Tales from the Wikipedia Trash Can 6: Jumping the Shark

Jumping the shark, indeed. The all-powerful wikicensors considered that the original Jumping-the-Shark entry wasn't boring enough or dumb enough, you decide. What they did not count was Dr. sipmac's surveillance, which was already on the move. Here's a version of an earlier even richer version of:

Jumping the shark
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jumping the shark is a colloquialism coined by Jon Hein and used by TV critics and fans to denote the point in a television program's or file series' history where the plot veers off into absurd story lines or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations. This usually corresponds to the point where a show with falling ratings apparently becomes more desperate to draw in viewers. In the process of undergoing these changes, the TV or movie series loses its original appeal. Shows that have "jumped the shark" are typically deemed to have passed their peak.

Contents
1 Origin
2 Other uses of the term
3 Common methods
4 In popular culture
4.1 Sitcoms and dramatic series
4.2 Cartoons
4.3 In other media
5 See also
6 References
7 External links

Origin
The phrase refers to a scene in a three-part episode of the American TV series Happy Days, first broadcast on September 20, 1977. In the third of the three parts of the "Hollywood" episode, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), wearing swim trunks and his trademark leather jacket, jumps over a confined shark while water skiing. This was particularly ironic, in that Fonzie, famous for being a biker, had previously jumped his motorcycle for a publicity stunt—but was severely injured in the process, and very remorseful for his actions; he then learned a valuable lesson, and delivered a moral message, that taking foolish risks "isn't cool" (a clearly role-model message against popular 1970s trends of youths imitating daredevil stuntmen like Evel Knievel or Ernie Devlin). In contrast, Fonzie's later decision to take an even greater risk on water skis "to prove a point" came across as absurd in many ways (particularly since the "motorcycle jump" episode was a major point in Fonzie's character development). The infamous scene was seen by many as betraying Happy Days' 1950s setting and its earlier character development by cashing in on the 1970s fads of Evel Knievel and Jaws. Producer Garry Marshall later admitted that he knew the show had lost something as the crew prepared to shoot the scene. As Marshall pointed out in the reunion special that aired on February 3, 2005, however, Happy Days went on to produce approximately 100 more episodes. During the same special, in response to an audience member's question, Marshall introduced the notorious clip and noted how the show had inspired the term. The first public use of the phrase as a direct metaphor is reported to have been on December 24, 1997, when the www.jumptheshark.com website was launched by Jon Hein. According to the site, the phrase was coined by Hein's college roommate, Sean J. Connolly, in 1985. The term first appeared in print in the April 9, 1998, Los Angeles Times Calendar Weekend section. The site was sold to Gemstar (owners of TV Guide) on June 20, 2006 for "over $1 million", who then proceeded to completely revise the content of the site by removing all the user-created comments in 2009. The removal of these comments and the lack of a user-friendly interface / search engine has many former site visitors proclaiming that the website itself has "jumped the shark."



Other uses of the term
The phrase has been used more recently outside the realm of popular culture, representing anything that has reached its peak and has declined in quality. If one thinks a stock or a sports team or a subcultural phenomenon has reached its peak, for example, one can say that it has "jumped the shark." The phrase can also be used more specifically, when referring to a particular event that demonstrates this decline beyond all doubt, such as whenever an entertainment company or business makes a grave mistake, and therefore rapidly loses ratings or fans, becomes bankrupt or is sold. For example: "Has GM jumped the shark?"

