Colgate lasagne, a pink biro "aimed at women" and a Donald Trump board game - all ludicrous items which somehow made it past the drawing board and on to the production line, only to languish on the shelves before shuffling bashfully into history, the Telegraph reports.
But they didn't die completely. A new exhibition, The Museum of Failure, showcases these consumer duds in all their glory, opening today at the A+ D Architecture and Design Museum in the Los Angeles Arts District.
First displayed in Sweden in June, the collection of 100-plus failures was originally conceived by psychologist and innovation researcher, Dr Samuel West, as part of his research on corporate success and innovation.
When he discovered that 80-90 per cent of industries' projects fail, West felt the untold stories of failures and the lessons within them did not get their deserved attention.