's probably why
Blockbuster CEO John Antioco
passed on purchasing the company that year.
A move that probably still keeps him up at night.
At the time Netflix was a DEV mailing company
that was seeing a moderate amount of success.
Instead of paying 50 million dollars
that the Netflix CEO Reed Hastings requested,
Blockbuster launched its own DVD mailing service in 2008.
But it was too little too late
and the division was crushed by both Netflix and Redbox,
who essentially owned the market.
They lost over 1.2 billion dollars in 2010
and Blockbuster was foced to file for bankruptcy.
The very last store closed it's doors on November 9th 2010.
The final rental being, This is the End.
Well that's appropriate.
Well now I'm gonna go on Netlix and chill.
You know what I'm sayin?
So those were 10 failed products
that almost ended big companies,
and actually ended a couple of em.
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Bye now!