30 Overhyped Inventions That FLOPPED

Top 30 Overhyped Inventions That Flopped

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at the products that were supposed to be the next big thing but are mainly remembered for how badly they flopped.

#30: Apple Vision Pro

When Apple unveiled the Vision Pro in 2024, it was presented as the future of computing. Dubbed a “spatial computer,” the headset promised to revolutionize everything from entertainment and productivity to how we interact with the digital world. With cutting-edge displays and eye-tracking technology, early reactions were filled with awe. The problem? The massive $3,500 price tag. While the technology impressed critics, the headset’s weight, limited battery life, and lack of must-have apps made it difficult to sell as an everyday device. Interest cooled quickly after launch, with reports of declining demand and production cutbacks. Vision Pro may have showcased the future, but for most people, it arrived before there was a real reason to buy it.

#29: Google Stadia

The Stadia seemed like a glimpse into gaming’s future. Google’s cloud-gaming platform promised console-quality games streamed instantly to virtually any screen, eliminating the need for expensive hardware. The technology itself was impressive, but the business model left many gamers confused. Users often had to buy games individually despite already paying for subscriptions elsewhere. The platform also lacked the exclusive titles needed to attract a loyal audience. Things got worse when Google shut down its in-house game studios just over a year after launch, making many question the company’s long-term commitment. With weak adoption and declining confidence, Stadia never gained the traction Google expected. The service was shut down by January 2023, lasting just a little over three years in total.

#28: PlayStation Home

The PlayStation 3 was a challenging era for Sony, and the PS Home didn’t make it any easier. Marketed it as a massive virtual world with social spaces, decorated apartments, and live events, it sounded like a console-based digital metaverse. While the vision was there, Sony forgot one tiny but important detail – actually making it fun for users. Beyond incredibly slow chatting, mini-games, and collecting virtual items, there wasn't much to do. Many felt that Home was more of a virtual lobby than a living online world. While it developed a loyal community, it never became the revolutionary social platform Sony had promised. By the time it was shut down in 2015, the platform had been stuck as a perpetual beta for seven years!

#27: Apple Bandai Pippin

Entering the video market is way more difficult than it seems. Just ask Apple, which took a shot at the industry back in 1996. The system was marketed as more than just a game console, though. Apple envisioned it as a multimedia hub that could combine gaming, internet access, and computing in a single living-room device. Today, that might sound like the future. In reality, it was too expensive, underpowered, and stuck in an identity crisis. Gamers preferred dedicated consoles like the PlayStation, while computer users had little reason to choose a limited hybrid machine. Not to mention its painfully weak game library. With only around 42,000 units sold worldwide, the Pippin became one of the biggest commercial failures in gaming history.

#26: Google Wave

Trying too much at the same time rarely ever works out. In 2009, Google promised to combine email, instant messaging, file sharing, and social networking into one. The concept generated enormous buzz, especially among tech enthusiasts who saw it as the next evolution of the internet. But people need to understand how to use a product for it to sell. Not only was the Wave’s interface confusing, its purpose also wasn’t always clear, and many struggled to understand why they needed it in the first place. Despite its innovative features, adoption remained low. Just over a year after launch, Google announced it was discontinuing the ambitious but overly complicated platform. Apache Software Foundation took its own stab at it, but didn’t get too far either.

#25: Amazon Fire Phone

When Amazon unveiled the Fire Phone in 2014, the company hoped to challenge Apple and Samsung with a smartphone unlike anything else on the market. The device's biggest selling point was its futuristic “Dynamic Perspective” technology, which used multiple front-facing cameras to create 3D-like effects. Firefly was another promoted feature that could instantly identify products, songs, books, and more. While it did evoke plenty of curiosity, many saw it as gimmicky rather than a must-have. The phone was also expensive, locked into Amazon's ecosystem, and lacked access to Google’s popular apps and services. With little reason to choose it over established competitors, sales collapsed quickly. Its failure led the company to a reported $170 million write-down. Ouch!

#24: Sega Dreamcast

Sega’s comeback was less of a Cinderella story and more of a eulogy. To its credit, it had everything on paper – impressive graphics, online gaming capabilities, and a strong game lineup. Many still consider it Sega’s best console in years, and early sales were promising. Unfortunately, there was no stopping the PlayStation 2. Even before its release, Sony’s console promised more power, DVD playback, and massive third-party support. Sega was also still recovering from damaged consumer trust, caused by several poorly received hardware releases in the years prior. Despite its innovation and loyal fanbase, the Dreamcast struggled to maintain momentum. Just two years after launch, Sega discontinued the console and exited the hardware business for good.

#23: Google+

When Google+ launched in 2011, the platform seemed poised to challenge Facebook and become the center of online social networking. Features like Circles for organizing contacts and Hangouts for group video chats, both of which were praised at the time. Early sign-up numbers looked impressive, but rather than organic growth, much of it came from Google integrating the service across its ecosystem. Many users also found Google+ confusing, bland, and lacking a clear purpose. While Facebook felt like the place where people actually connected, Google+ often seemed like a ghost town with little reason to keep coming back. Despite Google’s relentless promotion, engagement remained low, and the service was shut down for consumers in 2019. Looks like people didn’t wanna hang out, after all.

#22: Humane AI Pin

If the Humane AI Pin had had its way, you’d have ditched your smartphone by now. Worn on your clothing, the device used voice commands, artificial intelligence, and a tiny laser projector to deliver information without the need for a screen. The concept seemed promising, especially as AI fever swept through the tech industry. However, reality was a lot more disappointing. Reviews criticized the device’s slow responses, unreliable performance, limited functionality, and short battery life. Many of the tasks could be performed faster and more easily on a smartphone. Its hefty price tag and required subscription didn’t win confidence, either. Within 10 months, the company’s assets were sold to HP, excluding the AI Pin device business. We know we’ve said it before, but seriously, Ouch!

#21: Juicero

Juicero may be the gold standard for solving a problem that didn’t exist. Introduced in 2016, the Wi-Fi-enabled machine was marketed as THE way to make fresh juice at home. The catch? The machine cost hundreds of dollars and worked only with proprietary juice packets sold by the company…which only lasted a maximum of eight days. And if there’s one thing we all learned, it’s that people don’t want to spend $700 for juice. Suddenly, Juicero went from high-tech innovation to an expensive punchline. At the end of the day, people weren’t asking why they needed one – it was why anyone would pay hundreds of dollars for a machine that performed a task their fingers could accomplish for free. Unsurprisingly, the company folded in 2017.

#20: New Coke

In 1985, Coca-Cola replaced its original formula with an entirely new version known as New Coke. It was made to compete with Pepsi, which had been winning over consumers in taste tests. To long-term customers, though, it was unacceptable. People weren’t just attached to the taste of Coca-Cola – they were attached to what it represented. Soon enough, angry consumers flooded the company with complaints demanding the return of the original recipe. What was meant to modernize an iconic brand instead became a PR nightmare. Less than three months later, Coca-Cola reversed course and brought back the original formula. Today, it’s still seen as one of the most infamous miscalculations in marketing history, no matter what Lucas from “Stranger Things” tries to tell you.

#19: Microsoft Kin One & Kin Two

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. Having said that, they have made something of a comeback in recent years.

#5: Samsung Galaxy Note 7

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

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

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,

Can you think of any other failed overhyped inventions? Let us know in the comments.