From the DeLorean and New Coke to the Newton and Google Glass, here’s a list of the biggest product flops from corporate giants.
Product innovation is one way that large corporations stay competitive in a rapidly changing marketplace, but it doesn’t always work out when big brands attempt innovation.
Below are what we consider to be 155 of the biggest product flops of all time. We combed through thousands of media articles to select these product flops across major industries including tech software and hardware, consumer packaged goods, fast food, and electronics.
Not all of these are flops – well, the Evian Water Bra certainly is – but some of them are products that had a fairly long life but just lost out against the competition. Things like Betamax (which was better, but lost to VHS), and the LaserDisc, could have done much better, but got supplanted by other technologies. (Technically, even VHS is a failure.) And some other items were ahead of their time (the Newton), or transitional (DATs). But it’s an interesting graveyard of dead products, many of which have been truly forgotten.
It’s worth thinking about some of these products with a couple of Amazon’s new product announcements, such as Alexa glasses and an Alexa ring.
Source: When Corporate Innovation Goes Bad — The 155 Biggest Product Failures Of All Time