Coming back to Back to the Future, every person who saw that movie growing up, was waiting for the day when they could finally ride their own hoverboard just like Marty McFly. In 2015, it seemed like that dream was becoming a reality until they began spontaneously combusting.
It didn’t seem to matter who made them, the lithium-ion batteries that powered the devices overheated and caught fire. By 2017, thousands of hoverboards were recalled and they were banned by airlines long before that. Seems like our hoverboard dreams will have to wait a little longer.
Astro Pants, Lululemon
If you were ever willing to pay $100 for a pair of yoga pants, you are most likely familiar with Lululemon. The company launched their black Astro Pants in 2013, but women who used them to exercise ended up showing more of themselves than they bargained over. Turns out, the pants become see-through when the wearer bent over.
The pants were recalled, but the recall did not fix the problem and the user complaints continued. Instead of apologizing, founder Chip Wilson made a comment about women with the wrong body types causing the problem. This did not go over well, and the company’s sales and stock took a beating.
Kanoa Wireless Headphones
Negative reviews can make or break a company, but in the case of Kanoa Wireless Headphones, it only took one review to break the whole thing down. If you’ve never heard of Kanoa, don’t feel bad, they were a company who wanted to revolutionize wireless headphones and raised capital by crowdfunding. Despite meeting their fundraising goal, however, Kanoa was not able to meet the standards it promised.
After some delays, the company finally sent a pair of its headphones to well-known YouTube technology reviewer Cody Crouch, AKA iTwe4kz. He gave them a terrible review which showed that he had trouble connecting them to his phone and that the charging case was not working. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he also claimed that Kanoa tried to bribe him to give them a good review. Only four days after the review was posted, the company was disbanded.
Twitter Peek
In 2009, Twitter and technology company Peek Inc. released the Twitter Peek, a handheld device that let you tweet anywhere and didn’t even require wi-fi. The idea behind it, was a device for Twitter enthusiasts who didn’t have a smartphone, but do those even exist, and if so why would they pay nearly $200 for this product?
The worst part is that the device only displayed 20-character previews of tweets, and reading the whole thing was quite complicated. This frustrated users to no end and they gave the Twitter Peek a hard pass. By 2012, the company cut off all the support to this product. The only surprise is that it took so long.
Cue Cat Barcode Scanner
In 1999, the Digital Convergence Corporation decided that what people who were reading a magazine really needed was a cat-shaped device that could help them find information about things that were of interest to them without actually typing in the URL. In order to do so, all you had to do was scan a barcode in the magazine, use a USB cable to plug the Cue Cat into your computer, and just like that, you would be directed to the correct web page.
Sounds simple, right, wrong. Users couldn’t understand why they needed this device and those that did use it, had to deal with privacy issues and a famous information breach. By 2001, codes were no longer generated for the scanner and by 2005, Cue Cats were being sold for 30 cents a pop just to get rid of them.