Top 20 Overhyped Inventions That FLOPPED
#20: Betamax
For those of you asking, “What’s Betamax?” It’s like VHS, but different. And while we do realize that many of you also have no clue what VHS is… it was huge. Before there was streaming, and before there was Blu-ray, and before DVDs, there were video cassette tapes. And beginning in the mid-70s there were two main video cassette formats competing against each other - VHS and Betamax. While it could be argued that Beta was better quality, many factors - including price - led to VHS owning 60% of the North American market by 1980, and they just grew their dominance from there. Beta was never the Alpha they’d hoped to be.
#19: Microsoft Kin One & Kin Two
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This one is a double failure of magnificent proportions. The 2010 Kin One and Kin Two were phones designed by Microsoft aimed at the younger social network-loving generation. The problem though was that the younger generation didn’t like them. In fact, pretty much no one did. The Kin phones didn’t have third-party apps or an app store and the web browser on the devices didn’t support Flash video (which back in 2010 was kind of a big deal). An even bigger deal was the lack of any instant messaging services - which for a “social” phone seems like a crazy omission. Microsoft worked on the Kin phones for two years and spent over $1 billion - and within two months Verizon stopped selling them.
#18: Oakley THUMP
We don’t know about you but two items we tend to lose the most are our sunglasses and our headphones. Well, back in 2004 Oakley gave us the opportunity to lose them both at the same time when they introduced their THUMP sunglasses with built-in headphones and MP3 player. The THUMPs were the first ever sunglasses to have an audio player built into them and while it might sound cool - it certainly doesn’t sound $400-$500 cool (depending on if you wanted 128MB or 256MB). What if you wanted to take off your sunglasses but keep listening to your music? For that kind of money, we’d be sleeping in those things. Needless to say, they never really caught on.
#17: Microsoft Bob
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These days even a 10-year-old could probably navigate a Windows home screen with their eyes closed. However, back in the mid-90s, it was all still pretty new and not as intuitive to many users. This brings us to Bob, Microsoft's attempt to switch out the standard Windows Program Manager for something more user-friendly… a house. Well, at least an image of a house with rooms and items that everyone was familiar with. Want to open a Word document? Just click on the paper on the desk. Can’t figure something out? Let your cute virtual puppy help you. It almost sounds like a bad joke - but it wasn’t. It was a major Microsoft product launch released in March of 1995 and discontinued in 1996.
#16: CueCat
From posters to restaurant menus, we’ve all whipped out our phone to scan a QR code at one time or another and found it rather quick and useful. Well, back in 2000 before smartphones, the Digital Convergence Corporation had an idea for a barcode reader that users could use to scan URL barcodes found in various magazines, catalogs, etc. Again, sounds kind of useful right? Wrong! You see, this CueCat barcode reader had to be plugged into your computer, which means you had to have the item there with you. Not to mention the lengthy installation and registration process. To quote one reviewer who said the device was “not solving a problem.” Gizmodo dubbed it the worst invention of the 2000s.
#15: Microsoft Zune
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Despite Apple’s huge market share in the portable media player space with the iPod in the mid-2000s - some very smart people at Microsoft still believed they could be beat. So, they spent lots of time and a whole lotta money coming up with the Zune. And if you were around in 2006 you probably remember it - not because you bought one (unless you were Sheldon Cooper), but because Microsoft promoted it everywhere. On the plus side, all that promotion made it the second best-selling PMP when it launched with 9% market share. However, iPod was still number one with 63% - and they never really got much closer than that. In the end, the Zune wasn’t a bad product. It just wasn’t an iPod.
#14: Premier Smokeless Cigarettes
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In the 80s, the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company didn’t just see their industry lead fall to Phillip Morris, but growing anti-smoking sentiment was a growing concern as well. So, in an attempt to provide a “healthier” option, they came up with the Premier brand of smokeless cigarettes. These definitely weren’t healthy, but they did reduce smoke and eliminated the inhalation of tar. The problem was they were hard to use and generally unpleasant to smoke. According to multiple testers in Japan, they tasted like bull… except they didn’t say “bull.” Even the company’s CEO said they smelled “like a fart.” They were discontinued within a year with total losses coming in between $800 million and $1 billion.