Common methods
The "Jump the Shark" web site listed 18 categories fans used to tag shows, signifying the moment at which the show jumped. The categories included:
* Same Character, Different Actor, replacing a cast member with another actor to play the same role, in an attempt to retain the given character. This is generally the result of the departure of a cast member for any reason—most often (but not always) dissatisfaction with the show or role, or conflicts with members of the show's cast or production team. This category applied to shows where the actor/actress had been associated with a role or had been deemed to be crucial to the show's success or appeal. (Ex: Sarah Chalke replacing Lecy Goranson as Becky Conner on the TV show Roseanne.)
* Exit...Stage Left, when a (usually popular) cast member or character quits or retires. (Ex: John Amos leaving the cast of Good Times, William Petersen leaving CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, or Bob Barker retiring from The Price Is Right).
* Death, when a cast member dies (in real life), particularly if the individual was a popular or important part of the show. (Ex: Phil Hartman's passing and its effect on NewsRadio or John Ritter's death and its effect on 8 Simple Rules.)
* Gets Canned, when a (usually popular) cast member or character gets fired. (Ex: Delta Burke being forced out of Designing Women)
* They did it, in which two main characters have sex, particularly if their sexual tension was deemed part of the show's appeal. (Ex: Who's The Boss? or I Dream of Jeannie or Moonlighting or Frasier)
* Inane plot devices, appealing to the lowest common denominator, often revolving around lowbrow humor such as the act of flatulence.
* Moving the main characters from their familiar surroundings to a new setting, such as a new home or even a new town. (Ex: I Love Lucy moving to the suburbs of Connecticut from New York City, Laverne and Shirley moving from Milwaukee to Hollywood)
* Special guest star, where guest stars (sometimes, personalities not generally involved with television) are used as an attempt to attract viewers. (An example is Nancy Reagan's appearance on Diff'rent Strokes to promote her "Just say no" anti-drug agenda.)
* A very special...: the very special episode, describing a situation comedy episode that either deals with a serious or controversial social issue or is unusually dramatic in some way (a notorious attempt to boost failing ratings with cheap appeals to emotion, but which ultimately destroys the levity of the series). (Examples include The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Blossom)
* New kid in town, or Cousin Oliver Syndrome (in reference to the character on The Brady Bunch), when a new character (often, a young child) is added to the cast, in response to former child actors who have entered adolescence or adulthood, or to revive falling ratings. (Ex: The Seven carácter on Married...with Children, The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones, or Scrappy Doo on "Scooby- Doo")
* Birth, when a new baby is added to a show's cast (and often unnaturally aged to a preschooler the season following the birth), sometimes to accommodate an actress's real-life pregnancy (Ex: Alias), but usually for the same reasons a New kid in town might otherwise be brought in. Another common manifestation in this category is the birth of twins. (Ex: Full House with the aging of the twins Alex and Nicholas from infant in season 5 to pre-schooler in season 6 or Malcolm in the Middle and the introduction of Jamie)
* Another category, entitled simply Ted McGinley, usually includes any show that has featured McGinley in the cast. He has joined the casts of several popular shows alter their zenith (The Love Boat, Happy Days, Dynasty...), earning him the titles of the "Patron Saint of Shark Jumping" and the "Grim Reaper of Television". Other shows, on which McGinley appeared from the start, have in most instances been critically panned or canceled quickly.
* Return of a dead character: In Harper's Island, the return in episode 10 of John Wakefield as the primary killer cause the series to change from a Murder mystery to a slasher series.

