Someone Asks “What Product Failed Because People Were Too Dumb To Understand It?”, And 66 Folks Deliver

Products, just like people, have life cycles. Typically, their existence is broken into four stages—introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. And, just like ours, the time of each one can vary greatly.

So when a post on r/AskReddit invited people to name the products that they believe have died just because we weren't smart enough to understand them, it received plenty of replies.

From movies to gaming consoles and even foods, here are some of the most interesting submissions and the stories behind their demise.

#1

The US National Park Service struggled for years to find a locking trash can that would be able to keep bears out. People couldn't figure them out so they wouldn't lock it back up, or litter, rendering them useless. One park ranger was quoted as saying there was considerable overlap between the dumbest people and the smartest bears.

Image credits: llcucf80

#2

Removable batteries on smartphones.

People couldn't handle the "cHeAp PlAsTiC" on a phone they were putting a case on anyway. As a result, we can't change the batteries in smartphones anymore.

Image credits: SecretPotatoChip

#3

The 1/3lb burger because people thought it was smaller than the 1/4lb one.

Image credits: evilmonkey2

#4

Golden Rice.
In many countries in southeast Asia White rice is the main food. But white rice lacks Provitamin A, which is essential for lots of stuff in the eyes and immune system.
So some scientists developed a new species of rice which has been genetically engineered to produce golden rice.
Studies have shown that the rice could be a serious help in those countries and it grows just as good as normal rice.
But because it is evil generic engineering lots of organizations give their best to slow the approval process down with (in most cases) b******t and some idiots keep destroying test fields.

Image credits: Raghduhll

#5

They put out instant cake mix in the 50's. You only needed to add water, but no one would buy it. I think they couldn't believe you could make a cake with just powder and water. They discontinued it.

cen-texan replied: There was a story when I was in school that the marketing guys figured out that if you take out the powdered egg and had the end user add eggs it would sell.

They figured that as women were going into the workforce and weren't able to cook a full meal, the felt guilty about buying a complete mix. Having the end user add real eggs gave them the feeling that they were really baking and not just pouring powder out of a box.

Image credits: CyborgWraith

#6

The Wii U. People didn't know it was a new console and thought it was just a regular Wii, an add on to the Wii or who knows what else. A different name would have solved this entire problem. People still don't know how to distinguish Wii U games from regular Wii games, even though Wii U games will not play on a Wii console.

Marketing Geniuses take note, if you have a new product give it a different name than a slight variant on its predecessor.

Image credits: SaraAB87

#7

In Sweden we had twopacks of sugarcubes at cafés. They were really simple to open, just hold it with the weld up, pinch each half and break it in half. The weld would open in an elegant way and expose the sweetness inside, ready to be taken out and consumed. Just like opening a book.

Very few understood this.

People would rip, tear, scratch, bite and do all sorts of f**kery to open the innocent packs of sweet reward. And they complained, oh they complained.


Story goes the inventor were depressed for life because just a few brilliant people could understand the beauty of his brilliant little treasure chests of sugary heaven. F*****s.

Image credits: HSPWS

#8

The Zune. Mayyybe a stretch but you could pay a monthly subscription ($10 if memory serves) for unlimited downloads. As long as you had the subscription, you could download anything you wanted to your device. On top of that you got 10 song credits a month you could use to buy songs to keep forever. As a music lover, I thought this was a better option than paying a buck a song from Apple for your iPod, plus I recall it being a cheaper device with more storage. All you can eat music for $10 plus I get 10 songs a month to keep forever? Not bad. People still think I’m crazy when I bring it up. Granted, the stuff you didn’t own would go away of you ever canceled the subscription, but still, it’s not that different a concept from streaming platforms like Spotify.

Image credits: patriotcommando

#9

Off the wall one but: Soap that doesn't sud.

A chemical needs to be added to soap in order for it to sud, and it was added so people would know that they were scrubbing enough. Now, people all expect soap to sud, so if someone puts out soap that doesn't have that chemical, people say the soap is broken.

Image credits: anarky98

#10

Nearly 50% of HDTV’s in the early era were returned because people plugged in their RCA cables as the main video source.

They not only didn’t understand what HD was, they thought the picture looked worse, as it was distorted on a 16:9 screen.

Image credits: usf_edd

#11

The metric system in the United States

Image credits: anon

#12

COVID symptom checking websites. People don’t want to comply with these as a preventive measure to determine potential outbreaks before they occur because “they’re tracking my personal information.”

The COVID symptom checking programs track only your responses and if it’s through your employer or school, only your school or employee ID number. They don’t understand that their phones track much more information than the COVID symptom checkers.

Image credits: NeonBird

#13

In 1979, Clairol rolled out their touch-of-yogurt shampoo, which they hoped would help people with oily hair. Unfortunately for them, oily-haired consumers didn’t like the idea of washing their hair with yogurt. The few who did buy the shampoo thought it was edible, only to be disappointed after getting sick as a result.

