13 ms·

Dead Startup Toys

feross 5y ago
I'm usually a fan of MSCHF's parodies, but it's a bit disappointing to see reflexive tech-hate using the usual examples, Theranos and Juicero, on the HN homepage. It's not kind or curious. It's just a bit boring.
- 54712throwaway 5y ago
  the ultimate irony is that they are funded by top-tier VCs. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/mschfs-push-party-raises-an-unconventional-round-at-a-200-million-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/mschfs-push-party-raises-a...
axiosgunnar 5y ago
Is „one laptop per child“ really as bad as the other vaporware/fraudware in the list?
- karmakaze 5y ago
  I'd feel bad having a $40 toy for a failed make-the-world-better $100 product. Wasn't there even a 2-for special where I buy one, and one gets sent abroad?
  - mcphage 5y ago
    Yep, I did that, and got one for myself.
    - karmakaze 5y ago
      That's cool, better than the toy version as cute as it is. (For a sec, I thought you might have meant feel guilty and get a toy :-)
- Robotbeat 5y ago
  Yeah… that one kinda makes me sad. I agree it’s different from the others.
- nullspace 5y ago
  It looks like they are still around though, and at least seem to be active. The specific laptop itself, probably not, olpc does not seem to fit this list. I agree.
- edly 5y ago
  I knew a girl in school who had one of these. It was a neat little gadget at a cheap cost, but was criticized for not solving more pressing issues (water, schools) and there was no training provided for teachers. The laptops also weren't sustainable and difficult to repair. It seems the initiative is still kicking since their website is still alive (albeit without an HTTPS certificate).
  - philjackson 5y ago
    > but was criticized for not solving more pressing issues Sounds very much like a fallacy of relative privation to me.
- md_ 5y ago
  Well, if you think OLPC was a deliberate grift—I don't—then it's like the moral difference between scamming buyers looking for an Internet-connected juicer and scamming donors looking to help the world. As a non-deliberate grift—I guess the same math applies? Wildly overpromising and underdelivering on a picnic cooler seems somehow less morally problematic than wildly overpromising and underdelivering on an effort to improve third-world childhood education. Of course, the counterpoint is that Silicon Valley (or MIT Media Lab) bros whose hearts are in the right place deserve plaudits for their ill-informed-but-generally-well-meaning efforts, even if those efforts waste millions of dollars that could have gone to more effective altruistic endeavors. Which, like, yeah, that's an argument, I guess?
  - avs733 5y ago
    I think you are on the right track here, and its important. In the context of work with developing nations, the defense of good intentions is increasingly dismissed out of hand. Good intentions are often deeply problematic and can cause more harm than good - including capture/transfer of resources that could have been used in some other way improve conditions for people. c.f., many NGO projects to improve stove design in less developed countries [0] [0] https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- schwartzworld 5y ago
  It's not. Chromebooks just came along and made their goals obsolete.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    At least with respect to the developing world educational tool for children goal, it was probably filled by smartphones far more than Chromebooks.
- kmeisthax 5y ago
  Not necessarily. The list is actually two different categories mixed together: 1. Products which failed because they were targeting their niche poorly (e.g. Juicero, OLPC) 2. Products which failed because they were outright scams (e.g. Theranos, Coolest) However, I do think the failure of OLPC is still interesting enough to deserve a mention on this list. With OLPC in particular they were trying to be like three different things all at once and they succeeded at none of them. - OLPC wanted to sell computers to the educational market, so they were selling lots of cheap machines to schools. This is actually not a bad business model; Google and Apple today have basically cornered that market with Chromebooks and iPads. Had OLPC succeeded, we could have had schools covered in cheap XO-1s instead. However... - OLPC wanted to be a philanthropic mission to the third world, so they were designing the laptop with all sorts of weird features that only made sense for that market. Some of them are reasonable, like they actually intended it to be ruggedized and easy to repair. But they also had some weird features - like, it was designed around being able to mesh-network an entire village together with them. And at one point they were even going to have a handcrank on the thing so you could charge the laptop by hand if necessary. All of these features are unnecessary if you're just selling laptops to schools and they ultimately wound up getting dropped. - OLPC also was built around it's founder's pet theories about constructionist learning. If you don't know what that means, well, then you're probably not a Hacker News user; because constructonism is how most techies learn a new system. We play around with it. The laptop was designed around a Linux-based UI called Sugar and was specifically intended to push Free Software onto the third world. The idea was that kids could learn how the computer actually worked by modifying the software onboard. It even had a view source button on the keyboard! All of that is catnip to people like us and completely useless for educators. Ultimately they wound up delivering a very weird product that didn't actually do the thing it promised to do. That's very much in the spirit of a failed startup.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    I'd add the technology probably also just wasn't there for the price point they wanted to build to. After all, a succession of netbook and adjacent laptops over the next few years didn't really hit a sweet spot either--certainly not commensurate with the hype in certain circles.
  - 5y ago
- londons_explore 5y ago
  I contributed to the OLPC project. They had a lot of cool tech, but all the poor integration of a bunch of unrelated open source projects and a lack of people with the ability to design something to fit their market. The end result was a cool product that nobody wanted that didn't work awfully well. I now use my OLPC as a sunlight visible status board - and I still need to reboot it once a month because the kernel has some memory leak somewhere.
egypturnash 5y ago
Damn, this web design is stunningly gorgeous work in service to a stunningly dumb joke.
- abrawill 5y ago
  Did you press 'F' to pay your respects though?
  - jffry 5y ago
    In case anybody thinks this is offtopic: pressing F does indeed do something on that page (be warned: there is sound). There's an inscription in the marble below the list of products that implores you to pay your respects to capitalism.
    - namdnay 5y ago
      The irony being that this website is the product of a startup that is itself valued at an eye-watering 100M..
  - egypturnash 5y ago
    I refuse to pay any respect to these ironically-deified excesses of marketing, so no.
- PicassoCTs 5y ago
  Calling end-stage capitalism ventures a stunningly dumb joke seems a bit harsh. The fewer people have surplus cash, the more idiotic-exotic the devices & services peddled to them have to become. Mind the gap!
sircastor 5y ago
Man, that Jibo toy makes me sad. I feel like Amazon realized that they didn't need the screen or the character movement to accomplish 95% of what consumers were interested in: voice-controlled task automation. The Echo and similar devices make more sense, but I would have liked to see what Jibo could have become. In some alternate reality the world is full of expressive robots... and probably doors that sigh when you walk through them.
- bserge 5y ago
  It kinda lives on, Elliq is very similar, but aimed at old people. https://elliq.com/ https://elliq.com/ There's actually quite a few of these that I never knew about, aimed at old people. Not quite sure why. https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robots-for-elderly-people/ https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robot...
  - k12sosse 5y ago
    That ElliQ banner video is something special. I love the reactions. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2679/2074/files/banner-video.mp4?2201078599517207280 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2679/2074/files/banner-vid...