In popular culture
Sitcoms and dramatic series
* The ninth season episode of The X-Files featuring the final adventure of The Lone Gunmen is entitled "Jump The Shark".
* Fourth season episode of Supernatural is entitled "Jump the Shark" where Dean and Sam Winchester find their long lost brother. The episode also pays homage by having the characters meet in a diner called "Cousin Oliver's Diner". Inside the diner is a "31st Annual Fonzarelli Skiing Championship" poster can be seen in the background, referring to the 1977 event.
* Arrested Development character Barry Zuckercorn, played by Henry Winkler, who played the Fonz in Happy Days, literally jumps over a shark in the episode "Motherboy XXX".
* In the That '70s Show episode "Jackie Says Cheese", Fez imagines jumping over a shark, thinking how cool it would be to be the Fonz. Hyde comments that not only is it the worst idea ever, but that it also was the worst moment in television history. Fez agrees, saying he stopped watching the show after that episode.
* MADtv reenacted a skit in which the infamous "jump the shark" episode was partially redone in mock Spanish, featuring dialogue such as Laverne saying "Aww, Shirl,Fonzie es jumpo el sharko!"
* In the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1, after receiving an idea to shoot a movie entirely with puppets, Martin Lloyd (the director of the movie) says "That'll work, a whole movie made with puppets...maybe we can have puppet O'Neill jump over a puppet shark on a 1/3-scale motorcycle."
* A sketch at the beginning of Reno 911!'s fifth season premiere features Lt. Jim Dangle attempting to jump over a small leopard shark. In the background, a banner can be seen which reads, "Jumping he shark for autism." However, Dangle fails to actually jump the shark and instead crashes facefirst nto the aquarium.
*The CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode "Two And a Half Deaths" contains a scene in which Det. Captain Jim Brass tries to explain to Gil Grissom the meaning of the phrase "jump the shark." However, Grissom appears not to understand who Fonzie is and Brass gives up on the explanation.
* In the opening to the House episode Here Kitty, Dr. Gregory House sets up a ramp for his toy car to "jump a [toy] shark", but the car was caught by Dr. Cuddy.
* After series 6 of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, Ralf Little confirmed he would not be rejoining the cast for series seven. In the first - live - episode of series six, his character (who didn't physically appear) Johnny Keogh, was killed water-skiing over a shark in the USA
* In the series finale of Boston Legal, Alan and Denny marry, despite both being straight and Denny's homophobia, justifying it as a marriage of convenience and not love. Denny says this would be "like jumping a shark".
* In an episode of the Canadian comedy series Made in Canada, the characters discuss the nature of jumping the shark, and talk about when each of them "jumped the shark" in their own personal lives.
Cartoons
* Clerks: The Animated Series had an episode which discussed the "Happy Days" jump the shark episode.
* At the end of the Kim Possible episode "Ill Suited," Ron Stoppable calls Kim, waking her up to discuss several different dreams he had, including one of Kim ski-jumping over sharks. Furthermore, Kim indicates that he was only dreaming, seemingly emphasizing that the show hadn't yet reached its prime.
* In episode "Sharko's Machine" of Sealab 2021, Sharko jumps over a pool of Fonzies during a montage.
* The Fairly OddParents had a music video on the DVD movie Channel Chasers called "If I Lived In TV" which featured Timmy Turner waterskiing with Fonzie, in which they eventually jump over a shark.
* The South Park episode "Probably" begins with a "Previously on South Park" segment, in which interspliced with actual clips are cartoonized scenes of Fonzie about to jump over a shark. In the South Park version of events, Fonz doesn't make it, and is consequently eaten. Also, the episode City on the Edge of Forever includes a clip of Fonzie jumping over a bus on his motorcycle, crashing into Kenny, then handing out ice cream.
* The episode 257-494 which began Season 4 of Teen Titans had Robin jump a shark while on skis.
* The Simpsons clip show "Gump Roast" ends with many jumping-the-shark allusions, including a shot of Homer water skiing over a shark.
* In the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends series finale episode, "Goodbye to Bloo", Bloo, thinking that Mac is moving away and being unable to think of anything fun to do on his last day, decides that, when you have run out of things to do, the only thing left is to "Jump the Shark" (literal in this case, but also a reference to the definition of the term itself).
* SuperNews episode 7 "I Don't wanna go Bowling!" depicted a sketch where a character quotes "It's time to jump the shark. Ayyyy!!" and jumps the Twitter Fail Whale

In other media
* The computer game Jumpman Zero has a level titled jump the shark, which requires the player to do just that.
* In the skateboard video game Tony Hawk's American Wasteland, the player is required to jump over a shark named Fonzie.
* In the Australian interview series Enough Rope, Andrew Denton interviewed a Northern Territory fisherman named Ian Dodge, who had jumped over an actual live shark when it temporarily landed
* In Fish Finders, the Radio Serial, Drake suggests (as he and Nick are planning to build a huge expansion onto their aquarium) that they should have acrobats covered in shrimp, who should then jump into shark tanks for visitors. Nick then responds by saying "Jumping the shark! I like it!".
* The cover of Knights of the Dinner Table #151 features Gary Jackson on a motorcycle, dressed as Evel Knievel, jumping over a shark in a pool.
* The "Weird Al" Yankovic song, "Couch Potato" (from the 2003 Poodle Hat album) features the line, "And 'King of Queens' jumped the shark the first minute, I can't believe Richard Simmons ain't in it."

See also
* Jumping the couch
* Nuking the fridge

Bonus from the newest “version” (more of a lame attempt):

Nuking the fridge

An analogous term, Nuking the fridge, is an allusion to a scene early in the 2008 film Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In the scene, Indiana Jones is hit by the blast of a nuclear weapon while hiding inside a lead-lined refrigerator in a desperate attempt at survival. The refrigerator is hurled a great distance through the sky and tumbles hard to the ground, while the structures surrounding it are utterly obliterated. A relatively uninjured Jones emerges to witness the mushroom cloud miles away. Audiences found the absurdity of this event disappointing and reflective of the decreased quality of the series, thus the term nuking the fridge.

