Loveable Losers: Some of Our Favorite Failures

Seeing something you love fail is a terrible feeling. No matter what it is, you still think it was insane for people not to embrace it. Bad timing, bad luck, or just bad promotion can doom a product to failure. The following items have all flamed out spectacularly and now you’re forced to go to the consumer wasteland that is Ebay to even catch a glimpse of them.

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The Sega Dreamcast. (1998-2001) Dreamcast was fated to be a failure. So many thing lined up against it you had to wonder what kind of black cloud hung over Sega’s hardware division. It was the first system to comprise of the “6th generation of console games”, it came before the Playstation 2, the Xbox and the Gamecube. The system looked beautiful, was the first to have internet connectivity(years before anyone else), and had an amazing game library. Unfortunately, around the time the Dreamcast launched, 2000, was also the time broadband internet use was beginning to become widespread. Couple that with the fact you could actually download bootleg Dreamcast games off the internet and burn them to CD, was a bad sign for the system. Once the Playstation 2 hit the market, combined with people ripping off the entire game library, the Dreamcast sunk fast. The Dreamcasts failure marked the end of Sega creating video game hardware.

Polaroid Camera.  (1948-2009)  The Polaroid camera, an instant-film camera that originally hit the market in 1948, was one of the most popular personal cameras ever until the original company filed for  bankruptcy in 2001, citing the rise of digital photography as the cause of its demise. Much to hipsters’ chagrin, the revamped Polaroid Corporation stopped making the cameras in 2007 and stopped selling instant film in 2009. A Netherlands based group called “The Impossible Project” has made Polaroid-compatible film available on the market, but the instant-camera business has yet to recover from Polaroid’s bitter end.

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Oxygenating Fizzing Cleanser Clean & Clear.  (????-2009) The Oxygenating Fizzing Cleanser was a Clean & Clear product available in any drugstore for about 5 bucks, and it was the only good thing about middle school. It was a facewash made of a special gel that fizzed like seltzer upon application and supposedly oxygenated your greasy teenaged pores. One thing was for sure– it smelled like a minty field and felt awesome. Clean & Clear discontinued this product in 2009, but it’s still available on the internet for 30 dollars. We’ll just reminisce, thanks.

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Oreo O’s Cereal.  (1998-2007)  From 1998 to 2007, kids all over America finally felt like they had control over their mornings as they devoured  bowl after bowl of Oreo O’s, the breakfast cereal modeled after everyone’s favorite cookie. Unfortunately, The breakfast treat is now discontinued leaving children everywhere to eat ‘Cookie Crisp’ like some sort of animal. Oreo O’s are still readily available in South Korea however, where a kilo can fetch upwards of $24,000.

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Surge.  (1996-2002)  Surge has become one of the most fought for discontinued sodas to date. The citrus green colored soda was Coke’s attempt to steal some of Pepsi’s Mountain Dew market share. The first year of its release in 1997 was a massive success selling 69 Million Cases. As the years went on the sales started to decline for Surge leading Coke to cease production in 2002. That didn’t stop the online community to fight back to try and save the soda which has seen a spike in the recent years. Such sites as savesurge.org and the Facebook group SURGE Movement has gathered much support causing them to be featured on Yahoo! News, InvestorPlace, Business Insider and CNN Money. The SURGE Movement even bought a billboard outside Cokes headquarters in Atlanta Georgia saying “Dear Coke, we couldn’t buy Surge, so we bought this billboard instead”.

Flip Video Camera.  (2006-2009) The Flip Cam revolutionized the camcorder industry because of it’s small size, large capacity, and the its video quality. The Flip was an attractive option for consumers because it recorded videos in 1280 x 720 HD, took crystal clear photos, and allowed users to easily transport large amounts of data from the device to their computers. Unfortunately for Cisco, the Flip disappeared because it did not adapt to the ever changing needs of the consumer. In the social media culture that we live in, The Flip did not allow users to access the Internet directly, making it a less attractive option than using a cell phone. Additionally, the evolution of the Smart Phone, coupled with the improvements in cell phone cameras, made the Flip expendable. The Flip is a classic example of a high quality product that users loved, but could not survive in the marketplace.

TRIO TV Network.  (1994- 2005) Trio debuted in 1994, under the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, with the slogan “pop, culture, TV”. It featured the loved Brilliant But Canceled series that played little seen, failed TV shows from various networks. The network had trouble keeping an audience and was bounced around, re-sold and re-bought multiple times. It eventually ended up on DirecTV but was dropped in 2005. It was finally put down for good in 2006 when it was combined with Bravo. The channel was way ahead of its time and if launched today would most likely kill with the increasingly fragmented TV audience.