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Free Failed Inventions quiz: 89 trivia questions and answers — famous flops & failures. Easy to hard, with explained answers. No sign-up.
Start this quiz →🖨️ Printable version (20 questions + answers)
From the Iridium project to the Slinky, this quiz explores spectacular commercial failures and accidental discoveries that sometimes changed the world. A fun way to see the flip side of innovation.
This quiz currently has 89 questions, ranging from easy to hard, available in French, English and Spanish when the Spanish translation is available.
Warm up before the quiz with these 17 trivia questions and their explained answers: click a question to reveal the answer.
Answer: New Coke. In 1985, Coca-Cola reformulated its recipe and launched New Coke. It was a disaster: American consumers revolted, organized boycotts, and hoarded old cans. The 'old Coke' was relaunched 79 days later as Coca-Cola Classic.
Answer: Penicillin. In 1928, Alexander Fleming returned from vacation and noticed that a mold (Penicillium notatum) had contaminated his staphylococcus culture... and killed the bacteria. This laboratory 'mistake' — uncleaned dishes — was one of the greatest medical discoveries in history, saving hundreds of millions of lives.
Answer: Windows Vista. Windows Vista (2006) was sold as a revolution. In reality, it demanded very powerful hardware, was slow, incompatible with many drivers, and bombarded users with authorization requests (UAC). Mac sales soared. Microsoft had to launch Windows 7 just 3 years later to recover from the disaster.
Answer: DeLorean DMC-12. John DeLorean promised the ethical car of the future. What buyers got was an unrepairable stainless-steel body, a gutless engine and poor build quality. The company collapsed after roughly 9,000 cars. Three years later, 'Back to the Future' turned it into a legend.
Answer: Google Glass. Their discreet camera worried people: some bars banned them, and wearers were nicknamed 'glassholes'. They were then repurposed for professional use.
Answer: Green. The green 'EZ Squirt' was an initial hit, and other colours (purple, pink, orange…) followed. The fad faded and the range disappeared in 2006.
Answer: Smell-O-Vision. 'Scent of Mystery' was the only film to use it: the smells arrived late, mixed together or made people sneeze. One critic reportedly summed up: 'the film stank'.
Answer: The Lisa. It already had a graphical interface and a mouse, but its price doomed it. Thousands of unsold units were reportedly buried in a landfill in Utah.
Answer: The Dreamcast. Although well liked, it suffered from the arrival of the PlayStation 2. Sega then focused on games, including Sonic, now on its former rivals' consoles.
Answer: Google. Google Glass, launched in 2013 at $1,500, was a spectacular flop: prohibitive price, poor battery life, and privacy concerns (wearers were nicknamed 'Glassholes'). The consumer project was dropped in 2015.
Answer: Thalidomide. Thalidomide, sold from 1957 as a sedative and anti-nausea drug for pregnant women, caused limb malformations (phocomelia) in 10,000 to 20,000 children worldwide. This health scandal revolutionized drug approval procedures.
Answer: Brasília. Brasília, inaugurated in 1960 as Brazil's new capital, was designed by Niemeyer and Costa as a modernist utopia. But residents found it cold, impractical, and unsuited to human life. It was long nicknamed 'the city without a soul'. Today dynamic, it remains a textbook case of poorly calibrated idealistic urban planning.
Answer: Juicero. The Wi-Fi-connected, sensor-packed machine did nothing but squeeze pre-filled subscription pouches. In 2017, Bloomberg published a video showing two bare hands extracting the juice just as fast. The company shut down four months later.
Answer: Tacoma Narrows. Nicknamed 'Galloping Gertie', its deck was too thin and too flexible and began oscillating in a wind of around 65 km/h. Filmed as it happened, the collapse became the world's textbook case in aeroelasticity. The only casualty was a cocker spaniel named Tubby, left in a car.
Answer: About 48 days. Designed for social-media-loving teenagers, they were expensive and limited. Microsoft lost hundreds of millions of dollars on the venture.
Answer: Google Wave. A mix of email, chat and shared document, it was so complex that few users understood what it was for. Some of its ideas lived on in other tools.
Answer: The Ouya. It raised over $8 million in pledges, but few developers and players followed.
72 more questions are waiting for you in the quiz!