  - ashleyn 5y ago
    > https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robots-for-elderly-people/ https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robot... In the context of the "loneliness epidemic" there's something very Black Mirror about this phenomenon.
- davidkuhta 5y ago
  Not by any means a Jibo replacement, but Peeqo may be of interest for some of the social aspects. https://peeqo.com https://peeqo.com
- hbosch 5y ago
  > I feel like Amazon realized that they didn't need the screen or the character movement to accomplish 95% of what consumers were interested in Or did they? https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/24/amazons-new-echo-show-10-follows-you-as-you-move/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/24/amazons-new-echo-show-10-f...
stuaxo 5y ago
I know it's a joke, but a bit harsh it says OLPC achieved nothing.
- axiosgunnar 5y ago
  I'm not too familiar with OLPC (perhaps they were indeed a money grab), but I feel there is a difference between "oops..my startup that would have made me rich AF failed" and "oops.. my startup that would have made the internet more accessible for african kids failed"
  - BoorishBears 5y ago
    I'd love to see what about hard to repair e-waste dumped on teachers with minimal training was supposed to lead to making the internet more accessible for kids. https://books.google.com/books?id=v4y5DwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=v4y5DwAAQBAJ
  - skavi 5y ago
    "oops.. my startup diverted funds that could have gone to actually effective charities"
    - intuitionist 5y ago
      To the (small) extent that it was Jeffrey Epstein’s money I think I prefer it being lit on fire to whatever else he might have done with it
    - jandrese 5y ago
      OLPC was far from the least effective charity though. It could have diverted funds from an even worse charity.
  - jhbadger 5y ago
    Although Negroponte is an angel investor these days according to Wikipedia, so he did become wealthy somehow. I'm not sure how much OLPC helped that (although leaders of seemingly noble non-profits can do quite well for themselves in general).
yobert 5y ago
Are they going to have a toy for themselves in a month? :D
cthomson 5y ago
Reading the amount of money invested in each of these inspires a huge sense of waste lol
rogual 5y ago
I love that people are still doing fun page designs like this. I'd started to forget it was possible.
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  The animated Elizabeth Holmes cherubs have a real 90s internet feel to them. Totally the stuff of nightmares too.
mrfusion 5y ago
There must be a bunch of others they’re missing.
sathley 5y ago
Why didn't someone think of this sooner?
monkeybutton 5y ago
Interesting to see that it is by the same people as the Satan Shoes.
Simulacra 5y ago
I loved the Coolest Cooler idea but thought maybe it was overengineering something that most people didn't really need. How often do we get to use a cooler in a summer? Not much for my family, not enough time.
- ddek 5y ago
  It was a rare case where breaking the interface segregation principle IRL causes product failure.
- Arrath 5y ago
  My only exposure to that was my roommate at the time backing it. I must say I did enjoy his months of complaining about all the issues they had.
davidkuhta 5y ago
I almost backed the Coolest Cooler, until I saw the built-in 'ice blender' and realized I didn't want a cooler that required a power supply. Sad to see so many people get taken for a ride :/
- com2kid 5y ago
  A friend of mine got hers and loves it. She uses it multiple times per year, it is a staple at her parties. I understand not all backers were so lucky, but it seems to be more a situation of the company not being able to execute on something that a lot of people actually did want (judging by the # of backers they had).
  - davidkuhta 5y ago
    Interesting, cool to hear that it wasn't all bluster. So now I must know... how's that blender?
    - com2kid 5y ago
      It has made plenty of iced cocktails, so it seems to work well enough for her!
philjackson 5y ago
It it actually selling something? It takes me to a shopify link...
- leth_dev 5y ago
  I'm wondering it too. If so, it appears that they do not support international shipping. :(
- cercatrova 5y ago
  They are actually selling the toys, yes.
  - SamBam 5y ago
    But that's still ambiguous. It refers to all the products as toys. So is it actually selling the original hardware, like the Jibo, for $40? Do they "work" in any way? Does the OLPC turn on?
    - cercatrova 5y ago
      No they're plastic toys that resemble the startup product. Not the actual startup product itself. It's simply an item to collect for novelty, not for any real purpose.
- milkthefat 5y ago
  They are selling miniature replicas of the products as "toys" for 40$.
  - agloeregrets 5y ago
    Also all sales are final and any order mistakes or anything is final. It's all Grifting.
croes 5y ago
Don't forget the ZANO mini drone, the OLO smartphone 3D printer, Peachy printer, the $100 resin printer and Blocks, the modular smartwatch. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/torquing/zano-autonomous-intelligent-swarming-nano-drone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/torquing/zano-autonomou... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/olo3d/olo-the-first-ever-smartphone-3d-printer https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/olo3d/olo-the-first-eve... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-pr... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2106691934/blocks-the-worlds-first-modular-smartwatch https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2106691934/blocks-the-w...
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  If they included failed 3D printer startups the Elizacherubs would grow old by the time you reached the bottom of the page.
- SamBam 5y ago
  I don't think counting products that never made it to production really counts, through... I backed the Peachy Printer and was sad to see it fail (and definitely assume that large parts of the creator's explanations were not entirely true), but a failed $600k Kickstarter is not in the same league as an eight- or nine-figure company producing something that turns out to be completely stupid.
lxe 5y ago
Amazing website design. Need to bring this aesthetic back.
mushufasa 5y ago
Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? It was always a nonprofit, so of course it didn't make money. While the technology was lacking in many respects, it did serve a lot of children at the time, and proved the market that Chromebooks came to later dominate with a similar approach (linux-based OS with minimal resources at $100-300 price point).
- ghaff 5y ago
  >Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? I'd say it kind of did (as did Netbooks as a technology for the most part as well). It's smartphones really that won the segment that OLPC was primarily targeted at. Chromebooks became fairly big in education but primarily AFAIK in developed countries.
  - tinco 5y ago
    If it, and netbooks as a hardware category, failed, it was because in the end they turned out to not have been worth it. I used a netbook happily for about a year or two, it cost ~$400 if I recall correctly, and afterwards I donated it to my sister who I think used it for a while as well. That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that was $1250, and I used it for 8 years, after which I also donated it to my sister, and she's still happily using it. That's a roughly similar $150/yr, but for a best in class product with great comfort and wide usability. I wonder if anyone used a OLPC's for more than a year or two.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      Didn't netbooks as a category just merge into cheaper laptops? I doubt they were unprofitable for the manufacturers. I'll bet the children in Africa etc with the OLPCs used them for several years. They can't switch to a MacBook.
      - chirau 5y ago
        They didn't really do much in Africa eventually, if anything at all.
forgetfulness 5y ago
It's missing "Pryme Vessyl", the "smart cup" that tracked your water intake and told you when to drink water. You know, just in case you lose the sense of thirst for some bizarre reason.
- BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
