Yesterday, I talked a great piece of advice from a friend of mine: the idea that you shouldn’t worry about creating the perfect product.  Instead, just get something out into the marketplace, and see where consumers guide you. 

In that same vein, I thought it would be interesting to come up with a list of products that have failed.  With failed products, you know something went wrong.  And that something is often an insulated product creation process . . . the drive to create a perfect product without determining how the market will respond to it.

Here is a list of 10 famous products that have failed:

Products That Have Failed new coke1) New Coke

Probably the most famous of failed products.  I think Bill Cosby even helped promote New Coke.  How could it have gone so horribly wrong??  Not that hard, really.  Why make a new Coke when the old Coke was pretty darn good to begin with?

If it isn’t broken, chances are it doesn’t need to be fixed.   

2) Crystal PepsiProducts That Have Failed crystal pepsi

Crystal Pepsi actually was going strong, and, for a little while, it looked like it had some staying power.  But in the end, the problem here was the same problem with New Coke.  If regular Pepsi was doing just fine, why create a similar-tasting, caffeine-free, clear Pepsi??  There was no market need for it. 

Apparently, the thinking was to target those Pepsi drinkers who were concerned about drinking (a) a dark-colored soda that (b) had loads of caffeine in it.  The flaw in this thinking, however, was that Pepsi drinkers didn’t really care about that kind of stuff.     

3) McDonald’s Arch Deluxe Burger

Products That Have Failed mcdonalds arch deluxe

I barely remember this one.  From what I learned, McDonald’s was trying to target adults with this . . . ahem . . . “fine cuisine.”  So they offered a burger that was a little better than their regular rat meat burgers and charged significantly more for it.  Presto!  You have a failed product. 

The lesson for Micky D’s here is that, if you offer cheap grub food at dirt cheap prices and make millions of dollars doing it, why change?  Let the “adults” go somewhere else for fine cuisine.  You have your market.  Don’t mess with a good thing.

Products That Have Failed polaroid4) Polaroid Instant Film

I don’t know about you, but I hated taking a Polaroid picture and then standing around shaking the picture waiting to see how it came out.  That was just plain annoying. 

So, with that image in my head, it’s no surprise that the “instant film” product didn’t pan out.  It doesn’t sound like a fair association.  But it wasn’t just a result of that.  The failure of Polaroid Instant Film was also due to the emergence of digital photography. 

5) Levi’s Type 1 JeansProducts That Have Failed levis type 1

This was quite the marketing blunder.  A commercial for these jeans aired a few years ago during the Super Bowl, and it sort of missed the mark.  Look at the picture (from the commercial) on the right.  Does the image of a guy covered in dirt and riding an out-of-control car rodeo style make you want to buy a pair of jeans? 

I couldn’t think of a more classic example of why you should let the market determine what kind of product you put out.

Products That Have Failed ford edsel6) Ford Edsel

My parents were just children when the 1958 Edsel hit the market.  I’ve read about a variety of reasons why this car tanked.  Supposedly, the front of the vehicle was just plain ugly. 

The name itself (”Edsel”) didn’t catch on.  There was also something about a weird pricing strategy.   

7) IBM PCjrProducts That Have Failed ibm pcjr

The IBM PCjr was IBM’s first attempt at entering the market for inexpensive home-use personal computers.  The problem?  At $699, it was twice as expensive as the Atari 8-bit family computer and Commodore 64 computer. 

Its keyboard was also a sore point.  IBM used an infrared wireless chiclet keyboard, which was similar to that of a pocket calculator.  It had wide spaces between keys to leave room for instructional overlays bundled with software packages.  Consumers thought it felt cheap and made it difficult to type on.  It only had 62 keys, and it lacked the numeric keypad and separate function keys of the original IBM PC.  IBM eventually replaced it for free with a different wireless keyboard with more conventional keys.     

Products That Have Failed sony betamax8) Sony Betamax

My father-in-law has a whole collection of beta tapes.  In 1975, this product was a breakthrough.  But it just didn’t catch on.  Betamax was the big fish in the small pool at first, but VHS eventually won the war with humility and smart engineering and pricing. 

This fierce format war pitted Sony and its attempt to dictate an industry standard against JVC and its gutsy decision to develop its own technology.  The result was the emergence of VHS and control of 70% of the North American market.  By 1984, over 40 companies decided to use a VCR-compatible format.  In addition, VHS camcorders were more affordable.  Betamax was long gone by 1988.   

9) Apple Lisa

Products That Have Failed apple lisa

The Lisa was an amazing computer.  It was the first one to use a GUI and a mouse.  But $10,000 was too much of a price tag.  If you make a phenomenal product, but price consumers out of it, it’s still a failure. 

10) Apple PippinProducts That Have Failed apple pippin

Unfortunately, Apple is rounding out this list.  (Two more Apple products after this one.)  The Pippin was voted one of the 25 worst tech products of all time.  To this day, we don’t know what the Pippin really was.  Was it a computer . . . or a gaming console?  It was oddly shaped, and it wasn’t all that great at being a computer . . . or a gaming console. 

Moreover, giving this identity confusion, at $599, it was affordable as a computer, but it was way too expensive as a gaming console.  And, unfortunately, most people thought it was a gaming console.  Look at it.  It’s a gaming console, right??

You can probably guess that the Pippin lost big to the likes of Nintendo, Sony, and Sega.

Products That Have Failed macintosh portable11) Macintosh Portable

Lesson #1 in product creation: If you’re going to give a product a certain label, make sure the label FITS the product. 

If you’re going to call something “portable,” make sure the freakin’ thing is portable!! 

Does that clunkfest on the left look portable to you?  Heck no.  This computer lasted two years.

12) Macintosh TVProducts That Have Failed macintosh tv

Computer/TV integration.  Great idea, right?  It certainly was.  The problem was, I think, that technology wasn’t quite ready to produce something like this in 1993.  People didn’t watch TV on 14-inch screens then; instead, they were buying 40- and 50-inch TVs.  So why buy one of these when you already had a television set that was bigger and looked better. 

Moreover, it just doesn’t look any different than a regular PC. 

Only now is the market finally inching closer and closer to computer/TV integration. 

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