The Museum of Failure Is A Success

Before the big opening over the weekend we got a look at downtown LA's newest attraction The Museum of Failure. Its walls are filled with items of legend. Things lost to history that come out of conversations among friends when trying to remember the past and saying, "What the Hell were they thinking?," All of these failures are on display with a bit of info that'll make you wonder how we still have a functioning society or just how stupid people can be. Many of the failures aren't to long ago and some even deal with one of TTDILA's favorite topics, video games.

The Museum of Failure
Dec 2-Feb 5, 2018
Wednesday: 2-6 pm
Thursday/Friday: 2-8 pm
Saturday/Sunday: 12 – 7 pm
Closed: Monday/Tuesday
A+D Architecture and Design Museum
900 E 4th St, Los Angeles, CA 90013
$16.50 online 

Though not bound to one section gaming is only a part within the Museum of Failure, a dream from Dr. Samuel West of Sweden. This pop-up museum comes from Dr. West after he marveled at another LA museum, The Museum of Broken Relationships. Well, not the one here, the original one in Croatia. The pop-up doesn't dig into human relationship failures, but more into poorly convinced products, techniques and ideas.

Video games don't have their own section, but they should. Through the different areas you'll see a trend of failure when it comes to gaming products. The newest being No Man's Sky, a game with so much hype and promises that weren't fulfilled. Then you have consoles like the Apple Pippin. Do you remember Apple even releasing a console? It was $600 when it came out in 1995 and flopped its way off the market by 1996. There's of course the awful E.T. Atari game that ruined thousands of Christmas mornings. Then you have Nintendo's Power Glove and Virtua Boy, showing even companies that are still around and are doing great business can come up with some useless and unplayable junk.

One of the many draws might be the rent-able sex doll from China. Yes, after your "done" it'll shared with others in the share industry which is thriving there.

America doesn't have the patent on failures and were kind of amazed of the Minitel out of France. It was a tiny computer that was part of a network in France that worked very similar to the Internet though it was around since 1982. The French could use these terminals to do look up phone numbers, do banking and even buy tickets. More services became available and it lasted until 2012. Apparently, it was so useful France was slow to adopt the real Internet we use today.

So, some items inside aren't as bad as others. There's the Skipper doll that can grow boobs to simulate going through puberty or Colgate's massively strange foray into TV dinners with a lasagna.

Food has it's own section and there are some tasty treats we miss and don't miss. We do miss Canada's Orbitz soda with little chunks of fruit gelatin floating around that made it look cool. We don't want to every try the disastrous New Coke of 1985.

If feeling up to it you can write a failure of your own down anonymously and put it up at the "Failure Confessional."

You'll see years and years of concepts throughout your trip into failure. You should go, because as the museum reminds you, you call always learn from failure and other people's mistakes.