40 Products That Were Thought To Be Life-Changing, But Were Utter Flops Instead
Remember the Segway craze of the early 2000s? Mall cops were zooming down walkways with them, and guided Segway tours became a hit in popular tourist destinations. But then, seemingly overnight, they disappeared. And now they’re nowhere to be found, as electric scooters have quickly become the preferred mode of transit for pedestrians who don’t feel like walking.
There’s a new “next big thing” every year, but unfortunately, they don’t all live up to their own expectations. Redditors have recently been discussing “next big things” that massively flopped, so below, you can look back on products and companies that, in hindsight, probably received too much hype. Enjoy scrolling through, and be sure to upvote the things you had completely forgotten about!
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Not entirely relevant, but I liked the trend where everybody wanted the smallest cell phone possible. For 20 years cell phones got smaller and smaller. Often being the main selling point of the phone.
Then all of sudden you could watch videos on your phone, and almost overnight the trend reversed to “larger is better”.
The “[pandemic] baby boom” People thought that during lockdowns we’d see a bunch of pregnancies because couples would essentially have nothing else to do. Instead we saw people isolate more even after the lockdowns ended and fewer people are dating at all now let alone having kids. When inflation started to increase you also saw more people choose to delay having kids due to increased costs and some residual effects of shortages (like the baby formula shortage we had in the US last year)
Those chips that were “fat free”, except they made you have violent diarrhea and a**l leakage because of the Olestra used in them.
An*l leakage and explosive diarrhea is a sure fire weight loss regimen.
Internet of Things.
I'm an engineer, and while I was in college people in my field have been banging that drum.
Turns out we just need a good enough refrigerator, not an internet connected one.
When the Windows Phone was unveiled, Microsoft held a genuine funeral procession for the iPhone.
Blockchain. I couldn’t stop hearing about it in grad school. I got pushed into studying data analytics and had to do a course on it. In the end I wrote my paper on the usefulness of it and basically said “it’s not without its uses, but there doesn’t seem to be a pressing need for it.” I read later a much better assessment of “a solution looking for a problem” and that basically nailed it.
Blockchain is an excellent choice for many things but its main commercial use (cryptocurrency) isn't one of them. Its wasting resources to create an artificial scarcity that has no real value. The strength or weakness of a currency is user belief. Almost the entire world looked at it and decided my one dollar or one yen bill works just fine and it won't go away if I forget a password.
I’m still very distraught we never got the modular phone revolution I was promised back in the early 2010s. Now it’s wildly exciting to have a replaceable battery. My heart weeps
The DCEU. I mean, they started a franchise finally showing Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman together on the big screen, and yet they somehow managed to botch it so spectacularly, so early on.
I've watched all those movies and couldn't tell you what happened in any of them except the first Wonder Woman movie.
Amazon’s shopping buttons. They pushed really hard for those and I never saw the point.
The Metaverse.
Curved TV's.
Is that trend "dead"? Just thought it's not cheap enough yet to be massively expanded.. saw several high end curved TV's on display in my local electronics store, when I visited to get my new, cheap QLED tv.
Motion controls in video games. They have not disappeared completely but they are nowhere as popular as they were back in the late 2000s.
Minidisc
Oh yes, I went with that.... just a better way to mixtape than the old tape format. But noone else jumped on board it seemed:)
Kinect was a full body motion control thing for the Xbox 360. It was supposed to change the gaming industry. It had maybe a dozen games made for it, most of which barely worked. And it silently went away after about 2 or 3 years.
How is that tesla cybertruck, it was announced years ago but not available yet, or is it?
New Coke, 20 or 30 years ago, I think. Belly flopped.
What do you mean, the 90's were like 10 years ago.... right?
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Belly flopped is being kind, it crashed and burned and drove once loyal customers away If you want to taste what Coke tasted like before they switched to high fructose corn syrup over 40 years ago, find some Mexican Coke in the glass bottles still made with cane sugar.
High fructose corn syrup in place of sugar in coke is a US-specific thing. Any other country (well at least most, Idk if there's some exceptions to this) use sugar.
