Saturday summer morning fun: treat yourself (or your boss) to a Dead Startup Toy

Making Lemonade Out Of Lemons. Most of our Readers have seen startups come and go. Some this Editor has profiled were regrettable. Some had Cute Factor, but still tanked. Others were high in Stonato Factor. And a few, like Theranos, had Major Fraud Factor, augering in taking hundreds of millions of OPM with it (not including legal fees).

But entrepreneurial hope springs eternal, and why not memorialize these College Trys with a toy? MSCHF of Brooklyn has style, enough to go viral with a unique spin on swag. You can go on eBay, Poshmark, or Etsy to grab a Theranos poster or mug, but you can’t get a Theranos mini MiniLab to put on your shelf as a memento mori. Or a toy Jibo [TTA 18 July 2014]  to remind you to not go up against Google and Amazon. There’s also CoolestCooler, a Kickstarted cooler/speaker/blender that never delivered the goods but burned through $14 million, Juicero, an $400 IoT juicer that laid waste to $120 million in one year, and One Laptop Per Child, a Nick Negroponte-headed $100 laptop full of clunkiness that didn’t make it past the Seven Year Itch of Reality.  (The last two are sold out)

Have some fun reviewing–and shoppingHat tip to Reader Dave Albert of AliveCor (KardiaMobile), who definitely has a sense of humor!

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