  > You know, just in case you lose the sense of thirst for some bizarre reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipsia
  - LamaOfRuin 5y ago
    "Due to its rarity, the disorder has not been the subject of many research studies." The definition of "for some bizarre reason"
    - s_gourichon 5y ago
      Definitely a huge market for a startup then! ;-)
- Biganon 5y ago
  If you only drink when you're feeling thirsty, you're probably not drinking enough. Not saying this product is the way to go though.
  - forgetfulness 5y ago
    Why though? It's the signal that you're lacking water. If you aren't feeling thirsty, your body is judging that it doesn't need more. There's special circumstances when you should push away any discomfort in getting it when thirsty, like when you're sick, and give it priority, but thirst is pretty much the indicator. You don't even need to drink that much in the form of glasses of water either, because you are getting it from food throughout the day too.
  - meatmanek 5y ago
goldcd 5y ago
Coffeezilla did a fun launch video for the range - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KxdkpjQ31s&ab_channel=Coffeezilla https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KxdkpjQ31s&ab_channel=Coffe...
andyjohnson0 5y ago
They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
- duxup 5y ago
  That was a neat one. I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried. One of those 'oh man great idea ... oh no I don't think it will ever work' kinda situations. It was very much a fun early mass consumer days of the internet kinda shot in the dark / fun to me.
  - monkpit 5y ago
    The Dallas Morning News sent them to subscribers with their Sunday paper back when this was a thing, because they realized nobody would buy one. It still failed miserably.
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried. I think they gave away the readers for free. I had one at one point, and I certainly wouldn't have paid a penny for it. I think they were also the basis for quite a few barcode-based hobbyist projects at the time.
    - stoolpigeon 5y ago
      Yes. I still have mine and I didn't pay for it. I don't remember how/where I got it but it was free to me.
  - sophacles 5y ago
    In retrospect I see it as ahead of it's time. The idea of "place a computer readable label on things to send you to a special website (etc)" is still alive and used today in the form of QR codes. The hardware problem ended up solved by convincing everyone to carry a computer in their pocket and image recognition, but the central idea is pretty much unchanged.
DeadBeatDad 5y ago
You could train an AI to generate these randomly, something similar to: https://thischemicaldoesnotexist.com/ https://thischemicaldoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
dotBen 5y ago
Seems prudent to point out this isn't the product of a disgruntled's weekend project with fancy webdesign. This is a product from MSCHF which is a $100M+ startup [1] (feels like they're getting a bit of an astroturfed free ride of prime PR on HN because folks may not realize who is behind this) [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42
- whymauri 5y ago
  Is it astroturf, though? I think this is genuinely hilarious. Elizabeth Holmes as the patron saint of the website is the cherry on top.
  - harikb 5y ago
    thanks, I didn't notice that small image!
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    The *cherub on top
  - legohead 5y ago
    I'd say so as they just picked the most well known gadgets. So they basically put minimal effort into research and surrounded it by a pretty site.
    - crackercrews 5y ago
      Where was the pretty site?
- rozap 5y ago
  The best part is when you go to mschf.xyz there are a bunch of links, and when you click one it logs `TypeError: n.setAttribute is not a function` to the console and then doesn't do anything. millions of dollars to build a homepage with some links on it that spit out JS errors is the ultimate commentary. i think it's genius.
duxup 5y ago
>coolestcooler The hyper expensive cooler segment of society is one I never would have predicted / don't understand.
- steve_adams_86 5y ago
  I thought so too, but after months of occasional research I ended up buying (what I consider) an absurdly expensive pelican cooler. I looked at it based on some main criteria, like: 1. Is it durable 2. How long will it keep stuff cold? 3. What’s the warranty like? The pelican was 2-3x the cost of alternatives (but the same as a few competitors like Yeti), but ultimately scored best on each. Based on the material it’s made from and the experience I have with their other products (particularly cases, which the cooler essentially is) I felt confident the cooler would be effectively bomb proof and last ages in harsh conditions. It has a lifetime warranty, but I don’t want to have to use those. I want something to really last. After a few years it still looks brand new and still keeps ice a ridiculously long time. It’s kind of funny - I put fish in it when spear fishing remotely, which seems ridiculous because I’m putting gnarly stuff in a really nice cooler. Somehow though the plastic doesn’t retain the smell, and it’s still perfectly usable for regular camping trips. Having insurance that fish I catch will stay fresh is incredible though. If I stay somewhere three nights and get my limit each day, I can bring fish/crab/etc home. Combined with our rooftop tent it means we can camp really comfortably for a long time. It was well worth the cost so far. Edit: I should add that I don’t work for pelican or anything, I just like my cooler and have become conditioned to justify why I bought it, haha. So many people give me shit for it, it’s programmed in now. I swear it’s worth it - if you’ll actually use it. Something 1/3 the price is fine for plenty of people’s needs too.
  - Pxtl 5y ago
    Yes, but the Coolest Cooler with its blender and speakers seems obviously designed for beach parties and not outdoorsmen. I don't doubt there's a market for high-end coolers but there are very different use-cases. Like, as a car-camper I always spring for the plug-in car-powered Peltier coolers.
    - 5y ago
maerF0x0 5y ago
That Elizabeth Holmes cherub! OMG best part of my morning. https://deadstartuptoys.com/_nuxt/img/cherub-animate.319d6a4.png https://deadstartuptoys.com/_nuxt/img/cherub-animate.319d6a4...
mxwsn 5y ago
The art collective behind this project, MSCHF, has done some pretty interesting stuff: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCHF https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCHF
post_break 5y ago
Needs to add lockitron and little printer.
- Semiapies 5y ago
  I was just about to post Little Printer. Because we need a machine to make receipt-paper printouts of all the stuff we can take three seconds to look at on our phones. It was a cute design, though. ETA: Of course, as this is a limited-edition marketing thing, they can't actually make toys for more than a half-dozen or so models.
justin 5y ago
I made a video of these toys, which were hilarious to play with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJye7Xfmys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJye7Xfmys
- 8iterations 5y ago
  atrium was really bad my dude.
  - stingrae 5y ago
    totally unnecessary comment "dude".
- er4hn 5y ago
  Thanks for posting this! I wanted to get a feel for the size and movability of the toys. They look pretty fun :)
- adamcharnock 5y ago
  My mind is blown by the effort that has gone into a product (even if it is only a mock-up) that celebrates failed products. I just went on a very enjoyable rant about this which included the phrases, “what’s wrong with people?!” And “just create something of value!”
exabrial 5y ago
If you've got thick enough skin to hear a bunch of highly offensive and hilarious Canadian cursing, AvE on YouTube tears down a Juicero machine.
- ehnto 5y ago
  Great recommendation, I learned a lot when I first watched that video. I learned bits and pieces about product design, material science, the nature of startups and venture capital, some introspection occurred, I learned to love again, and a whole bunch of new slang I will neither remember nor understand.
  - goldcd 5y ago
    A Rosetta stone exists - https://avedictionary.com/browse/ https://avedictionary.com/browse/
pjdemers 5y ago
I had an OLPC. My children liked the apps, but struggled with the keyboard because they kept fat fingering the keys. They were little at the time, younger than the target audience. I can't imagine bigger hands trying to type on that keyboard.
