Billy Beer, Yogurt Shampoo : Museum Pays Tribute to Product Flops

On the shelves in the converted 19th-Century granary sit theproducts that dreams were made of: designer diapers, yogurt-laced shampoo, baked cat food, parsnip chips, french fried potatoes and peas. Thousands of products, all carefully designed to capture the marketplace, and all failures.

“There’s a story behind each of them,” said Robert McMath, reaching into the shelves and plucking out one product, and then another.

The tall, graying McMath is obviously fond of them all and appears to have instant recall of each one’s short-lived history.

To an observer, the failures are testaments to the good taste of American consumers.

McMath’s International Supermarket & Museum here displays more than 5,000 items at a time, including failed products, interesting success stories and weird new products still struggling to make it. Another 75,000 items are packed neatly in storerooms.

The museum grew out of McMath’s Marketing Intelligence Services, a company he formed in 1968 to keep clients current on all the new products pouring into the marketplace from package-goods producers. He now boasts 700 clients here and abroad.

With the help of almost 300 sales representatives, McMath and his staff of 23 see about 70% of the several thousand new products introduced each year.

Along the way McMath has disposed of few products. “I’m a Scotsman,” he said. “I never throw anything away.”

Reflects Life Styles

Much as an art or fashion museum tells us something about periods of history, this museum, which is open only to McMath’s clients, reflects the fads and life styles of the past two decades.

Billy Beer puts a certain stamp on the era of former President Jimmy Carter. In the shampoo section, we see the cycles in eye-blinking rapidity: protein-rich fruit scents, herbal essences, yogurt and--the latest--tofu. Only the strongest entries in those categories still survive.

Clairol’s Touch of Yogurt shampoo, tested and abandoned in 1979, might have succeeded with a different name that didn’t conjure up a vision of rubbing thick white gook into one’s hair, McMath said.

Gerber Products thought it had a winner in the early 1970s with Singles, a line of dinners in jars meant for adults, but the food was too closely associated with baby food.

One of the more spectacular failures was Nestle’s New Cookery, a varied line of three dozen foods low in salt, sugar and fats. But the name suggested kitchen work, McMath said, and the packaging didn’t stand out.

And when Nestle’s put the line into test markets, the competition--Jello, Kraft, Smucker’s, Campbell’s and others--responded by reducing their prices sharply. Nestle’s finally called it quits after spending somewhere between $100 million and $250 million, McMath said.

“Sometimes you learn from failures,” he said. Stouffer, a Nestle’s subsidiary, later came out with Lean Cuisine, a highly successful line of frozen dinners.

The roll of shame goes on and on: Male Chauvinist, an “arrogant” after-shave lotion; Mr. Meatloaf, Baker Tom’s Baked Cat Food; Captain Cat Cat-Litter Deodorant; Gorilla Balls, a vitamin-enriched malt candy; Yogurt Face and Body Powder; Gimme Cucumber hair conditioner; Soaps for Lovers.

Some products last long enough for a small manufacturer to make the money and run off with a modest profit, McMath said.

But as a rule of thumb, an item that doesn’t produce sales of $1 million a month just won’t do for Procter & Gamble and the other giants, he said.

H. J. Heinz Co., for instance, introduced Help, a fruit drink, in 1978. It was selling at the rate of $10 million a year, but Heinz folded it after nine months, McMath said.

And the Kellogg Co. wasn’t doing badly some years ago with Rise ‘N Shine a breakfast drink with 10% orange juice but couldn’t break Tang’s stranglehold on the market and eventually withdrew.

Only two of every 10 new products succeed, McMath said. That’s more grist for his granary. But at that rate of failure, McMath ought to start planning for additional museum space.