It was called Rejuvenique: a facial mask endorsed by actress Linda Evans, of "Dynasty" fame, in 1999. It was not only creepy looking, but had electrodes that shocked a person's face.
"It was never really approved by any authority, but the reviews said it feels like there was a thousand ants biting your face," said Samuel West, the founder and curator of the Museum of Failure.
The mask is one of more than 130 items from around the world that didn't quite do the trick — and are now on display in the traveling exhibition at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
What You Need To Know
- The Museum of Failure is a traveling exhibition on display at Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn
- It is made up of a collection of items representing more than 130 flops, fails and mistakes throughout history
- A number of the epic fails are from well-known brands like Coca-Cola, Ford, Colgate, Nintendo and Pepsi
West founded the museum in Sweden in 2017. Food items like Crystal Pepsi and flavored waters for pets are featured, as well as the famous story of New Coke from Coca-Cola in the mid-1980s.
"Coke decided to change their original classic formula, created chaos, and consumers were super annoyed and worried that they wouldn't have their original Coke," said West, who noted that somehow this worked in Coke's favor, as people went out of their way to stock up on original Coke. The original Coke was brought back as "Coca-Cola Classic" three months later.
Other failures include the tragic story of the Titanic, the "unsinkable" luxury liner that sadly did sink after hitting an iceberg in the north Atlantic on its maiden voyage in 1912, with more than 1,500 passengers and crew perishing. There was also the Mercedes-Benz A-class compact car, which rolled over during a safety test.
On the tech side, the Nintendo Power Glove was a huge failure when it was released in 1989.
"High expectations; this was like the future of gaming. However, it was really difficult, almost impossible, to make it work," said West, who noted that failure would lead to more success for Nintendo with their Wii gaming system.
That's a big focus of the museum: that sometimes failure has to happen before things get figured out.
"Here we are looking at some of the failures that didn't make it, but we often forget that the successes are built upon sort of multiple, hundreds of failures before it," West said.
All of this failure will be on display at Industry City through May 14.