SavantIdiot 5y ago
I was expecting a well-researched collection, instead there are a whopping six items. This website is like a startup: promises something exciting, delivers a dud. Feels more like a grudge page. Also, a friend of mine was lucky enough to get a Coolest cooler. It's actually well made and still works. EDIT: I'm a dingdong: this site is actually selling scale-model replicas. Duh.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  Yeah, the Coolest Cooler seems like a great product if you're into making blender cocktails at parties. A single unified battery for a Peltier and speaker and blender seems like a sensible idea, although it doesn't add that much value over a separate battery-powered blender, Peltier cooler, and speaker. But realistically every place you're going to want a battery-powered blender you're also going to want a good cooler, so that kind of makes sense, and you can get a pretty good bluetooth speaker from a cereal box-top these days so that's a cheap bolt-on to make this the all-singing all-dancing party machine. edit: Googling, I can't seem to find out - does it actually provide electric cooling? Or is it just a big high-quality insulated cooler with some electronic doodads attached?
- gkoberger 5y ago
  I mean, they had to somehow procure stock from startups that are long out of business. Items nobody actually wants, so what's the point of having _more_ items nobody actually wants? (EDIT: oh. whoops. they're miniatures haha)
  - thedogeye 5y ago
    They are not selling the actual products of these startups but rather super cute miniaturized versions that they made.
    - ashtonkem 5y ago
      Some of these items barely existed in the first place. You can get a Juicero, probably, but good luck getting your hands on an honest Theranos device. Few existed, and most of those are probably in the hands of the federal prosecutors charging Holmes with fraud.
jonny_eh 5y ago
No OUYA?
- saul_goodman 5y ago
  The plethora of strange and weird homebrew games on ouya was great, part of what made the platform so great.
  - jonny_eh 5y ago
    100% agree, I worked at the company during its brief lifespan and one the best parts was meeting various indie devs.
xkeysc0re 5y ago
I'm lucky enough to have an original Pets.com sock puppet still in my possession
throwawaycities 5y ago
Where’s the Frye Festival toy tent?
motohagiography 5y ago
One hopes there is some dignity to be found in the discovery that, if nothing else, your purpose was to be an example to others. The OLPC thing is a useful lesson in product design though. It wasn't really a product, it was a mandate about what some people thought others should do, and now instead we have netbooks, the android ecosystem, tablets, and everything else. If someone in the world wants a laptop over other immediate needs, they can get one. Juicero I think had the same problem the rest of juicer market had, which it was a niche product for a nexus of people who both had an upper middle disposable income and thought it was a good idea to convert fibre rich foods into insulin spiking sugar water. Jibo's robot without a purpose was existentially pretty accurate, but they discovered nobody wants that kind of uncanny reminder of the absurdity of their existence hanging around. I joke, but a well aimed joke can destroy a brand, and having funny people around to take those shots can be company saving.
- marvindanig 5y ago
  The funnest piece of information (and a notable one) is the amount of money these "smartest folks on the planet" put into all of these bullshit projects. And the list doesn't even include the photo-sharing apps that met Bay Area's standard of innovation for rest of the world to follow. Ha!
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  The thing about Juicero's story that makes it amusing is the fact the company managed to get several brand name VC's to pour in a metric ton of money. I mean in an ideal world, Juicero should have been something you'd have seen on Shark Tank right after somebody's pitch about socks with pockets or something.
axegon_ 5y ago
Jibo got $73M for a product that had no practical purpose or market but involving tons of R&D? For real?!?!
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
I'm pretty sure that many of these toy versions of products might actually outsell the ones they were inspired with.
javier10e6 5y ago
Who can forget the adorable Nabaztag? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag
noxer 5y ago
the "Dead Startup" part reverse to the page which is litterally broken on any device I have.
notananthem 5y ago
Love this, would never buy this crap, its the thought that counts. Also appreciate how many people are upset by it.
fortyseven 5y ago
Nice website, but something feels really shitty about this.
sandworm101 5y ago
I want one of those soccer balls with an inbuilt dynamo. Or those tiles tested in UK schools that harvest power from footsteps. I'm thinking of a similar website for all the failed products that tried to use children as a source of electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empower_Playgrounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empower_Playgrounds https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/28/the-soccket-is-an-electricity-generating-soccer-ball-for-the-developing-world/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/28/the-soccket-is-an-electric... https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/guides/technology/energy-harvesting-tiles https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/guides/technology/energy-harv...
- Digit-Al 5y ago
  No need for anything super elaborate if you want to generate electricity from kids. Just shove 'em in a big hamster wheel with a large can of red bull and a bag of sweets. I mean, sure, some of them will probably die but if we carry on the way we are with the environment they'll all die anyway, so swings and roundabouts. /s
backtoyoujim 5y ago
needs a kozmo scooter w/matching bag
robgibbons 5y ago
Fairly safe to add Magic Leap to the list.
EamonnMR 5y ago
That checkout had just enough friction that I didn't purchase anything.
samstave 5y ago
The juicero is actually a well designed device. I found a few a while back for $100 as I wanted to harvest the motors and gearing out of them...
throwawayboise 5y ago
I thought this was going to be about the office toys from dead startups. I don't know how it is now but in the first dot-com boom in the late 1990s we had all kinds of kids toys like scooters, nerf guns, all over the office. Even then I thought it was sort of ridiculous to see grown adults playing with that stuff at work. In retrospect it should have been a big warning sign that none of this was going to last.
- dunnevens 5y ago
  I had a related thought: this was going to be a collection of dead startup tchotchke. The t-shirts, pens, light-up pens, etc. with long forgotten logos. That would be a fun and depressing collection. The thought made me a little sad because there's a box in my closet with precisely those items emblazoned with the dead logo of my dead startup.
muyuu 5y ago
some people ran away with million$ failure is relative plus Negroponte got to learnt that communism doesn't work (or maybe he didn't)
- muyuu 5y ago
  got to learn*
908B64B197 5y ago
The Juicero teardown is hilarious; the device is ridiculously overbuilt. [0] But I still think it was a viable business model. The Nespresso of Juices. Except Nespresso makes machines for ~150$. [1] Had Juicero been able to make one for that price (or cheaper or a wooden bio-degradable hand-crank free with the first pack of pouches) they would still be growing today and making millions in monthly revenues. Because the money is in the subscription. [0] https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nespresso-Essenza-Original-Espresso-Breville/dp/B073ZGWN12 https://www.amazon.com/Nespresso-Essenza-Original-Espresso-B...
juanuys 5y ago
I thought I was going to see my Cognitoys Dino on that site... https://www.wired.com/2015/02/cognitoys-ibm-watson/ https://www.wired.com/2015/02/cognitoys-ibm-watson/
- juanuys 5y ago
  I say "my". I mean my daughters'. ahem
dgaultiere 5y ago
Need to add Nikola toy truck
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I'm usually a fan of MSCHF's parodies, but it's a bit disappointing to see reflexive tech-hate using the usual examples, Theranos and Juicero, on the HN homepage. It's not kind or curious. It's just a bit boring.