Image credits: Katybee18

#14

About 15 years ago Arm & Hammer came out with a series of environmentally safe cleaning products for bath, kitchen, and glass. They worked well, smelled good, and I really liked them.
The drawback for dummies was the reusability of the spray bottle. Refills came in a cartridge the size of a five hour energy shot. You filled the bottle up to the fill line with water then screwed the cartridge into the bottle which had special inner threads to open the cartridge. The spray bottle was sold empty with a cartridge attached. The checker at the store paused when ringing me up to ask if I really wanted to pay six bucks for an empty bottle. When I bought the glass cleaner I got the same question. Nobody bought it because they didn't realize how it was packaged.

Image credits: cascadiancuddles

#15

I'd have to say freedom. Too many people strip it down to "doing whatever the hell you want", and do all kinds of stupid and destructive things and give a bad name to the concept. Then people who know what freedom really is, but don't want people to be free, use it as a pretext for taking away our freedoms.

Image credits: EvilSnack

#16

We had a guy come talk to us at my college about his experience in marketing. He mentioned that when he used to work for Campbell's (I think) they had trouble breaking into the Chinese market with their instant soup. They had just assumed that it would sell just as well there as anywhere else but apparently it was the same kind of issue as you mentioned where I guess culturally it was seen as "cheap" to just heat up some instant soup. So they rebranded and repackaged it as a dry mix that you had to actually add to boiling water and lo and behold it started selling

Image credits: Underbash

#17

My dad once told me about how they tried to sell crumpets in a new country and they did really poorly because no one realised that they were supposed to be toasted. I think once they updated the packaging to tell everyone they were supposed to be toasted they did a lot better.

Image credits: acciofriday

#18

Police Squad!, made by the guys who did Airplane! and widely considered pound for pound one of the funniest TV shows that's ever aired. But it failed because it required audiences to actually pay close attention to the quickfire gags and fast dialogue. Led to ABC's president memorably saying it was cancelled because "the viewer had to watch it in order to appreciate it."

Later it was adapted into the Naked Gun movies, which were smash successes, probably because people in theaters are locked down into the movie.

Image credits: Johnnyc**kseed

#19

masks, vaccines, and anything else scientists spend literal years researching

#20

Inhaled insulin

#21

Complicated videogames, they've been super dumbed down over the years.

#22

For a while, seat belts, because auto executives thought it implied the car was unsafe.

#23

The first electric cars. For the people don't know, electric cars were actually invented before gas powered ones, but people back then had so little clue/regard for climate that it never cought on until recently

#24

Those chip bags that would decompose in the ground. Too noisy, they said.

But I kind of feel all chip bags are noisy to some degree. That being said, we should've either poured the contents into a washable bowl or plate or something like that or just used the noise as a deterrent to prevent over-eating

Image credits: BarryLonx

#25

There was a lottery ticket scratch off that had a temperature listed on it. You would scratch off to reveal your own temperature, and if it was colder than the listed one, you win. Pretty simple, right?

It failed because people don’t understand negative numbers. People called in claiming that they “won” because -6 is “colder” than -8.

It is not. The ticket was ultimately discontinued.

Image credits: Squishiimuffin

#26

Quarantine procedures!

Jesus Christ we could have released these lockdowns months ago if people just listened to the experts!

Image credits: awomanwritingawoman

#27

American liberalism. People thought that saying "the land of the free" would make it the land of the free, regardless of law changes.

#28

PSP Go, so practical and portable.

#29

Sega Dreamcast?

Image credits: Jfonzy

#30

It still sells well, but the number of people that try to return their Tempurpedic Mattress because it's too firm... It's temperature sensitive material, they refuse to use a heater during winter.

#31

Google glass. The applications for it were massive. Though, I guess it wasn’t that people didn’t “understand it”. It was more that it made you look like a Dragon Ball Z bad guy.

#32

The Internet

#33

Family Guy Online. It shut down because a lot of family guy fans couldn't figure out the game and it was easy as f**k and really fun.

#34

The Atari 2600 ET game

Image credits: PooPooSmoothies

#35

Dyson hand dryers. Put hands in, slowly pull out over 10 seconds

Dumbf***s just waved hands in a blade of air which dries 5mm wide

#36

Microsoft Lumia phones

#37

Initially? The idea of washing your hands was resisted to the point that the man pushing the idea of hand washing was driven to a mental breakdown from the ridicule of his peers.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#:~:text=Despite%20various%20publica,tions%20of%20results,rejected%20by%20the%20medical%20community](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis#:~:text=Despite%20various%20publications%20of%20results,rejected%20by%20the%20medical%20community).

Today's equivalent would be a toss up between masks and vaccines. Because some >!(overly vocal, inbred, mouth breathing Jesus freak)!< people are just too f*****g stupid to listen to science.

Image credits: AtheistScoutLeader

#38

At the time - alternating current.

#39

Condoms!

#40

Representative Democracy.