Media notice of the phrase includes articles in Newsweek Magazine, the Toronto Sun, and the New York Times, a tongue in cheek reference in Entertainment Weekly, an on-the-air discussion between television anchor Staci Spanos of WJXT-TV and radio personality Mark Kaye of WAPE-FM, and MSN's A-List Searches' Hot Topic of the Day on July 6, 2008. On Monday, July 7, 2008, CNBC ran a story entitled "Have Media Stocks Nuked the Fridge?". Nuke the fridge was also ranked fifth in Time Magazine's "Top Ten Buzzwords of 2008" and nominated for Word of the Year by the American Dialect Society.

South Park mentions the scene in the episode "The China Problem."

Hey! You saw it here, on sipmacrants!

Related articles

• Jump the Shark (sfnowak.com)
• The 9 Worst Times Internet Memes Jumped The Shark (buzzfeed.com)
• Hugo Chavez Jumps the Shark. (puebloalsur.wordpress.com)

Sandler's Grown Ups Critics are just jealous children

It’s there anything better than being Adam Sandler’s buddy? Duh. Being Adam Sandler, of course. So, please, please don’t pay attention to those movie critics using epithets like inane, derivative, repetitive, immature… you name it. There’re just jealous. For real.

Consider this: picture yourself being a comedian making not only comedies, but successful comedies aimed to the low- and the middlebrow. Yep, no Woody Allen material, for starters. Making unpretentious movies is not the major offense to the critics, but not caring about them it is.
Adam Sandler has been releasing through Happy Madison a consistent string of hits that has made him a major box-office draw, besides, if he uses any theme that used with proper treatment could be “Oscar Gold”, he uses it lightheartedly: offensive humor sometimes, but not-so-offensive of too controversial statements. Additionally he uses a lot of familiar faces in his movies over and over again, not only from Saturday Night Live, but Kevin James, Henry Wrinkler and the hottest female A-listers, by the way. Some of them wouldn’t be getting any action those days just by themselves, but that’s not a problem for them, thanks to old chum Sandler.

Considering all this, is completely no surprise that the newest Sandler flick features an all-star ensemble cast (Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Maya Rudolph, Joyce Van Patten, Ebony Jo-Ann, Di Quon, Steve Buscemi, Tim Meadows, Madison Riley) which coincide to mourn over the death of a basketball coach that made a difference in the lives of the starring male cast (once a champion team back in 1978). In the meanwhile, their families celebrate the 4th of July weekend, reconnecting to the simple things of life and patching up things between them and their children.

Too corny? Too much déjà vu? Too much toilet humor? The critics thought so, even without a saluting-the-flag-scene in the era of the first post-american president (God forbid!). For me, like most Adam Sandler movies, it was a truly entertaining movie, in spite of all its faults (real and alleged ones). It doesn’t need to promise. I go and watch it, totally sure that it will deliver.

Beyond that, to all the allegations of corniness and cheap sentimentalism, and the lack of warped personalities that make Hollywood pictures “interesting”, I would simply point that Egg-head made a movie about friendship, something in he truly believes, and you can realize it in real life, too.


This guy is so much better than you, critics.

With Titus every episode was a very special episode...

...and that alone makes Titus the best sitcom ever! According to our now-familiar expression “jump the shark”, a clear symptom of fatigue in a series is the conscious effort to attract waning audiences by announcing a "very special episode", by definition an episode that “either deals with a serious or controversial social issue or is unusually dramatic in some way (a notorious attempt to boost failing ratings with cheap appeals to emotion, but which ultimately destroys the levity of the series)”.

If you watched any given episode of Titus, you could find the use (but not the abuse) of themes like death, attempted and committed suicide, rape, child molestation, mental illness, road rage, gun violence, drug abuse, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and terrorism. For newcomers this would look like a Nip/Tuck precursor, but in reality, this show was a sitcom with very dark humor. You never noticed there were the typical ingredients of a “very special episode” because there was no truculence, no melodrama, but just a lot of jokes and punchlines in a story with a fractured structure, based not so loosely on the life of the main character, the one and only Christopher Titus.