54712throwaway 5y ago
the ultimate irony is that they are funded by top-tier VCs. https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/mschfs-push-party-raises-an-unconventional-round-at-a-200-million-valuation/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/09/mschfs-push-party-raises-a...

axiosgunnar 5y ago

Is „one laptop per child“ really as bad as the other vaporware/fraudware in the list?

karmakaze 5y ago
I'd feel bad having a $40 toy for a failed make-the-world-better $100 product. Wasn't there even a 2-for special where I buy one, and one gets sent abroad?
- mcphage 5y ago
  Yep, I did that, and got one for myself.
  - karmakaze 5y ago
    That's cool, better than the toy version as cute as it is. (For a sec, I thought you might have meant feel guilty and get a toy :-)
Robotbeat 5y ago
Yeah… that one kinda makes me sad. I agree it’s different from the others.
nullspace 5y ago
It looks like they are still around though, and at least seem to be active. The specific laptop itself, probably not, olpc does not seem to fit this list. I agree.
edly 5y ago
I knew a girl in school who had one of these. It was a neat little gadget at a cheap cost, but was criticized for not solving more pressing issues (water, schools) and there was no training provided for teachers. The laptops also weren't sustainable and difficult to repair. It seems the initiative is still kicking since their website is still alive (albeit without an HTTPS certificate).
- philjackson 5y ago
  > but was criticized for not solving more pressing issues Sounds very much like a fallacy of relative privation to me.
md_ 5y ago
Well, if you think OLPC was a deliberate grift—I don't—then it's like the moral difference between scamming buyers looking for an Internet-connected juicer and scamming donors looking to help the world. As a non-deliberate grift—I guess the same math applies? Wildly overpromising and underdelivering on a picnic cooler seems somehow less morally problematic than wildly overpromising and underdelivering on an effort to improve third-world childhood education. Of course, the counterpoint is that Silicon Valley (or MIT Media Lab) bros whose hearts are in the right place deserve plaudits for their ill-informed-but-generally-well-meaning efforts, even if those efforts waste millions of dollars that could have gone to more effective altruistic endeavors. Which, like, yeah, that's an argument, I guess?
- avs733 5y ago
  I think you are on the right track here, and its important. In the context of work with developing nations, the defense of good intentions is increasingly dismissed out of hand. Good intentions are often deeply problematic and can cause more harm than good - including capture/transfer of resources that could have been used in some other way improve conditions for people. c.f., many NGO projects to improve stove design in less developed countries [0] [0] https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf https://nature.berkeley.edu/er100/readings/Crewe_1997.pdf
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
schwartzworld 5y ago
It's not. Chromebooks just came along and made their goals obsolete.
- ghaff 5y ago
  At least with respect to the developing world educational tool for children goal, it was probably filled by smartphones far more than Chromebooks.
kmeisthax 5y ago
Not necessarily. The list is actually two different categories mixed together: 1. Products which failed because they were targeting their niche poorly (e.g. Juicero, OLPC) 2. Products which failed because they were outright scams (e.g. Theranos, Coolest) However, I do think the failure of OLPC is still interesting enough to deserve a mention on this list. With OLPC in particular they were trying to be like three different things all at once and they succeeded at none of them. - OLPC wanted to sell computers to the educational market, so they were selling lots of cheap machines to schools. This is actually not a bad business model; Google and Apple today have basically cornered that market with Chromebooks and iPads. Had OLPC succeeded, we could have had schools covered in cheap XO-1s instead. However... - OLPC wanted to be a philanthropic mission to the third world, so they were designing the laptop with all sorts of weird features that only made sense for that market. Some of them are reasonable, like they actually intended it to be ruggedized and easy to repair. But they also had some weird features - like, it was designed around being able to mesh-network an entire village together with them. And at one point they were even going to have a handcrank on the thing so you could charge the laptop by hand if necessary. All of these features are unnecessary if you're just selling laptops to schools and they ultimately wound up getting dropped. - OLPC also was built around it's founder's pet theories about constructionist learning. If you don't know what that means, well, then you're probably not a Hacker News user; because constructonism is how most techies learn a new system. We play around with it. The laptop was designed around a Linux-based UI called Sugar and was specifically intended to push Free Software onto the third world. The idea was that kids could learn how the computer actually worked by modifying the software onboard. It even had a view source button on the keyboard! All of that is catnip to people like us and completely useless for educators. Ultimately they wound up delivering a very weird product that didn't actually do the thing it promised to do. That's very much in the spirit of a failed startup.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I'd add the technology probably also just wasn't there for the price point they wanted to build to. After all, a succession of netbook and adjacent laptops over the next few years didn't really hit a sweet spot either--certainly not commensurate with the hype in certain circles.
- 5y ago
londons_explore 5y ago
I contributed to the OLPC project. They had a lot of cool tech, but all the poor integration of a bunch of unrelated open source projects and a lack of people with the ability to design something to fit their market. The end result was a cool product that nobody wanted that didn't work awfully well. I now use my OLPC as a sunlight visible status board - and I still need to reboot it once a month because the kernel has some memory leak somewhere.

egypturnash 5y ago

Damn, this web design is stunningly gorgeous work in service to a stunningly dumb joke.

abrawill 5y ago
Did you press 'F' to pay your respects though?
- jffry 5y ago
  In case anybody thinks this is offtopic: pressing F does indeed do something on that page (be warned: there is sound). There's an inscription in the marble below the list of products that implores you to pay your respects to capitalism.
  - namdnay 5y ago
    The irony being that this website is the product of a startup that is itself valued at an eye-watering 100M..
- egypturnash 5y ago
  I refuse to pay any respect to these ironically-deified excesses of marketing, so no.
PicassoCTs 5y ago
Calling end-stage capitalism ventures a stunningly dumb joke seems a bit harsh. The fewer people have surplus cash, the more idiotic-exotic the devices & services peddled to them have to become. Mind the gap!

sircastor 5y ago

Man, that Jibo toy makes me sad. I feel like Amazon realized that they didn't need the screen or the character movement to accomplish 95% of what consumers were interested in: voice-controlled task automation. The Echo and similar devices make more sense, but I would have liked to see what Jibo could have become. In some alternate reality the world is full of expressive robots... and probably doors that sigh when you walk through them.

bserge 5y ago
It kinda lives on, Elliq is very similar, but aimed at old people. https://elliq.com/ https://elliq.com/ There's actually quite a few of these that I never knew about, aimed at old people. Not quite sure why. https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robots-for-elderly-people/ https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robot...
- k12sosse 5y ago
  That ElliQ banner video is something special. I love the reactions. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2679/2074/files/banner-video.mp4?2201078599517207280 https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2679/2074/files/banner-vid...
- ashleyn 5y ago
  > https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robots-for-elderly-people/ https://roboticsbiz.com/top-seven-companion-and-social-robot... In the context of the "loneliness epidemic" there's something very Black Mirror about this phenomenon.
davidkuhta 5y ago
Not by any means a Jibo replacement, but Peeqo may be of interest for some of the social aspects. https://peeqo.com https://peeqo.com
hbosch 5y ago
> I feel like Amazon realized that they didn't need the screen or the character movement to accomplish 95% of what consumers were interested in Or did they? https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/24/amazons-new-echo-show-10-follows-you-as-you-move/ https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/24/amazons-new-echo-show-10-f...