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They made that due to the Pepsi challenge showing that people did prefer Pepsi - Coke even ran it's own tests and found that out. What was ironic, when New Coke came out, the test they ran showed that people preferred the New Coke! The problem was, people did not want their Coke changed. Coke drinkers never asked for it!
This is a great marketing story of poor decision making. The 'tests' showed people preferred Pepsi mostly because it was about 10% sweeter. So Coke made New Coke sweeter, like Pepsi. Here is the dumb part, Coke thought its drinkers would stay with New Coke because that was their brand but they thought Pepsi drinkers would switch from Pepsi to New Coke because it tasted like Pepsi. Coke drinkers would be brand-loyal but not Pepsi drinkers?? Plus, if the original Coke drinkers wanted a sweeter drink nothing was stopping them from buying Pepsi. Coca-Cola seemed to forget that Coke and Pepsi drinkers buy because of the taste, not the name.
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I knew one person that liked New Coke. She was my friends Mom. When it was discontinued she drove around to every store in our area to buy the last few cases. She insisted it was the best thing since sliced bread. I was never sold on it.
It was a huge flop but the main goal was accomplished--to replace sugar with toxic high fructose corn syrup in the 'classic' version.
It was horrible. So glad it died even before it hit the shelves in some locations. We didn't even have social media to complain about it, so one sip and that is all the public needed.
A fantastically successful feint. Coke managed to switch from sugar to corn syrup, and actually boosted their sales and reputation in the process. See, the theory is that New Coke was supposed to fail, but when people demanded Coca-Cola Classic, the publicity was worth tens of billions of dollars. But they never really GOT Coca-Cola Classic; they got a return to a lightly drier, spicier flavor, but made with much cheaper corn syrup instead. Had Coke deliberately switch to corn syrup, the outcry would've sunk the company.
There’s a conspiracy theory (that actually makes sense). Pepsi was beating Coke for the first time so the made New Coke. Of course there was an outrage and people demanded the original Coke again so Coke Classic was born and sales were huge. But this let Coke use High Fructose corn syrup which is cheaper than sugar. So sales up and production costs down. They’ve been ahead of Pepsi ever since.
The current Coke is a new coke, called Coke classic, it was a bait and switch. Old coke had glucose, new Coke classic has fructose.
I think that was the point, though. It was designed to flop, encouraging people to buy more regular Coke or something.
No, it wasn't. They genuinely believed it would be a successful product based on market research. In blind taste tests people said they preferred new coke.
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What will kill coke is the global push to ban plastic waste. They fill plastic with water. Name a product they make that isnt delivered using plsstic?
The litany of film adaptations of young adult novels that happened in the wake of Hunger Games' success. Aside from Divergent, which eventually ran out of gas, and Maze Runner all of them flopped and didn't get sequels.
Fyre festival
The future when you were young😂
"When I was young I was poor. But after decades of hard work, I'm no longer young."
Clear Pepsi. If I remember correctly they even used a Van Halen song for the commercials
They just came out with clear ketchup did they learn nothing from the crazy colors of the 90s
How has NOBODY posted about the Firephone???
Whole teams of people were fired after that debacle.
Wii U was unfortunate. The Switch is just a very refined Wii U.
One of the funniest I remember was solar roads. Solar panels that you drive on. Without damaging them, somehow. With your operating room tires.
HD DVD
Still remember half the movies being blue and the others red.
And they say DVD and Blu-ray are becoming popular again because they're more permanent than the digital downloads you bought.
Dippin Dots has been the ice cream of the future for a while now. You'd think that future would have come to pass by now.
Emu meat!
For a while there in the late 80s & early 90s it was a thing that doctors & lawyers who wanted the ranch lifestyle would invest in. There was enough awareness of it that emus getting killed by the monster was even played for a gag in *8 Legged Freaks* & one of the *Tremors* movies.
No wonder they got into wars. They didn't want to be dinner.
Disney's Atlantis. They had a whole park planned around it. Unfortunately they released it in a year saturated by insanely good movies.
