Look, not every startup can be a winner. Dead Startup Toys, another drop by the internet collective known as MSCHF, plans to commemorate that.
You see, it’s not enough to just have a bad idea. All of the little toys in this actual online store are small versions of real products that got real funding and then really, really collapsed when everyone released how useless they really were.
Dead Startup Toys for Africa?
The products on offer include representations of the Juicero (an over-engineered juice presser that was easily replaced by human hands), the Coolest Cooler (which made huge bank on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and then completely failed to deliver), as well as the One Laptop Per Child project, the Theranos miniLab and the Jibo Social Robot (that one, people were sad to see go).
A toy version of each was available at just $40 a pop, or as part of a boxed collector’s edition, but the MSCHF drop has completely sold out — which is typical for this sort of thing. You can still check out the store, and the story behind each device. It’s quite a wild ride.
MSCHF is known for this sort of thing. Previously, they made a pair of Nike shoes that really, really upset Nike, and they also recently got their hands on one of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots and let people on the internet control it, and the paintball gun mounted on top of it.
