MUSEUM OF FAILURE

Here at UKVending we are always pushing the boundaries of what is possible as well as the customer experience and whilst we, usually, succeed handsomely other entrepreneurs in our field have not been so successful with their ideas. On a recent visit to Sweden we stopped in at the Museum of Failure in Helsingborg and found some extremely interesting, usually funny ideas that never made it big, including some from the vending industry.

The Museum of Failure’s motto is ‘Learning is the only way to turn failure into success’ and true many of the exhibits at the museum have been improved and re-introduced later to a market more likely to accept the novelty. Some other examples of the ‘really got this one wrong’ exhibits include Harley Davidson’s leather perfume, a Betamax video player and Nokia’s famously clam shell taco shaped N-Gage game console. Nearly all of these will have to be explained to those born this century.

Most of the inventions all have good intentions and that is certainly true of ‘Aerosol Tea’. Under the brand name of ‘No More Tea Bags’ this handle aerosol can claimed to be able to, almost single handed, to do away with the 370,000 metric tons of tea bags us Brits through into landfill sites every single year. The can, when depressed, would spray the essence of tea into a cup to be followed by the usual boiling water. Whilst the idea of a 20 cup tea aerosol was sound, the taste, colour, odour and…well everything about the flavour of the tea was appalling and the ‘No More Tea Bags’ idea sank quicker than a liner striking an iceberg.