It’s incredible, despite the nature of the show, how realistic it looked sometimes. It must be because there is a big deal of death, attempted and committed suicide, rape, child molestation, mental illness, road rage, gun violence, drug abuse, domestic abuse, alcoholism, and terrorism in real life, with a difference: you just suffer it, you don’t laugh at your own misery.
Consider Ken “Papa” Titus, a real intimidating and insensitive dad, who never missed “a drink, a joint, or an opportunity to get laid in his life” but “never missed a day of work or a house payment”, who lost everything everytime he got divoced. That’s telling a lot. If you watch the series you inevitably will arrive at the conclusion: an abusive but strangely caring father is the real star of the sitcom and the glue that holds together the rest of the cast. Without the outstanding acting job of Stacy Keach, the antics and the quirks of Christopher, Dave (Zack Ward), Erin (Cynthia Watros) and Tommy (David Shatraw) would not be as amusing and understandable as they are when they share the common ground of a father figure that is not as uncommon in real life as you might think. It is completely unusual in TV, that’s for sure, but in real life you’ll find a father who tries by any means necessary to make a man out of you, imbuing the late underappreciated value of true and pure manhood by any costs, with a twist of responsibility and work ethic in the mix. Somebody to remind you that feelings and acknowledging weaknesess are for wussies, not real men.
Did the sitcom ever jump the shark? I’m not sure, but when we learned Titus had a sister, I think that was just too much for a “surprise character”. Anyway, the series got cancelled by the reason of internal fights between the Fox TV execs and the creators, i.e. real “creative disputes” and not ratings drops.

Too bad for the cast, because there was no syndication and no residuals, but the sitcom never suffered from noticeable quality decline. For the people that watched it for the first time, Titus was a staple of the early naughts. For the people still watching the episodes in DVD or in youtube, it is still a kick-ass show.

BTW, Wikipedia did the memory hole trick again with its Jumping-the-Shark article. Looks like I will have to take a look in the Wikipedia trashcan... again.


Click.

Related articles

• Comics Titus, Richards set to fill weekend with laughs (pbpulse.com)
• Happy Days Writer Defends "Jump the Shark" Moment (omg.yahoo.com)
• Cheers & Jeers: Stacy Keach Lights Up Lights Out (seattlepi.com)
• Which of Your Favorite Shows Have Jumped the Shark? (omg.yahoo.com)

Cool Investment Opportunity in New York: An Islamic Gay Bar

Greg Gutfeld, the libertarian hero of Big Hollywood and Fox's Red Eye, is looking for investors for an interesting project a propos of the new mosque at Ground Zero: an islamic gay bar.

Why? In spite of the protests of the 9/11 victims' relatives, and in spite that it was thought this decision was in extremely bad taste, it was approved by a New York City community board the building of a mosque near the site where the Twin Towers collapsed and +3.000 people died right before the eyes of the entire world. Well, Mr. Gutfeld thinks this is a game we can play, too.

First of all, Dr. sipmac would like to know what GLAAD and NOW think about this. Will they be supportive? If they are afraid of the fatwa (as Dr. sipmac is), will they support Gutfeld (and the LGBT and straight potential customers of the bar), at least under the table? BTW, should women wear burqa-style clothes in the new bar? Could we draw the prophet everytime we drop there if we want it? Could sip watch the Super Best Friends, 200 and 201 episodes from South Park in there? Could Dr. sipmac watch those episodes without censorship? In a nutshell, will sharia law still apply in a muslim gay bar?

Could the Islam culture and religion be reinvented in the meanwhile?

Anyway, count me in.

Tales from the Wikipedia Trash Can 5 - Commercial Flops

Gone from the Wikipedia, but not from our hearts. Without further ado,

List of commercial failures From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
A commercial failure is a product that does not reach expectations of success, failing to come even close. A major flop goes one step further and is recognized for its almost complete lack of success.

Most of the items listed below are ones that had high expectations, large amounts of money or widespread publicity, but fell far short of success. Obviously, due to the subjective nature of "success" and "meeting expectations", there can be disagreement about what constitutes a "major flop".

Contents
* 1 Commercial failures in aviation
* 2 Automotive flops
* 3 Computing flops
3.1 Hardware flops
3.1.1 Personal computers
3.1.2 Supercomputers
3.1.3 Devices and technology
3.2 Software flops
* 4 Internet Dot-Com flops
* 5 Retail flops
* 6 Food and drink flops
* 7 Other commercial flops

Commercial failures in aviation
These are aircraft which failed in the marketplace, but may have been technically sound. For aircraft which failed to work at all, see List of famous failures in science and engineering.