stuaxo 5y ago

I know it's a joke, but a bit harsh it says OLPC achieved nothing.

axiosgunnar 5y ago
I'm not too familiar with OLPC (perhaps they were indeed a money grab), but I feel there is a difference between "oops..my startup that would have made me rich AF failed" and "oops.. my startup that would have made the internet more accessible for african kids failed"
- BoorishBears 5y ago
  I'd love to see what about hard to repair e-waste dumped on teachers with minimal training was supposed to lead to making the internet more accessible for kids. https://books.google.com/books?id=v4y5DwAAQBAJ https://books.google.com/books?id=v4y5DwAAQBAJ
- skavi 5y ago
  "oops.. my startup diverted funds that could have gone to actually effective charities"
  - intuitionist 5y ago
    To the (small) extent that it was Jeffrey Epstein’s money I think I prefer it being lit on fire to whatever else he might have done with it
  - jandrese 5y ago
    OLPC was far from the least effective charity though. It could have diverted funds from an even worse charity.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  Although Negroponte is an angel investor these days according to Wikipedia, so he did become wealthy somehow. I'm not sure how much OLPC helped that (although leaders of seemingly noble non-profits can do quite well for themselves in general).

yobert 5y ago

Are they going to have a toy for themselves in a month? :D

cthomson 5y ago

Reading the amount of money invested in each of these inspires a huge sense of waste lol

rogual 5y ago

I love that people are still doing fun page designs like this. I'd started to forget it was possible.

monkeybutton 5y ago
The animated Elizabeth Holmes cherubs have a real 90s internet feel to them. Totally the stuff of nightmares too.

mrfusion 5y ago

There must be a bunch of others they’re missing.

sathley 5y ago

Why didn't someone think of this sooner?

monkeybutton 5y ago

Interesting to see that it is by the same people as the Satan Shoes.

Simulacra 5y ago

I loved the Coolest Cooler idea but thought maybe it was overengineering something that most people didn't really need. How often do we get to use a cooler in a summer? Not much for my family, not enough time.

ddek 5y ago
It was a rare case where breaking the interface segregation principle IRL causes product failure.
Arrath 5y ago
My only exposure to that was my roommate at the time backing it. I must say I did enjoy his months of complaining about all the issues they had.

davidkuhta 5y ago

I almost backed the Coolest Cooler, until I saw the built-in 'ice blender' and realized I didn't want a cooler that required a power supply. Sad to see so many people get taken for a ride :/

com2kid 5y ago
A friend of mine got hers and loves it. She uses it multiple times per year, it is a staple at her parties. I understand not all backers were so lucky, but it seems to be more a situation of the company not being able to execute on something that a lot of people actually did want (judging by the # of backers they had).
- davidkuhta 5y ago
  Interesting, cool to hear that it wasn't all bluster. So now I must know... how's that blender?
  - com2kid 5y ago
    It has made plenty of iced cocktails, so it seems to work well enough for her!

philjackson 5y ago

It it actually selling something? It takes me to a shopify link...

leth_dev 5y ago
I'm wondering it too. If so, it appears that they do not support international shipping. :(
cercatrova 5y ago
They are actually selling the toys, yes.
- SamBam 5y ago
  But that's still ambiguous. It refers to all the products as toys. So is it actually selling the original hardware, like the Jibo, for $40? Do they "work" in any way? Does the OLPC turn on?
  - cercatrova 5y ago
    No they're plastic toys that resemble the startup product. Not the actual startup product itself. It's simply an item to collect for novelty, not for any real purpose.
milkthefat 5y ago
They are selling miniature replicas of the products as "toys" for 40$.
- agloeregrets 5y ago
  Also all sales are final and any order mistakes or anything is final. It's all Grifting.

croes 5y ago

Don't forget the ZANO mini drone, the OLO smartphone 3D printer, Peachy printer, the $100 resin printer and Blocks, the modular smartwatch. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/torquing/zano-autonomous-intelligent-swarming-nano-drone https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/torquing/zano-autonomou... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/olo3d/olo-the-first-ever-smartphone-3d-printer https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/olo3d/olo-the-first-eve... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-printer-the-first-100-3d-printer-and-sc https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/117421627/the-peachy-pr... https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2106691934/blocks-the-worlds-first-modular-smartwatch https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2106691934/blocks-the-w...

BoorishBears 5y ago
If they included failed 3D printer startups the Elizacherubs would grow old by the time you reached the bottom of the page.
SamBam 5y ago
I don't think counting products that never made it to production really counts, through... I backed the Peachy Printer and was sad to see it fail (and definitely assume that large parts of the creator's explanations were not entirely true), but a failed $600k Kickstarter is not in the same league as an eight- or nine-figure company producing something that turns out to be completely stupid.

lxe 5y ago

Amazing website design. Need to bring this aesthetic back.

mushufasa 5y ago

Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? It was always a nonprofit, so of course it didn't make money. While the technology was lacking in many respects, it did serve a lot of children at the time, and proved the market that Chromebooks came to later dominate with a similar approach (linux-based OS with minimal resources at $100-300 price point).

ghaff 5y ago
>Did One Laptop per Child truly fail as a startup? I'd say it kind of did (as did Netbooks as a technology for the most part as well). It's smartphones really that won the segment that OLPC was primarily targeted at. Chromebooks became fairly big in education but primarily AFAIK in developed countries.
- tinco 5y ago
  If it, and netbooks as a hardware category, failed, it was because in the end they turned out to not have been worth it. I used a netbook happily for about a year or two, it cost ~$400 if I recall correctly, and afterwards I donated it to my sister who I think used it for a while as well. That's at least $150/yr for a low end product fun but uncomfortable product. After the netbook I upgraded to a Macbook Pro that was $1250, and I used it for 8 years, after which I also donated it to my sister, and she's still happily using it. That's a roughly similar $150/yr, but for a best in class product with great comfort and wide usability. I wonder if anyone used a OLPC's for more than a year or two.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Didn't netbooks as a category just merge into cheaper laptops? I doubt they were unprofitable for the manufacturers. I'll bet the children in Africa etc with the OLPCs used them for several years. They can't switch to a MacBook.
    - chirau 5y ago
      They didn't really do much in Africa eventually, if anything at all.

forgetfulness 5y ago

It's missing "Pryme Vessyl", the "smart cup" that tracked your water intake and told you when to drink water. You know, just in case you lose the sense of thirst for some bizarre reason.

