The 15 Worst Product Failures of All-Time

No company wants to launch a new item that loses money, but sometimes a product just doesn't stick. 

So if you've got a new invention brewing, try to learn from the obstacles of others. Hopefully, you can use their lessons to shape your business and start investing in products that have longevity. 

Here are 15 products that struggled to make it big on the market. 

In 2003, Smith & Wesson launched bikes for the general public. Yes, you read that right: the firearms manufacturer decided that people would just go crazy for bicycles. You really can't make this stuff up.

Of course, Smith & Wesson have produced bikes for law enforcement for years, but the public just couldn't make the connection between firearms and bicycles in a way that made them feel good about purchasing the bikes.

Back in the early days of the pandemic, Singapore Airlines had a wacky idea: Why not just give people flights to nowhere? That way, they still get the experience of being on an airplane, but the company can still respect travel restrictions.

As you might expect, it flopped. This was a huge waste of resources, with environmentalists decrying the huge carbon footprint with little payoff.

Released in 2001, the Segway PT was even banned in some countries because they didn't fit well with bicycles and pedestrians. 

Safety issues ran wild with the Segway as well. In 2010, a former owner of the company passed away after losing control of his Segway and falling off of a cliff. 

In 2015, Segway pivoted to the more profitable scooters after being bought by Ninebot. 

This was a wacky product fail that should have been a smash hit. General Motors launched an electric car way before Tesla was on the scene. 

However, consumers feared that they could be stranded if they needed to exceed the 70-100 mile distance for the EV1 battery. 

The other thing that really derailed the success of the EV1 was that it was only available as a lease. With no purchase option and strong limitations, it's no shock the EV1 was eventually phased out. 

The Nook faced tough competition when it was launched alongside a plethora of other e-readers. 

Due to lackluster marketing and price changes, the niche product struggled to compete with Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad models. 

Does anyone remember the G4 Cube? It was supposed to be super compact, but it had many problems that should have been resolved before launch.

For starters, the case cracked easily and the cube overheated. 

Consumers didn't bite, and it was discontinued in 2001. However, it did give ideas for making compact computers work better in the future.

Since the Airboard was released years before the iPad, early-2000s consumers may have struggled to appreciate the device's full capabilities. 

Released in 2000, the AirBoard could send emails, watch videos, take photos, and stream local television. However, the $1,300 price tag made it a hard sell. 

The BlackBerry Storm was launched in 2008 in order to compete with Apple's iPhone. 

However, rushed development resulted in a product that faced multiple problems and technological glitches. 

BlackBerry tossed the project in the bin quickly in the face of numerous returns, and the phone became a tiny footnote in BlackBerry's history.

MoviePass was a subscription service that worked a little too well. For less than $10 per month, you could see one movie per day. Sounds great, right? Well, plenty of people flocked to the service, but it cost the company too much. 

They responded to the high demand by changing the pricing model, cutting the movie selection, and adding in lots of restrictions.

While this was to make it profitable for MoviePass, consumers left the service. MoviePass shut down in 2019.

When you're as big as Pepsi, how can you put out failed products? Well, take a look at Pepsi Blue. It was supposed to go head-to-head with Vanilla Coke but failed.

One of the issues was that blue food coloring is banned in multiple countries, but another reason is that some consumers didn't like the overly sweet taste.

Did the Dreamcast have powerful hardware? Yes. However, good hardware wasn't enough to carry it to popularity above the PlayStation 2. The Dreamcast had an awkward controller and other features that just didn't catch on with the public.

Today, Sega just focuses on publishing good games. 

While people didn't actually hover above the ground, the hoverboard became a very deep part of pop culture anyway. They were everywhere, all of the time ... until the hoverboards started catching on fire. Yikes!

This was even more dangerous when you think about the group that really loved hoverboards: Tweens and teenagers. Parents saw the exploding videos everywhere on social media and immediately called for the product to get pulled from the market.

Exploding cell phones? Somehow, that just isn't a product that's going to have a long shelf life. 

In 2017, Samsung had to recall over 2 million phones because the batteries would explode. This led to plenty of parody videos as well as decreased market sales for Samsung.

In the 1960s, the toothpaste company's Colgate Kitchen division briefly released crabmeat and dried chicken entrees.

However, since Colgate's brand is so strongly associated with dental products, the food products were removed. 

The TwitterPeek device was a short-lived 2009 sensation. 

A reviewer from Fast Company stated that the device only gave a 20-character preview of Tweets, displayed a cluttered browser, and was overpriced. 

Despite spending millions of dollars, product launches still have their challenges, and they aren't guaranteed to succeed. 

Whether it's a company or a single entrepreneur, it's important to learn from your failures in order to continue innovating, avoid wasting money, and eventually develop a successful product.