Off topic - article about some famous consumer item "flops."
May 22, 1999
'Sure-Fire' Products Became Flops
Filed at 11:03 a.m. EDT
By The Associated Press
CHICAGO (AP) -- Let's hop into the Edsel, pop the top off a Crystal (clear)
Pepsi and stick some Menudo in the eight-track player as we take a trip down
Memory Lane, in search of products lost on the road to the new millennium.
Century's end seems a good time to take a look at some ''sure-fire''
consumer goods that made a splash, only to litter the pages of history as
high-profile, and often high-priced, flops.
What will we encounter while touring the Land of Misfit Products, besides a
hamburger made with a seaweed derivative, a ''smokeless'' cigarette, and an
Apple Newton (which was supposed to decipher handwriting, remember)?
How about a crank to start a Model T?
All this stuff has one thing in common: It was everywhere once, and it's
nowhere now.
''These products all sounded like good ideas, but you never really know
because you're dealing with the consumer,'' said Bobby Calder, a professor
of marketing at Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of
Management. ''The minute you think you've got consumers figured out,
you're in trouble.''
Marketing experts say 80 percent of all new products fail upon introduction
and serve only to provide fodder for trivia magazines, Web sites and stories
like this one. Another 10 percent disappear within five years.
Some 25,000 new products were introduced in the food, beverage, beauty
and health care market last year alone. There were 5,500 new toys, hundreds
of new car models.
''It's far easier for a product to fail nowadays than it is to survive,'' says
Robert McMath, a former Procter & Gamble marketing executive who now
runs the New Products Showcase and Learning Center in Ithaca, N.Y. ''Any
one of a million things could go wrong, including the wrong packaging, the
wrong price or an awful taste. A lot of it is that it's the wrong product at the
wrong time, or too many of the same products at one time.''
In Sony's case, the Betamax was regarded as far superior in sound and
picture quality to VHS formats, but consumers turned their noses up on the
price. Folks also soured on Frito-Lay's lemonade, and had no sweetness in
their hearts for the sugary-tasting New Coke, which tasted a lot like the old
Pepsi.
Among famous stinkers, Ford's Edsel was an icon. It was named for Henry
Ford's son and introduced as the car of the future in the fall of 1957 after the
company spent $250 million on development and consumer surveys on what
to name it.
In the two years before its introduction, Ford employed its marketing might
in teaser ads and leaked information to position the car as unlike anything
ever seen.
''You've never had it like this before,'' one ad said.
Few wanted it.
Ford executives had hoped to sell more than 200,000 in the first year but
ended up selling only 63,107. In its entire three-year run, only 110,847 Edsels
were sold.
The two-ton behemoth -- actually seven different Edsel models in the first
year -- came with push-button gear selector systems in the steering wheel
and ''horse collar'' grills. But to the 2.5 million Americans who crowded into
showrooms the week of Sept. 4, 1957, they appeared to be nothing more
than expensive, odd-looking versions of cars already on the market.
Undaunted, Ford treated Americans on Oct. 13 to ''The Edsel Show,'' a
one-hour CBS special in place of ''The Ed Sullivan Show,'' with hosts Frank
Sinatra, Bing Crosby and other stars.
There was even a chance to win a free pony if you'd just come in for a test
drive.
Still no sell.
Might the Edsel have done better with another name? Hard to say,
considering the alternatives. Among the 6,000 names proposed for the
wonder car: the Utopian Turtletop, the Pastelogram and the Mongoose
Civique.
What went wrong? Automotive historians say Ford goofed by pitching the
Edsel as revolutionary, while consumers thought it merely revolting. Its
introduction also came during a recession that caused automobile sales to
tumble and consumers to shy away from larger cars.
And the Edsel quickly developed a reputation as a lemon because workers at
Ford and Mercury plants hated the fact the Edsel models were produced on
the same assembly lines as other cars. They often ''forgot'' to apply special
Edsel parts out of different bins.
''The Edsel served as a textbook example of corporate presumption and
disregard for market realities,'' says Anthony Young, a writer for Automobile
Quarterly magazine. ''It also proved that advertising and pre-delivery hype
have their limits in inducing consumers to buy a new and unproved car.''
Consumer dislike also quickly snuffed out RJR Nabisco Holdings Corp.'s
smokeless cigarette, a $325 million project first called the Premier.
One person who tried it immediately declared the cigarette ''tasted like
(expletive).'' And he was the company's chief executive.
Back to the drawing board. A $100 million reformulation led to a brand-new
product called Eclipse.
It quickly lived up to its name and was pulled off the shelves.
''It took them a while to figure out that smokers actually like the smoke part
of smoking,'' McMath notes. ''The only people who loved the product were
nonsmokers, and they somehow weren't the market RJR was trying to
reach.''
Other products became victims of technological evolution.
You'd be hard-pressed now to find an abacus, or a Dictaphone or even a
manual typewriter. And 33 rpm LP record albums? You can find those,
millions of them: Just look in the basements and garages of people over 40
who ''just know'' they're going to listen to them again someday.
Ernie Hovland, 73, remembers the days when he watched relatives start the
Model T with a crank.
''Life was a little slower in the old days,'' he acknowledges, ''but new
technology was just as exciting then as it is today.''
Some products were ahead of their time. Apple's Newton electronic personal
assistant fell far from the tree and disappeared after the product had problems
living up to its selling point: the ability to read the user's handwriting and store
that data.
Once universal but gone now, too: home fallout shelters, a backyard must at
the height of the Cold War. They've now gone the way of the ice truck.
Some products may have fallen by the wayside because of government taxes
on imports or restrictions on sales. Other inventions evolved, and not a
moment too soon. Hydraulic elevators that had an alarming failure and fatality
rate in early skyscrapers were quickly replaced by electric versions.
Nowadays, consumers must deal with the idea of planned obsolescence. A
Wall Street Journal writer once encapsulated the term's meaning:
''The marvels of modern technology include the development of a soda can
which, when discarded, will last forever -- and a $7,000 car, which, when
properly cared for, will rust out in two or three years.''
A shameless example of limited upside potential was The Nothing Box, a $25
item in a 1964 Hammacher Schlemmer catalog that promised to do exactly as
it advertised.
''This box does something; it blinks and that's all,'' the ad says. ''Let us warn
you that unless you use an ax, you can't turn it off. It will keep winking its
eight eyes in no recognizable pattern and for no apparent reason for nearly a
year.
''Then it's as dead as a mackerel and you can't get it fixed.''
You also could get an accompanying Nothing Rock for the same price. This
product, likely a cousin to the Pet Rock, was self-explanatory.
Then there's the Autoskate, a sort of curved skateboard on wheels that you
could purchase for $24.95 in 1949, slip under your flat tire and use to coast
to the nearest service station.
But if you're thinking of consigning these things to the Flops Forever list,
think about this:
The Lava Lamp, once left for dead on the junk heap of life, is back and it's
groovy.
And you can once again be cool by squeezing into Capri pants.
Entrepreneurs note: Think Baby Boomer nostalgia. The future may be in the
glory days behind.
Which brings us back to that laughingstock, the Edsel.
Collectors of the nearly 8,000 models left worldwide participate almost
monthly in clubs and shows. A well-maintained model that cost between
$2,200 and $6,500 new can bring $5,000 to $24,000 now.
Roy Kleckner of Danville, Ca., bought a convertible in 1978, and now he's
vice president of the Edsel Owners Club.
''Today, you go down the roads and get thumbs-up by so many people,''
Kleckner says. ''I guess we'll have the Edsel to the time when we can no
longer drive.''
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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