Image credits: anon

#41

The E.U. Hope the Brexiters are happy...

#42

NJ vehicle registration expiration stickers. They were issued about 15 years ago. Idea was simple, place sticker in upper right corner of license plate. Next years sticker, place over the old one.

NJ drivers, stick the first one on correctly and subsequent stickers go anywhere on the license plate.

It was pathetic the patterns of stickers I would see. The state stopped sending them out because it clearly didn’t catch on.

#43

Those lytro cameras, you could take a picture completely out of focus and fix it in like 3 seconds, i found it amazing yet the company still went bankrupt.



For some reason people were more interested in [these stupid things](https://ift.tt/Nt3QpvR)

#44

The yellow line on buses or bus stations.

#45

Those little shopping carts at grocery stores for kids. A bunch of dumb a*s parents refused to parent their kids and they would just let them jam the carts into displays, peoples legs, other carts etc, so almost all grocery stores in our area got rid of them. They were made so kids could put their own choices into the cart and be mindful of what they choose, not babysitter bumper cars.

Image credits: ironbox13

#46

Rubik’s cube

#47

Blinkers

#48

Netbooks.
There is a market nowdays for pocket-sized computers with an actual keyboard and a desktop OS, sadly people saw them only in their infancy when they were slow and sluggish. Manifacturers stopped making them just when technology became small enough to really fit a proper processor inside a little bugger not bigger than 7". Now we got games you can stream from a bigger rig, some office jobs are actually made outside the office, we consume a lot more digital medias, just think about how many people buy bluetooth keyboard for their tablet! If we made netbooks today again, and made them good, and cheap, they would be common sight.

Image credits: HELLBENT42

#49

HE clothes washers. Worked at Lowes in appliances and people just couldn’t wrap their heads around the lack of an agitator

Image credits: Jfonzy

#50

Diesel gas/engines in cars

Until people cares about mpg

#51

Hahaha, democracy.

#52

Rotary Engines: there was even a big push for GM and others to adopt rotary engines in the 1970s but poor GM design and ill timed oil embargos killed them in the states. Mazda continued development but even the excellent RX series cars were plagued by people not understanding how to care for their rotary engines (read: no turning on for a minute then off, regular coolant checks, oil mixing pump being an important service item) that they developed a stigma of being unreliable.

#53

The Steam Controller, although I blame Valve for not educating the public about it properly, rather than the public being too dumb to understand it. If you're willing to learn how it works, it's one of the finest pieces of engineering you'll hold in your hands as a gamer.

Here's hoping that the Steam Controller 2.0 patents and rumours actually lead to a relaunch and, if so, a specially-designed game or software tools that will teach the user how it works, much like Solitaire taught Windows users how to use the mouse.

#54

Most drugs, such as morphine and LSD. They started as perfectly legal drug, that could have positive effects if used correctly. But people started abusing them and they ended up outlawed in most countries.

Image credits: Fisto-the-sex-robot

#55

Game.com

The hand held video game console, day planner, and internet browser (plus more) in one package

#56

Samsung A7 speakers need an it degree to set up. Fortunately Sonos is around the corner.

#57

The PS Vita. It was so ahead of it's time

#58

Steam Link (the box). People didn't seem to realize it wasn't just for games, but was a generic PC "remotifier" of screen, keyboard, mouse and possible controller.

#59

Nuclear power

#60

The Pied Piper Platform.

#61

The Printing Press. Or rather what some accept as the earliest example of movable type that we have evidence for the Minoan Phaistos Disc

“An early clear incidence for the realization of the typographic principle is the notorious Phaistos Disc (ca. 1800–1600 B.C.). If the disc is, as assumed, a textual representation, we are really dealing with a "printed" text, which fulfills all definitional criteria of the typographic principle. The spiral sequencing of the graphematical units, the fact that they are impressed in a clay disc (blind printing!) and not imprinted are merely possible technological variants of textual representation. The decisive factor is that the material "types" are proven to be repeatedly instantiated on the clay disc.”

Image credits: t-h-e-chief

#62

Don't forget Microsoft "Bob".
https://ift.tt/XACmL6z

Tech people wouldn't touch it and non-techies couldn't understand it.

#63

When Yosemite became more popular the Rangers began to notice a problem with locals feeding bears food. The issue is that feeding bears food is the equivalent of giving them crack. They will instantly become aggressive, and will begin ravaging campsites and cars.

#64

3DO console

#65

Juicero. The people who were too dumb to understand it were the people who created it

#66

The M16 almost failed for multiple reasons. One of those reasons was a lack of maintenance because a lot of people though that the rifle was self-cleaning.

Another reason why the design failed was because the US Military abandoned their 30 aux 06 round present in earlier rifles, such as the M1 Garand, in favor of the lighter NATO 5.56mm round. This made people doubt its reliability.

Of course, the last reason why the design failed was because of a flaw with the design itself, but as per the question, I gave the two reasons why it failed because of the people using it.