Just how stupid are the products that have made their inventor millions? Koosh balls, beanie babies, pet rocks, lucky break wishbones are a few. What about those chia pets? They all seem stupid enough. I found some that are I didn't know about.
HeadOn
Sirivision distributed HeadOn. Once directly applied to the forehead, it relieves headaches. Like many things in the online world, HeadOn became famous thanks to the unbearably annoying commercial, which went viral. While HeadOn is made entirely of wax and isn’t backed by scientific research, over six million tubes were sold for eight dollars each.
Take this one: Why would such a product suddenly be invented rather than available for decades or event longer? I'm sure we've all pressed something to our heads to relieve pain with no results.
Million-Dollar Home Page
The story behind the Million-Dollar Home Page is so out of this world that you might not even believe it. It’s the creation of Alex Tew, a British 21-year old. He made a homepage where he sold 1MM pixels for $1 each. To accompany his creation, he even reached out to the heart of the public with his goal of using the homepage to pay for his college studies. Tew’s charity case got the attention of advertisers, and in just a little over a year, the site was able to sell out all of its pixels.
The second one is fascinating - did he go door to door with his homepage or was it an online marketing moment? The 21-year-old must have been a smart person to design that complicated home page and then make all of that happen. And does it take a million dollars to go to university in Britain? That makes him even smarter.
Santa Mail
Every single year, millions and millions of kids all over the world wrote letters to Santa, hoping that he would send them back a response. Byron Reese saw the potential in this market. This is why he decided to launch Santa Mail in 2002.
This service lets kids send their letters to the North Pole. Their parents then included a small fee of only $9.95, and in exchange, their kids received a personalized letter straight from Santa Claus himself. In 2009, Santa Mail was able to send responses to around 300,000 kids. Do the math! With every letter making $10, you can calculate how much Reese was able to earn from this service.
Santa Mail is brilliant - couldn't parents just do the job themselves and give themselves the $10? Are 300,000 parents unable to write a Santa letter? (We could start a Santa letter writing online course for just $10.00.) Or do 300,000 parents have such bad children, they can't write a happy letter back as the child who should be getting a lump of coal, but they feel pressure to give presents like their friends?
The one silly product that has its own explanation of how stupid it is, is The Snuggie
The Snuggie
The real reason behind the success of the Snuggie was its advertising campaign. The Snuggie, an invention of Scott Boilen from Allstar Products, was advertised in ridiculous infomercials that featured families who wore the Snuggie as they roasted marshmallows and attended sports events. Boilen said that he took this kind of approach because the product was already ridiculous, and advertising it in an equally ridiculous way made perfect sense. This approach worked, earning more than $200 million.
Ridiculous to the power of 2 = $200 million. That's the math lesson here.