Airbus A318 and A340-200
Sales were lower than Airbus expected.

Boeing flops
The Boeing 717, 737-600, 747SP, and 757-300 failed to receive the orders that Boeing originally expected. The 737-600 is still for sale, however, and as the development cost was shared with other 737 models, it might not be considered a flop in the traditional sense. The Boeing 767-400ER, while receiving only a few orders, wasn't a flop because it was intended to be a niche aircraft for Delta Air Lines and Continental Airlines to replace their Lockheed L-1011 and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 fleets.

Bristol Brabazon
A giant airliner that was too expensive, too large for the time, and carried too few passengers in great luxury rather than many passengers in less space.

Convair CV-880 and CV-990
Both were commercial disasters as they only offered five-abreast seating, and were easily out-competed on price by the Boeing 720 which was based on an existing aircraft type.

Dassault Aviation Mercure
This aircraft had an extremely limited range and as a result only ten were put in service, by the French domestic airline Air Inter.

Douglas Super DC-3
An attempt to improve the famous Douglas DC-3, only three were sold as large numbers of war surplus C-47s were available for about $8,000 each. The Super DC-3 cost $200,000.
VFW-614
Another small, short-range jet, notable for its unique over-wing engine installation. Only 16 were built.

Lockheed L-1011
The aircraft was a technically sound design (indeed, more advanced than the competing McDonnell Douglas DC-10). However, the cost of the development of the Rolls-Royce RB211 engine caused Rolls-Royce to go bankrupt, and delayed the programme. In the end, with only 250 frames sold, and 500 needed for the project to break even, the L-1011 resulted in a loss to Lockheed of $2.5 billion, or $10 million per aircraft. Lockheed left the civil airliner market after the failure of the L-1011.

McDonnell Douglas MD-87 and MD-90
Both failed to receive orders as compared with the Boeing 737 family and Airbus A320 family, both of which had high-bypass turbofan engines which burned less fuel than the low-bypass engines of the MD-87 and MD-90.
Northrop F-20 Tigershark
This fighter aircraft was designed as a private venture for export, but failed utterly as air forces wanted the more prestigious F-16 Fighting Falcon used by the United States Air Force, despite the F-20's lower cost.

Spruce Goose
Only one prototype was built of wood by Howard Hughes's Hughes Aircraft. It had the largest wingspan of any plane ever built.

Supersonic transports
Boeing 2707, Lockheed L-2000, Tupolev Tu-144, arguably Concorde

Automotive flops
Acura Vigor
The Vigor was a midsize sedan introduced in 1992 that fit between the Integra and the Legend in Acura's lineup. Sales were slow due to the car's 5-cylinder engine and small size, and it was cancelled after only 3 years in production.

Bricklin SV-1
This safety/sports car from Canada suffered from quality problems. Just 2,857 were sold in 3 years.

Buick Reatta
The Reatta was an aerodynamically-styled car originally made by Buick to attract "mature" buyers. But the car's controversial styling and heavy amount of computerized features actually turned out to repel them. The car was mostly handbuilt and the Reatta never topped 20,000 units in a 4 year run.

Cadillac V-8-6-4 variable cylinder engine
Poor reliability and dubious benefit doomed the variable displacement concept for a decade.

Caterham 21
Intended as a modern, more practical alternative to the Caterham/Lotus Seven. Unfortunately, Lotus successfully reinvented the Seven themselves at the same time with the Lotus Elise.

Chevrolet Corvair
A case study in Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed claimed the Corvair had a tendency to roll over, causing the car's eventual downfall.

Chrysler Airflow
Advanced aerodynamic design made the mistake of being far ahead of its mid-1930s era; in the depths of the Great Depression, the few who could afford a new car were looking for slight improvements on the tried-and-true, not a radically new concept.

Chrysler E-Class
This luxury car made by Chrysler sold poorly and only lasted for two years, 1983 and 1984.

Chrysler TC
The Chrysler TC was a luxury car made by both Chrysler and Maserati. Because it looked too similar to the Chrysler LeBaron of the time (in addition to its high price), the TC bombed and was only produced from 1989 to 1991.