#13: HP Touchpad
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As what happened with the iPod, once Apple introduced their iPad tablets everyone else was pretty much competing for second place. You might remember two of the biggest-hyped competitors, HP and BlackBerry, and their respective TouchPad and PlayBook devices. Or, actually, you might not remember them because neither device - despite the big companies behind them - made much of an impact on consumers. Both devices were launched to big fan fair in 2011 and while the PlayBook would stick around for a year or two, it only took 49 days for HP to give up on the TouchPad and cut prices to sell off their inventory.
#12: Apple Newton
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Yes, it’s true. Not everything Apple touches turns to gold. The Newton was a personal digital assistant - in fact, the term personal digital assistant was actually coined in reference to Apple’s device. It’s also proof that being first to market isn’t always a guarantee of success. The Newton was certainly intriguing and innovative, but it wasn’t perfect. One of the most exciting features was the handwriting recognition. However, upon launch, the kinks still hadn’t all been worked out and it was, let’s call it, not very good. Then there was the high price tag that we’ve all come to expect from Apple products. The Newton was developed during the time when Steve Jobs had left the company. When he came back, he killed it.
#11: DMC DeLorean
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If we’re talking about a product's lasting recognition in popular culture then the DeLorean is one of the great successes of all time. However, just because we all loved “Back to the Future” doesn’t mean the DeLorean was a big seller. Maybe if they’d been actual time machines they would’ve sold better. But not only did they not help you travel through time, the low-powered and generally poor-performing cars didn’t even live up to their sporty image. The gull-winged sports car produced in 1981 and 1982 filed for bankruptcy in 1983 and only ended up producing about 9,000 vehicles.
#10: LaserDisc
A 12-inch precursor to DVD and Blu-ray, LaserDisc gave film fans a better picture and superior sound compared to its format foe, VHS. Yet, history shows that VHS dominated the market. LaserDisc’s big, ultimately insurmountable problem was that it cost way too much. A single unit could set you back the equivalent of $1,500 or more, with movies costing up to $80. Even then, most discs had maximum 60 minutes play, meaning you had to turn and restart at sometimes quite climactic points, and LaserDisc didn’t allow you to record. It was popular in parts of South East Asia, especially Hong Kong, and wasn’t officially discontinued until 2009 – but LaserDisc had died long before then.
#9: Microsoft Kinect
Microsoft wasn’t the first company to bring motion censoring to video games and consoles, but it did differentiate itself by being controller-free - unlike what Nintendo was doing with the Wii at the time. Initially, the company looked to have a hit on their hands - selling 8 million units in the first two months and earning a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for “fastest-selling consumer electronics device.” But while Microsoft promoted the heck out of it, and bundled it with many Xbox devices, the Kinect never became the must-have thing they hoped it would be. And while the technology found life in academic and commercial realms, the consumer side of things pretty much came to an end in 2017.
#8: Nokia N-Gage
Back when the standard cell phone was still state-of-the-art, Nokia was one of the world’s most forward-thinking brands. But, contrary to the play on words, N-Gage failed to engage anybody. Released in 2003 and retailing at around $300, the handheld console’s awkward shape, clunky buttons, small screen, and questionable collection of games left users hugely unexcited. One of its most entertaining aspects was that it looked like a taco – and that tells you everything you need to know. The 2004 release of a follow-up attempt, the N-Gage QD, was a marginal improvement, but the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS soon saw off what proved to be very weak competition.
#7: Wii U
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The Wii and the Switch are Nintendo’s two best-selling home consoles ever. What some of us have probably forgotten though is that in between those consoles Nintendo released Wii U. Following the mega-success of the Wii wasn’t going to be easy. And while adding HD graphics, a controller with built-in touchpad, and improved online functions are all good things. In the end, the console was a pretty big disappointment for the company - and for many consumers who complained about things like the gamepad’s short battery life and generally poor user interface. The game selection was rather disappointing as well. Looking at the numbers, while the Wii and Switch have sold over 101 and 125 million units respectively, Wii U only boasts just over 13 million.