BugsJustFindMe 5y ago
> You know, just in case you lose the sense of thirst for some bizarre reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipsia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adipsia
- LamaOfRuin 5y ago
  "Due to its rarity, the disorder has not been the subject of many research studies." The definition of "for some bizarre reason"
  - s_gourichon 5y ago
    Definitely a huge market for a startup then! ;-)
Biganon 5y ago
If you only drink when you're feeling thirsty, you're probably not drinking enough. Not saying this product is the way to go though.
- forgetfulness 5y ago
  Why though? It's the signal that you're lacking water. If you aren't feeling thirsty, your body is judging that it doesn't need more. There's special circumstances when you should push away any discomfort in getting it when thirsty, like when you're sick, and give it priority, but thirst is pretty much the indicator. You don't even need to drink that much in the form of glasses of water either, because you are getting it from food throughout the day too.
- meatmanek 5y ago

goldcd 5y ago

Coffeezilla did a fun launch video for the range - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KxdkpjQ31s&ab_channel=Coffeezilla https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KxdkpjQ31s&ab_channel=Coffe...

andyjohnson0 5y ago

They could add the CueCat to their list. I seem to remember that Wired got all excited about it at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat

duxup 5y ago
That was a neat one. I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried. One of those 'oh man great idea ... oh no I don't think it will ever work' kinda situations. It was very much a fun early mass consumer days of the internet kinda shot in the dark / fun to me.
- monkpit 5y ago
  The Dallas Morning News sent them to subscribers with their Sunday paper back when this was a thing, because they realized nobody would buy one. It still failed miserably.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > I never thought it would go anywhere because who would buy hardware just for that? But I did kinda admire that they tried. I think they gave away the readers for free. I had one at one point, and I certainly wouldn't have paid a penny for it. I think they were also the basis for quite a few barcode-based hobbyist projects at the time.
  - stoolpigeon 5y ago
    Yes. I still have mine and I didn't pay for it. I don't remember how/where I got it but it was free to me.
- sophacles 5y ago
  In retrospect I see it as ahead of it's time. The idea of "place a computer readable label on things to send you to a special website (etc)" is still alive and used today in the form of QR codes. The hardware problem ended up solved by convincing everyone to carry a computer in their pocket and image recognition, but the central idea is pretty much unchanged.

DeadBeatDad 5y ago

You could train an AI to generate these randomly, something similar to: https://thischemicaldoesnotexist.com/ https://thischemicaldoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/

dotBen 5y ago

Seems prudent to point out this isn't the product of a disgruntled's weekend project with fancy webdesign. This is a product from MSCHF which is a $100M+ startup [1] (feels like they're getting a bit of an astroturfed free ride of prime PR on HN because folks may not realize who is behind this) [1] https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42 https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/279769-42

whymauri 5y ago
Is it astroturf, though? I think this is genuinely hilarious. Elizabeth Holmes as the patron saint of the website is the cherry on top.
- harikb 5y ago
  thanks, I didn't notice that small image!
- cercatrova 5y ago
  The *cherub on top
- legohead 5y ago
  I'd say so as they just picked the most well known gadgets. So they basically put minimal effort into research and surrounded it by a pretty site.
  - crackercrews 5y ago
    Where was the pretty site?
rozap 5y ago
The best part is when you go to mschf.xyz there are a bunch of links, and when you click one it logs `TypeError: n.setAttribute is not a function` to the console and then doesn't do anything. millions of dollars to build a homepage with some links on it that spit out JS errors is the ultimate commentary. i think it's genius.

duxup 5y ago

>coolestcooler The hyper expensive cooler segment of society is one I never would have predicted / don't understand.

steve_adams_86 5y ago
I thought so too, but after months of occasional research I ended up buying (what I consider) an absurdly expensive pelican cooler. I looked at it based on some main criteria, like: 1. Is it durable 2. How long will it keep stuff cold? 3. What’s the warranty like? The pelican was 2-3x the cost of alternatives (but the same as a few competitors like Yeti), but ultimately scored best on each. Based on the material it’s made from and the experience I have with their other products (particularly cases, which the cooler essentially is) I felt confident the cooler would be effectively bomb proof and last ages in harsh conditions. It has a lifetime warranty, but I don’t want to have to use those. I want something to really last. After a few years it still looks brand new and still keeps ice a ridiculously long time. It’s kind of funny - I put fish in it when spear fishing remotely, which seems ridiculous because I’m putting gnarly stuff in a really nice cooler. Somehow though the plastic doesn’t retain the smell, and it’s still perfectly usable for regular camping trips. Having insurance that fish I catch will stay fresh is incredible though. If I stay somewhere three nights and get my limit each day, I can bring fish/crab/etc home. Combined with our rooftop tent it means we can camp really comfortably for a long time. It was well worth the cost so far. Edit: I should add that I don’t work for pelican or anything, I just like my cooler and have become conditioned to justify why I bought it, haha. So many people give me shit for it, it’s programmed in now. I swear it’s worth it - if you’ll actually use it. Something 1/3 the price is fine for plenty of people’s needs too.
- Pxtl 5y ago
  Yes, but the Coolest Cooler with its blender and speakers seems obviously designed for beach parties and not outdoorsmen. I don't doubt there's a market for high-end coolers but there are very different use-cases. Like, as a car-camper I always spring for the plug-in car-powered Peltier coolers.
  - 5y ago

maerF0x0 5y ago

That Elizabeth Holmes cherub! OMG best part of my morning. https://deadstartuptoys.com/_nuxt/img/cherub-animate.319d6a4.png https://deadstartuptoys.com/_nuxt/img/cherub-animate.319d6a4...

mxwsn 5y ago

The art collective behind this project, MSCHF, has done some pretty interesting stuff: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCHF https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSCHF

post_break 5y ago

Needs to add lockitron and little printer.

Semiapies 5y ago
I was just about to post Little Printer. Because we need a machine to make receipt-paper printouts of all the stuff we can take three seconds to look at on our phones. It was a cute design, though. ETA: Of course, as this is a limited-edition marketing thing, they can't actually make toys for more than a half-dozen or so models.

justin 5y ago

I made a video of these toys, which were hilarious to play with: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJye7Xfmys https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhJye7Xfmys

8iterations 5y ago
atrium was really bad my dude.
- stingrae 5y ago
  totally unnecessary comment "dude".
er4hn 5y ago
Thanks for posting this! I wanted to get a feel for the size and movability of the toys. They look pretty fun :)
adamcharnock 5y ago
My mind is blown by the effort that has gone into a product (even if it is only a mock-up) that celebrates failed products. I just went on a very enjoyable rant about this which included the phrases, “what’s wrong with people?!” And “just create something of value!”

exabrial 5y ago

If you've got thick enough skin to hear a bunch of highly offensive and hilarious Canadian cursing, AvE on YouTube tears down a Juicero machine.

ehnto 5y ago
Great recommendation, I learned a lot when I first watched that video. I learned bits and pieces about product design, material science, the nature of startups and venture capital, some introspection occurred, I learned to love again, and a whole bunch of new slang I will neither remember nor understand.
- goldcd 5y ago
  A Rosetta stone exists - https://avedictionary.com/browse/ https://avedictionary.com/browse/

pjdemers 5y ago

I had an OLPC. My children liked the apps, but struggled with the keyboard because they kept fat fingering the keys. They were little at the time, younger than the target audience. I can't imagine bigger hands trying to type on that keyboard.

