Failing Forward: Three Products We Had to Kill
Every company loves talking about their wins. The million-unit milestones, the five-star reviews, the glowing customer emails. And yeah, we love those too. But today I want to talk about something we don't usually share: the products that completely, spectacularly flopped.
Because if we're going to be honest with you — and that's kind of our thing — then you deserve to know that we don't get it right every time. Not even close.
Flop #1: The "Ultimate" Avocado Tool
Oh, this one still stings.
In 2018, avocado toast was having its moment (is it still having its moment? I can't keep up), and we thought: what if we made the ultimate avocado tool? A three-in-one gadget that could split, pit, and slice an avocado in seconds.
On paper, it was brilliant. In practice, it was a disaster.
The splitting blade wasn't sharp enough to cut through firm avocados but was too sharp for ripe ones — you'd end up with guacamole before you wanted guacamole. The pitting mechanism worked great on perfectly ripe avocados but sent unripe pits flying across the kitchen like tiny green cannonballs. And the slicer? Let's just say it created what one reviewer called "abstract avocado art."
We pulled it after three months and about 47 increasingly creative one-star reviews. Lesson learned: just because something is trendy doesn't mean you should rush a product to market.
Flop #2: The Travel Cord Organizer That Couldn't
This one hurt because the idea was genuinely good. A compact roll-up organizer for charging cables, earbuds, and adapters. We designed it, prototyped it, tested it internally, and everyone loved it.
Then customers started actually traveling with it.
The elastic loops that held the cables? They stretched out after about two weeks of use. The snap closure? It would pop open in backpacks, spilling cables everywhere — which is literally the opposite of what an organizer should do. And the material, which looked sleek and premium in our product photos, turned out to attract every speck of lint and dust within a five-mile radius.
We got emails from customers with photos of their organizers that looked like they'd been through a lint tornado. One guy said it looked like his organizer "grew a fur coat." We refunded everyone and went back to the drawing board.
The lesson: internal testing isn't enough. You need real-world, long-term testing with people who will actually use your product the way it's meant to be used — roughly, repeatedly, and in the bottom of a messy backpack.
Flop #3: The Musical Learning Cube (Version 1)
Before KiddoLab became the brand it is today, we had an early attempt at a children's toy: a musical learning cube with buttons, lights, and songs. It was packed with features. Too packed.
The cube had 14 different buttons, each playing a different song or sound. It had flashing lights in six colors. It had spinning gears, sliding panels, and a mirror. It was, in the words of one parent tester, "sensory overload in a box."
Babies didn't know where to look or what to press. Toddlers would get frustrated because there was too much happening at once. And parents — oh, parents had opinions. "It's like a tiny rave," one dad told us. "My kid doesn't need to go clubbing at 11 months."
We scrapped the whole thing and started over with a simpler philosophy: one primary interaction per toy, executed beautifully. That philosophy became the foundation of KiddoLab, and it's why our toys work so well today. But we had to fail first to figure that out.
Why We're Telling You This
Because failure is where the good stuff lives. Every flop taught us something we couldn't have learned any other way. The avocado tool taught us not to chase trends. The cord organizer taught us to test longer and harder. The learning cube taught us that less is more.
We're going to keep failing. Not on purpose, obviously — but because we keep trying new things, and new things don't always work. What we promise is that we'll always learn from it, and we'll always be honest about it.
Even when it involves flying avocado pits.
— Stan