11 Things That Were Hugely Hyped But Then Massively Flopped

In 2017, thousands of eager festivalgoers flocked to the Bahamas for what was supposed to be a luxury-filled weekend of partying with Instagram influencers and listening to big-name artists like Migos, Blink-182, and Tyga.

Instead, festival attendees found themselves stuck camping out in a makeshift construction site on rain-soaked mattresses and eating cold bread-and-cheese sandwiches. The headlining acts and A-listers were nonexistent.

It turned out that festival organizer Billy McFarland had spent a great deal of money promoting the festival (flying out famous supermodels for a video shoot) and less time actually planning it. McFarland had spent about six to eight weeks planning a seriously involved endeavor that would really take at least a year to pull off.

While McFarland has described Fyre Festival as merely a case of biting off more than he could chew, he repeatedly lied to investors and misled ticket-buyers about the festival. He also ended up stiffing many of the Bahamian vendors who contributed their services to the event. McFarland eventually pled guilty to multiple charges of wire fraud and was sentenced to six years in prison.

On April 21, 1986, millions of TV viewers tuned in live to watch host Geraldo Rivera and an excavation crew blast through concrete walls at the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, supposedly to uncover a secret "vault" associated with notorious gangster Al Capone.

Camera crews and a crowd of excited onlookers (including Mr. T) watched the spectacle from the streets, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cadavers or wads of cash that were sure to be inside. Instead, the contents were a big fat nothing.

The Lexington was formerly a luxury hotel, opened in 1892 and built for the World's Columbian Exposition the following year. It hosted many famous guests, such as Grover Cleveland and Booker T. Washington, before Capone set up shop in the hotel in 1928. Capone moved his headquarters into the fourth and fifth floors, and supposedly ran the place. Rumors swirled of secret tunnels and storage spaces built to accommodate "Public Enemy No. 1."

Years before the vault opening, Chicago Tribune journalists had reported on a mysterious 6-by-6-foot concrete-filled space beneath the hotel. A masonry expert believed the shoddy job had been done in the '30s and couldn't explain why it would exist.

In 1982, a nonprofit began the work of rehabbing the Lexington to its former glory, renewing interest in the alleged vault. A Los Angeles Times piece called it “Chicago’s equivalent of King Tutankhamun's tomb.” Tribune Entertainment picked up the story and signed on Rivera, who'd recently been fired from ABC, as the host for a live excavation.

Rivera, too, got caught up in the hype, fully expecting the space to contain something. But after the initial blast, the dig wore on and uncovered nothing but a few small glass bottles. Rivera recalled:

As the program is unfolding and it becomes more and more likely that I'm not going to find anything, there was a terrible, terrible sinking feeling, "My God, the whole world is watching."... As I approached the low point in realizing, recognizing that I'm not going to find anything, I thought that my public life was over.

After the big letdown, Rivera was so worried that he skipped the after-party to go to a nearby Mexican restaurant and do tequila shots with the excavation crew. But while it may have been a huge disappointment to everyone watching, The Mystery of Al Capone's Vaults topped local TV ratings history - three out of four televisions in Chicago tuned into the event, and it was huge nationally, as well. While no one found Capone's money, the ratings still made the event a lucrative endeavor.

The Lexington Hotel was eventually torn down in the '90s.

In 2001, the tech world broke the news of a top-secret invention created by an eccentric millionaire that would change the world as we knew it. The invention, known only as "IT" at the time, received massive fanfare before most people even knew what IT was. Steve Jobs said IT would be "as significant as the personal computer" and Jeff Bezos called IT "revolutionary."

In December 2001, inventor Dean Kamen unveiled his creation (literally - it was hidden behind a curtain) on Good Morning America: the Segway. Diane Sawyer's foreboding response? "That's it? That can't be it." 

The Segway ended up being a massive bust, especially when compared with the grandiose predictions. Founders estimated they would sell 10,000 Segways a week, reaching $1 billion faster than any company had ever done. In reality, the company sold fewer than 10,000 units in the first two years.

