- The happy happy children's toy, buy it for your kids, they'll sleep well! (laughing) Sometimes companies need
to shake it up a little bit so they come up with some
amazing new products. The phone that changes all phones or maybe a new fashion trend. But not all ventures are successful. Sometimes so much has been
put into a new product and it fails so badly that it literally almost bankrupts a company. (office noises) Here are 10 failed products
that almost ended big companies. Number 10 is the Delorean. There's a big difference
between fame and success and for proof look no further than the Delorean Motor Company. Founded on October 24
1975, the car manufacturer only sold one vehicle
in its short existence. The Delorean DMC12 Sports car. An automobile that took the
standard car door design and threw it out the window in favor of a winged vertical style. Almost from the start the
company was in over it's head with constant design
problems with the DMC12 and issues with the power
it was able to harness being incredibly low. Which is really ironic if
you've seen Back to the Future. Plus to save money the
assemebly line was built in Belfast Northern Ireland, the local workers knew
little about car building. The car flopped in the American market and Delorean closed in
1982 only to become famous due to the Back to the Future trilogy. So in this case the failed product actually did end the company, which is too bad because let's be honest, we'd all like to be riding
around in a Delorean. Number nine is the Edsel. Named after the son of Henry Ford who founded the Ford Motor
Company in 1903, the Edsel was the car that was
supposed to help the company catch up with GM in the American automotive
market in the late 50s. Design for the automobile began in 1955 and it was revealed to the
world on September fourth, 1957. For nearly a year before launch, Ford was making grand claims, leading the public to believe they would soon be staring
at the car of the future. But when the company
confidently unveiled the Edsel, many were left disappointed,
claiming it was the same style as many other vehicles and overall boring. A car named Edsel that's boring? What? After overindulging on advertising and the Edsel selling extremely poorly, Ford was left with a loss
of over 250 million dollars and a clear lesson of how
not to market a product. That's like if you had
a daughter named Beula and you started a fashion line. Hey everybody, wear the Beula. No thanks. Number eight is the Touchpad. Hewlett-Packard used to be
the name in home computing with systems in millions of homes, and while the company
is still seeing profits, they're reputation took
a huge dive in 2011 with the incredibly awkward release of the Touchpad tablet computer. HP threw a big event
on February ninth 2011 called Think Beyond, where
they unveiled the tablet to an excited crowd, however, no price or
shipping date was given, leaving people confused. Instead of launching at the event, HP executives decided to hold off and work on the operating
system some more. When the Touchpad was finally
released on July first, Apple's iPad two had already
taken over the market. Only 25,000 tablets were sold, leading HP to shut down
the web-os division and sell off their stock at a loss. Okay, okay guys I just
developed this thing it's a touch screen phone. You know Samsung and Apple phones are on like their 10th version, right? You're a little late. You're stupid. Number seven is Trendy Fashion. What started as a jean store
in Baltimore, Maryland in 1968 grew to be one of the most
iconic clothing stores in the United States
through the 70s and 80s. But trying to maintain that fast growth is what ultimately led to Merry go round closing the doors to hundreds of stores. Though the company had numerous failures, it's biggest was how it lost touch with it's customer base. As the early 90s brought
in the grunge look, most retailers began doing market research and adjusting specific locations to sell what the area was looking for. But not Merry go round. Fixating on flashy, colorful clothes worn by rappers like LL Cool J, the company tried to set the
trend in areas full of people in torn jeans and t-shirts. Fast forward and after filing
for bankruptcy in 1994, Merry go round closed it's
remaining 536 stores in 1996 and liquidated all assets. Well, I guess more than
one company on this list because of a bad product decision, which is too bad because I
would love to see neon clothing come back, you know what I'm sayin? Got me drippin in finesse, I'm sorry, I'll never do that again. Number 6 is the Dreamcast. Released in Japan on November 27th 1998 and North American markets
on September 9th 1999, the Dreamcast was a video
game system developed by Sega that due to a number of issues and horrible business decisions, ultimately met an early demise. The design and technology
inside the consol was expensive, meaning to compete with
the Play station two, each system had to be sold at a loss. Additionally, third party
support just wasn't there as the system was difficult
to develop games for due to a flawed controller
design and software issue. On March 31st 2001, just
after two years on the market, Dreamcast was pulled by
Sega and after 18 years, the company announced it's exit from the consol development business. But today Sega still exists and focuses on software
development for other systems. Ah, memories. You know Sonic the Hedgehog