SavantIdiot 5y ago

I was expecting a well-researched collection, instead there are a whopping six items. This website is like a startup: promises something exciting, delivers a dud. Feels more like a grudge page. Also, a friend of mine was lucky enough to get a Coolest cooler. It's actually well made and still works. EDIT: I'm a dingdong: this site is actually selling scale-model replicas. Duh.

Pxtl 5y ago
Yeah, the Coolest Cooler seems like a great product if you're into making blender cocktails at parties. A single unified battery for a Peltier and speaker and blender seems like a sensible idea, although it doesn't add that much value over a separate battery-powered blender, Peltier cooler, and speaker. But realistically every place you're going to want a battery-powered blender you're also going to want a good cooler, so that kind of makes sense, and you can get a pretty good bluetooth speaker from a cereal box-top these days so that's a cheap bolt-on to make this the all-singing all-dancing party machine. edit: Googling, I can't seem to find out - does it actually provide electric cooling? Or is it just a big high-quality insulated cooler with some electronic doodads attached?
gkoberger 5y ago
I mean, they had to somehow procure stock from startups that are long out of business. Items nobody actually wants, so what's the point of having _more_ items nobody actually wants? (EDIT: oh. whoops. they're miniatures haha)
- thedogeye 5y ago
  They are not selling the actual products of these startups but rather super cute miniaturized versions that they made.
  - ashtonkem 5y ago
    Some of these items barely existed in the first place. You can get a Juicero, probably, but good luck getting your hands on an honest Theranos device. Few existed, and most of those are probably in the hands of the federal prosecutors charging Holmes with fraud.

jonny_eh 5y ago

No OUYA?

saul_goodman 5y ago
The plethora of strange and weird homebrew games on ouya was great, part of what made the platform so great.
- jonny_eh 5y ago
  100% agree, I worked at the company during its brief lifespan and one the best parts was meeting various indie devs.

xkeysc0re 5y ago

I'm lucky enough to have an original Pets.com sock puppet still in my possession

throwawaycities 5y ago

Where’s the Frye Festival toy tent?

motohagiography 5y ago

One hopes there is some dignity to be found in the discovery that, if nothing else, your purpose was to be an example to others. The OLPC thing is a useful lesson in product design though. It wasn't really a product, it was a mandate about what some people thought others should do, and now instead we have netbooks, the android ecosystem, tablets, and everything else. If someone in the world wants a laptop over other immediate needs, they can get one. Juicero I think had the same problem the rest of juicer market had, which it was a niche product for a nexus of people who both had an upper middle disposable income and thought it was a good idea to convert fibre rich foods into insulin spiking sugar water. Jibo's robot without a purpose was existentially pretty accurate, but they discovered nobody wants that kind of uncanny reminder of the absurdity of their existence hanging around. I joke, but a well aimed joke can destroy a brand, and having funny people around to take those shots can be company saving.

marvindanig 5y ago
The funnest piece of information (and a notable one) is the amount of money these "smartest folks on the planet" put into all of these bullshit projects. And the list doesn't even include the photo-sharing apps that met Bay Area's standard of innovation for rest of the world to follow. Ha!
spookthesunset 5y ago
The thing about Juicero's story that makes it amusing is the fact the company managed to get several brand name VC's to pour in a metric ton of money. I mean in an ideal world, Juicero should have been something you'd have seen on Shark Tank right after somebody's pitch about socks with pockets or something.

axegon_ 5y ago

Jibo got $73M for a product that had no practical purpose or market but involving tons of R&D? For real?!?!

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

I'm pretty sure that many of these toy versions of products might actually outsell the ones they were inspired with.

javier10e6 5y ago

Who can forget the adorable Nabaztag? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag

noxer 5y ago

the "Dead Startup" part reverse to the page which is litterally broken on any device I have.

notananthem 5y ago

Love this, would never buy this crap, its the thought that counts. Also appreciate how many people are upset by it.

fortyseven 5y ago

Nice website, but something feels really shitty about this.

sandworm101 5y ago

I want one of those soccer balls with an inbuilt dynamo. Or those tiles tested in UK schools that harvest power from footsteps. I'm thinking of a similar website for all the failed products that tried to use children as a source of electricity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empower_Playgrounds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empower_Playgrounds https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/28/the-soccket-is-an-electricity-generating-soccer-ball-for-the-developing-world/ https://techcrunch.com/2013/02/28/the-soccket-is-an-electric... https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/guides/technology/energy-harvesting-tiles https://theswitch.co.uk/energy/guides/technology/energy-harv...

Digit-Al 5y ago
No need for anything super elaborate if you want to generate electricity from kids. Just shove 'em in a big hamster wheel with a large can of red bull and a bag of sweets. I mean, sure, some of them will probably die but if we carry on the way we are with the environment they'll all die anyway, so swings and roundabouts. /s

backtoyoujim 5y ago

needs a kozmo scooter w/matching bag

robgibbons 5y ago

Fairly safe to add Magic Leap to the list.

EamonnMR 5y ago

That checkout had just enough friction that I didn't purchase anything.

samstave 5y ago

The juicero is actually a well designed device. I found a few a while back for $100 as I wanted to harvest the motors and gearing out of them...

throwawayboise 5y ago

I thought this was going to be about the office toys from dead startups. I don't know how it is now but in the first dot-com boom in the late 1990s we had all kinds of kids toys like scooters, nerf guns, all over the office. Even then I thought it was sort of ridiculous to see grown adults playing with that stuff at work. In retrospect it should have been a big warning sign that none of this was going to last.

dunnevens 5y ago
I had a related thought: this was going to be a collection of dead startup tchotchke. The t-shirts, pens, light-up pens, etc. with long forgotten logos. That would be a fun and depressing collection. The thought made me a little sad because there's a box in my closet with precisely those items emblazoned with the dead logo of my dead startup.

muyuu 5y ago

some people ran away with million$ failure is relative plus Negroponte got to learnt that communism doesn't work (or maybe he didn't)

muyuu 5y ago
got to learn*

908B64B197 5y ago

The Juicero teardown is hilarious; the device is ridiculously overbuilt. [0] But I still think it was a viable business model. The Nespresso of Juices. Except Nespresso makes machines for ~150$. [1] Had Juicero been able to make one for that price (or cheaper or a wooden bio-degradable hand-crank free with the first pack of pouches) they would still be growing today and making millions in monthly revenues. Because the money is in the subscription. [0] https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ https://youtu.be/_Cp-BGQfpHQ [1] https://www.amazon.com/Nespresso-Essenza-Original-Espresso-Breville/dp/B073ZGWN12 https://www.amazon.com/Nespresso-Essenza-Original-Espresso-B...

juanuys 5y ago

I thought I was going to see my Cognitoys Dino on that site... https://www.wired.com/2015/02/cognitoys-ibm-watson/ https://www.wired.com/2015/02/cognitoys-ibm-watson/

juanuys 5y ago
I say "my". I mean my daughters'. ahem

dgaultiere 5y ago

Need to add Nikola toy truck

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