Zune
Zune was just as functional, easy to upload to, use and manage as an iPod, it was just in the right place at the wrong time. It just couldn't compete with the product that got there first.
Gonna tentatively suggest this, Apple's Vision Pro headset thing.
A VR headset with a separate battery that you have to carry, creepy eye vision screen on the front, and all for only $3500+. How could it fail?
Also, now that I think of it. Apple's Ping social networking thing.
Fusion power is always 10 years away
No, it didn't flop: https://fusionforenergy.europa.eu/news/jt-60sa-is-officially-the-most-powerful-tokamak/
Threads
My threads hold my clothing together. Believe me when I say this is a very good thing for the world.
KONY 2012
i guess the fact that i dont know half of these things means its true :-D
Me too! -but as a wise man once sang; ♫ "Too much monkey business for me to be involved in"♫
Load More Replies... At one time there was the laser disc. A bigger version of cd and super expensive
I remember my elementary school's gifted program was given a laser disk player. The school was so proud of that thing. We had one laser disk for it... a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Or maybe it was the Smithsonian? It's been a while. Late 80s.
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People are equating 'trends' with 'life-changing' by saying "these things are still around". This article isn't about whether a trend fell out of favor, it's whether something touted as 'life-changing' ended up being so. It's irrelevant if they're still around, what matters is that they didn't affect society in the way they were sold they would. Motion control was supposed to change gaming. It didn't. The fact that VR and some games still use it doesn't change the fact that it didn't change the gaming industry.
Remember ruby chocolate? It was everywhere for a while then it kind of vanished overnight.
Humans. We have had great potential for years but individually most of us squander our evolutionary advantage, as for a whole idk if we'll ever be truly civil, humanity seems to be regressing instead of progressing
Capacitance Electronic Disc - Right before VCRs were a household staple, and before laser disks, was the CED. I haven’t met a person yet that remembers them, but our local video store rented the disks and the machines for awhile in the 80’s. I still have a copy of Star Wars on CED as a conversion piece.
Real life earnings in Video Games. Remember when Diablo 3 came out and it was super hyped that it has an auction house where you can pay in real money to other players? And people might make money out of it? People were saying it will change the entire industry. Spoiler alert: It didn't and even that game cut it out eventually.
why would they? am stereo radio exists and people who want to listen to it can. The problem with terrestrial radio in general is that its not profitable anymore.
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i guess the fact that i dont know half of these things means its true :-D
Me too! -but as a wise man once sang; ♫ "Too much monkey business for me to be involved in"♫
Load More Replies... At one time there was the laser disc. A bigger version of cd and super expensive
I remember my elementary school's gifted program was given a laser disk player. The school was so proud of that thing. We had one laser disk for it... a tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. Or maybe it was the Smithsonian? It's been a while. Late 80s.
Load More Replies... People are equating 'trends' with 'life-changing' by saying "these things are still around". This article isn't about whether a trend fell out of favor, it's whether something touted as 'life-changing' ended up being so. It's irrelevant if they're still around, what matters is that they didn't affect society in the way they were sold they would. Motion control was supposed to change gaming. It didn't. The fact that VR and some games still use it doesn't change the fact that it didn't change the gaming industry.
Remember ruby chocolate? It was everywhere for a while then it kind of vanished overnight.
Humans. We have had great potential for years but individually most of us squander our evolutionary advantage, as for a whole idk if we'll ever be truly civil, humanity seems to be regressing instead of progressing
Capacitance Electronic Disc - Right before VCRs were a household staple, and before laser disks, was the CED. I haven’t met a person yet that remembers them, but our local video store rented the disks and the machines for awhile in the 80’s. I still have a copy of Star Wars on CED as a conversion piece.
Real life earnings in Video Games. Remember when Diablo 3 came out and it was super hyped that it has an auction house where you can pay in real money to other players? And people might make money out of it? People were saying it will change the entire industry. Spoiler alert: It didn't and even that game cut it out eventually.
why would they? am stereo radio exists and people who want to listen to it can. The problem with terrestrial radio in general is that its not profitable anymore.
Load More Replies...