was the sole reason I wanted to get a little hedgehog. Turns out they're spiky
and kinda poop a lot. Not the same. Number five is DivX. On June 8th 1998, Circuit City and Zifran, Brittinham,
Bronka, and Fisher a law firm, released DivX, a new way to watch movies that would compete with
DVD rental businesses. The idea was customers would
purchase special DivX players and hook them up to the internet
via a dial up phone line, yeah cuz everyone used to like
dial up internet, the whole eee-errr-ehhhhhh! That was the sound it used
to make, it was horrifying. Then they could purchase
movies for around $4-$5 from various stores and watch them in that
player for up to 48 hours. If they wanted the film
playable after that they would have to call a
hotline and pay an extra fee. But DivX movies were much
poorer quality than DVDs and their players cost
nearly twice as much. The format was discontinued
almost exactly a year after it launched, and DivX and it's parent
company Circuit City became the laughing stock of
the consumer technology world. Buy our player, it's got a cool name! Terrible quality, but a cool name! Number four is Jaguar. Released on November 23rd
1993 the Jaguar was the sixth and final video game consol
under the Atari brand name. Though a lesser system, the Atari Panther, was
supposed to come out first, the Jaguar's development
was far ahead of schedule so Panther was scraped in order for Atari to release the most advanced consol on the market at the time. And indeed it was! A 64 bit system that
put 16 bit consols like Sega Genesis and Super nintendo to shame. Or at least it would have if the Jaguar would have been a success. The hardware and software
were difficult to navigate for game developers, many
of whom opted to make games for competing systems instead, leading to a library of only
67 games and abysmal sales. Atari was forced into a reverse merger with JT storage in 1996 and its assets were quickly liquidated. Hey sometimes you just
need to keep it simple, remember pong? Look at how fun that is. Look at that, look at that. It's so fun to watch. Number three are Wow! Chips. The only real downsides to
eating all the junk food that you want are of course the upset stomachs you'll likely receive and all the weight that
you're likely going to gain. Back in 1996, Frito-Lay, the
maker of Fritos, Lays, Ruffles, Doritos, and Tostitos,
wanted to do something about the latter downside and
began offering Wow! Chips, which almost had no fat in them! But how did they accomplish this you ask. Well they swapped in
olestra, a fat substitute. Launching all across the
United States in 1998, Frito-Lay saw sales rise
over 400 million dollars, and everything was great and
they went on forever like that! No, if you paid attention
to the title of this list, you know that's not true. It was short lived, as the following year, sales plummeted to less than half that. Turns out eating too much olestra
caused abdominal cramping, diarrhea and a little side
affect called anal leakage. So, consumers turned away, which
left the company scrabbling to bring back the original chips. Oh God sorry I just was
thinking about what I just said and it's really, really gross
just enjoy regular chips folks just in moderation. Number two are Trump Steaks. In August of 2006, Donald Trump registered a US
trademark called Trump Steaks. Nine months later on May 8th 2007, his line was officially launched, offering top quality meat cuts,
including burgers, sausages, and the world's greatest steaks. Trump was very proud of his new products, promoting it on the show The Apprentice, and even appearing on a
home shopping channel. But the steaks were a colossel flop, barely selling any at all. The reason for the failure, Trump decided to only offer
the steaks for purchase at the Sharper Image,
a consumer electronics and lifestyle product store where nobody shopped for fine foods. So Trump Steaks were
pulled from the shelves less than two months after their launch and the Sharper Image went
bankrupt the following year. Okay that sounds like a really
really odd business decision, who's gonna go into a store and be like I want a blender and I also want a oh a
steak is a good combination. And number one are mail DVDs. Back in the year 2000,,
Netflix was just a small blip on the radar compared to the online streaming powerhouse it is today. And that's probably why Blockbuster CEO John Antioco passed on purchasing
the company that year. A move that probably still
keeps him up at night. At the time Netflix was
a DEV mailing company that was seeing a moderate
amount of success. Instead of paying 50 million dollars that the Netflix CEO
Reed Hastings requested, Blockbuster launched its own
DVD mailing service in 2008. But it was too little too late and the division was crushed
by both Netflix and Redbox, who essentially owned the market. They lost over 1.2 billion dollars in 2010 and Blockbuster was forced
to file for bankruptcy. The very last store closed it's
doors on November 9th 2010. The final rental being, This is the End. Well that's appropriate. Well now I'm gonna go on Netlix and chill. You know what I'm sayin? So those were 10 failed products that almost ended big companies, and actually ended a couple of em. But if you guys enjoyed this remember to give it a big thumbs up and also be sure to
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