As a new technology, the Segway was innovative. The two-wheeled scooter operated according to movements in the human body. But one of the Segway's biggest problems was that nobody really needed one. It was marketed for general personal transportation when people already used cars or bikes, and weren't willing to drop $5,000 on a scooter they'd have to lug into their office building every day. Plus, American cities weren't designed with the Segway in mind, so there wasn't a viable way to drive, charge, or park it. 

As Bezos also predicted when he called the product "revolutionary," it was too revolutionary for the USA. Had Segway focused on more niche markets (such as the mall cops who use them today), the company might have had more success introducing the product.

In 2016, Silicon Valley juice start-up Juicero launched to much anticipation after raising $120 million from investors. But just 16 months later, Juicero had run out of juice - the company became defunct in 2017.

Juicero was meant to capitalize on the cold-pressed juicing craze. It was a Wi-Fi-connected juicer with accompanying "produce packs" that allowed for "farm to glass" juice. One simply placed their produce pack flavor of pre-chopped fruits and veggies into the Juicero, and the machine would pour out fresh juice at the push of a button. Founder Doug Evans, who likened himself to Steve Jobs, called it "the first at-home cold-pressed juicing system." The sleek $400 machine was supposed to have a pressing power of 3 to 4 tons of pressure - enough to lift two Teslas. 

In April 2017, however, Bloomberg News released a video that showed Juicero's produce packs didn't require the accompanying $400 machine - you could just squeeze the juice packs by hand into a glass. The company hurriedly pointed out that Juicero had many uses beyond squeezing the juice; it also scanned a QR code on the pack that would tell you if your juice was expired. Or, you could look at the expiration date on the juice pack.

Juicero quickly became the laughingstock of the start-up world and a perfect example of creating a "solution" to a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

In late 1916, Gen. Robert Nivelle was promoted to commander-in-chief of the French armies on the Western Front in WWI. In 1917, he came up with a plan that would finally break through the German trench system. The Allied forces had been struggling for three years, and previous offenses, such as the Somme campaign, had disastrous casualty rates. 

Nivelle's plan was a massive onslaught of 1.2 million men to break the German lines. The main push would be by French troops in the Aisne region, with supporting strikes by British troops at Arras, Vimy Ridge, and at Bullecourt on the Hidenburg Line. The idea wasn't so different from the failed Somme offensive, but Nivelle planned to use artillery in a new way.

Newly developed tanks would use a curtain of artillery fire to protect the soldiers moving forward. Nivelle was regrettably boastful about his strategy and how successful it would be. Staking his reputation on it, he claimed the Nivelle offensive would end WWI in 48 hours and result in only 10,000 casualties to the Allies. 

But the Germans deduced the location beforehand, bolstered their troops, and built more trenches accordingly, and the few French tanks ended up being too slow and vulnerable to be game-changers. Rather than two days, the Nivelle offensive ended up lasting three weeks (from April into May). And instead of 10,000 casualties, the toll was over 300,000.

French divisions began to mutiny in early May, and eventually 68 divisions revolted in some form. Stories of the failed campaign included French troops showing up at the front lines drunk without weapons.

Nivelle finally called off the offensive but was still fired. While the offensive wasn't completely useless (they'd captured around 20,000 Germans along with 147 German artillery devices), Nivelle's gross overestimation of the maneuver's success led it to be seen as a catastrophic failure and cautionary tale for future commanders. Had Nivelle cut his losses sooner, when it was quickly clear that the plan had gone awry, a lot of lives might have been saved. 

Google+, one of the search giant's attempted forays into social media, seemed like a good idea when it launched in 2011. The social network would integrate with all of Google's other services, and allow users to sort their friends into "Circles" for group video chats, or "Hangouts."

Google+ began as an invite-only platform, a requirement the company may have kept up for too long, because too few people joined or used the social network. Google+ also had strict rules requiring real names only. Turns out, not everyone wants their actual name and email account linked to their social media. These aspects, along with an awkward user experience and interface (instead of "liking" or "favoriting" a post, you had to "Plus One" it), doomed Google+ from the start.

Also, Google+ was simply too late to the game. By 2011, Facebook and Twitter were already social media behemoths, and Google+ didn't offer anything new. But Google didn't give up on Google+ until 2018, when a bug caused a private data leak. The company assured everyone it was no big deal - no one was using Google+ anyway.