#6: Hoverboard
Of all the things that “Back to the Future” promised us, we couldn’t wait until technology advanced enough for hoverboards. Could there possibly be anything cooler than floating through crowds a la Marty McFly? Unfortunately, real-life hoverboards, AKA self-balancing scooters, were less than impressive. They cost a small fortune, proved devilishly difficult to control, and they kept randomly exploding. The safety issues especially put lots of people off the idea of levitating and caused many major cities to ban boards from the streets. Developers are still honing designs so that one day we all might fly, but for now, the invention is likely to crash and burn. Literally.
#5: Samsung Galaxy Note 7
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Released in 2016, the same year as Apple’s consistent but relatively uninspiring iPhone 7, the Galaxy Note 7 could have been Samsung’s defining moment in the smartphone wars. Instead, it almost blew Apple’s biggest competitor out of contention entirely. A manufacturing defect in the Note 7 battery led to multiple reports of phones overheating, and in some cases spontaneously catching fire. Samsung were forced into a series of international recalls, costing an estimated $17 billion at least, and inflicting serious damage on the company’s reputation. Before they started blowing up, some critics had labelled these phones as game changers, but it was quickly game over. Samsung had hoped for hot sales, just not like this.
#4: Segway
Conceived in 2001, some predicted Segway would soon become the planet’s favourite mode of transport. But most buyers couldn’t justify a cost of up to $7,000 given that there existed zero infrastructure for Segway use, and confusion reigned over its legal limits. Some countries barred them from roads, others said no to sidewalks, and some banned them all together. The hype quickly fizzled out, and Segway turned from new-age innovation to novelty item. Today, it’s most famous for wiping out Usain Bolt, and for somewhat ironically causing the death of Jimi Heselden, a British entrepreneur who in 2010, having recently bought the company, lost control of a Segway prototype and fell from a cliff.
#3: Windows Vista
Following on from the massively successful Windows XP, Vista set out to improve Microsoft security – and it did. But everything else about the ill-fated operating system left users scratching their heads and/or pulling their hair out. Increased hardware requirements meant many PCs couldn’t convert, despite Microsoft assurances that they could, while licensing issues and an avalanche or user prompts fed growing frustration. In 2009, when Windows 7 came to kill it off, optimistic analysts argued that Vista had been a success, acquiring 400 million users and becoming the second most widely used system on the net. The most popular OS, however? That would be XP, retaining millions more who simply refused to upgrade.
#2: 3D TV
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Around the release of James Cameron’s “Avatar” in 2009, 3D TV sparked another dimension of anticipation. After years of toying with the tech, it seemed we’d finally see our favorite films and programs convincingly pop out from flat screens. During the initial rush, soccer matches, golf tournaments, political events, beauty pageants, and major TV releases came with 3D capability. But buyers were never whole-heartedly convinced, and the advent of 4K screens and curved displays meant that 3D glasses seemed oddly outdated. By 2017, the likes of Samsung, Hisense, Sony, and LG had all dropped 3D tech. After a sensational rise, it was a spectacular fall.
#1: Google Glass
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The inventive journey to Google Glass is reasonably easy to trace. From desktop to laptop, to hand-held computing, smartphones, and wearables, the eyes seem a logical next tech target. But when Google rolled out its revolutionary eyewear, the world blinked, blinked again, and gave a resounding “No!” A head-mounted optical display enabling you to capture photos and video from your own line of vision, there had been a huge buzz around Glass pre-launch. But safety and privacy concerns quickly dwarfed the supposed benefits of having social media within inches of your iris. Introduced in early 2013, by January 2015 Goggle had dropped the prototype as the sci-fi specs just couldn’t live up to eye-watering expectations.
