Failures: Let's Make An Exhibition Of Ourselves

Sun Herald

Sunday March 23, 2008

David Dale

NOW is not the time to be urging a new Hall of Fame for Australia. The poverty-stricken Federal Government, faced with a surplus of only $18 billion, has cancelled funding for a Fishing Hall of Fame and a Rugby League Hall of Fame. They will not join the Stockman's Hall of Fame (Longreach, Queensland); the Prospectors and Miners Hall of Fame (Kalgoorlie, WA) and the Shearers' Hall of Fame (Hay, NSW), in celebrating rare Australian achievements.

But what, we wonder, might the Government's reaction be to the notion of a Hall of Failure? Surely we can learn as much about the national psyche from the things Australians refuse to do as from the things they do. And this is often described as a land that loves its losers - a public holiday for a military fiasco, a hero hanged after bungling a bank robbery, a national song about a suicidal sheep thief etc.

My inspiration comes from an institution I visited in the town of Naples, New York - The Museum of Failed Products. For 30 years a marketing expert named Robert McMath has been collecting the offcuts of capitalism - wondrous potions, gadgets and taste treats that were launched with the highest hopes, only to be spurned by the customers and fade into oblivion.

McMath showed me hair shampoos called A Touch Of Yoghurt and Gimme Cucumber; beverages called Panda Punch, Wallaby Squash and Afrokola; instant meals for lonely people called Singles; green potato chips called I Hate Peas; and personal care products described as "edible deodorant" and "spray-on toothpaste". He even shows a jar of Vegemite, the subject of a brief ad campaign in America but rejected as "too foreign-tasting".

So what might be on display in Australia's equivalent? We need look no further than the back catalogue of a company called K-Tel Products, which had huge success during the 1970s with the Feathertouch Knife, the Brush-o-Matic, the Record Selector, the Dial-o-Matic vegetable slicer and the Fishin' Magician.

I asked Ken McDonald, the managing director at the time, to reveal his worst sellers and he nominated three:

The Deggorator, which required you to place a boiled egg in a little lathe and turn a handle so a row of pens painted designs on the egg. Australians preferred chocolate eggs at Easter.

The Single Knitting Needle, a kind of crochet hook designed to let a woman knit with one hand and hold a cup of tea with the other. You needed a PhD in structural engineering to use it.

The Pop-up Cigarette Dispenser, which clung to your car dashboard. It had sold well in Canada but in our climate the plastic would melt and buckle, so the device delivered S-shaped cigarettes.

If you'd like to suggest other candidates for our Hall of Lame, go to http://blogs.sunherald.com.au/whoweare.

We should be able to launch this project without government help. And if nobody comes to visit we can say it's an exhibit in itself.