Daewoo
This Korean marque flopped badly in some markets, especially the United States. When Daewoo made its U.S. debut for the 1999 model year, it sold cars through independent contractors on college campuses rather than at conventional dealerships. U.S. sales ended in 2002 when Daewoo Motor America went bankrupt. New owner General Motors has dropped the Daewoo name outside Asia. However, Daewoo sales have been moderately successful in some regions, such as the UK.

De Lorean
Roughly 9,000 were built before John De Lorean's arrest on charges of cocaine-smuggling (which he was later acquitted for) closed the factory two years after its launch.

Dodge Rampage
The Dodge Rampage was a mixture of a car and a pickup truck. It was based upon the Dodge Omni. The Rampage was a front wheel drive truck, which is not normally used for trucks because a heavy load on the rear of the truck can cause traction problems. This is mainly considered to be the downfall of the Rampage, along with a weak engine. Its Plymouth Scamp twin only sold around 2,000 units, making it one of the rarest Plymouths ever created.

Buckminster Fuller's 1933 Dymaxion car
Original and innovative, but a fatal crash and safety issues with rear-wheel steering aborted investor interest and further development. A total of three were built.

Eagle
The Eagle brand was formed by Chrysler from the remains of AMC. Aimed at the enthusiast driver, sales of the badge-engineered cars faltered and the marque was folded after 11 years. Only the Eagle Talon was an unqualified sales success.

Edsel
One of the most successful new car line launches in history quickly became a legendary flop. Just over 100,000 were built in four years. In 1960, Edsel's final model year, only a few thousand were built.

Ford Pinto
This car's downfall was brought about in safety tests that revealed that, due to the location of the car's fuel tank, it tended to explode during mild rear-end collisions. The problem was fixed for 1977 models, but sales never recovered. The Pinto was finally discontinued in 1980.

Ford Ranger EV
Ford's only electric-powered pickup truck. There were numerous problems with the NiMH battery-equipped Rangers associated with an inability to accept a charge in hot environmental conditions, and some other problems requiring replacement of major components, but Ford successfully addressed these problems early in the vehicle's life cycle. There were some range issues around the 25,000 mile service life with the NiMH batteries, and due to the great expense of these batteries, Ford elected not to fix this range problem (a valid response under the lease terms). Some leases elected to continue the lease despite the shorter range.

Ford Taurus Ghia
Since its introduction in 1986, the Ford Taurus has rewritten the rules for building a midsize car and still dominiates the midsize car market, and is one of Ford's most successful models. But when Ford tried to push the Taurus on European and Australian buyers, with slight modifications from the American model and called the "Taurus Ghia", Ford learned the hard way that just because a car is successful in one market doesn't mean that it will be successful in another.

Leyland P76
Infamous in Australia as a commercial flop.

Lincoln Blackwood
luxury pickup truck: A velvet-lined bed, low towing capability, and a single exterior color led to the cancellation of this model after 15 months with 3,356 sold. The Lincoln Mark LT is the current "try again" of this model.

Lister Storm
The Lister Storm was a four-seater supercar which made 591 hp and was built by Lister. Due to financial purposes, only 5 were built, 3 still survive. The Storm still exists today in the racing scene.

Mazda Navajo
The Mazda Navajo was a two door SUV that was a badge engineered Ford Explorer. Even though Explorer sales soared the day it was introduced and became the best selling SUV, the Navajo sold very poorly and when the Explorer was redesigned in 1995, the Navajo was discontinued and the Explorer got a new running mate, the Mercury Mountaineer.

Mercury Marauder
The Marauder was introduced in 2003 as a modern day muscle car, but the Marauder suffered from lackluster sales, blamed by some on bland styling, gutless performance, and incorrect target audience. It didn't return for the 2005 model year.

Mercury Mystique
The Mercury Mystique was part of Ford's attempt to try the successful European Ford Mondeo on the American market as the Ford Contour and Mercury Mystique. Both cars were not meant for the American market and their high price steered buyers towards the Ford Taurus and Mercury Sable, because for about the same price as a Mystique or Contour, they gould get a bigger and more comfortable car. However, Ford was able to sell Contours at an average pace, but Mercury was barely able to sell Mystiques. The car's poor sales gave it the nickname the "Mercury Mistake". Both cars were discontinued in 2000.

Merkur
This U.S. marque, which consisted of two rebadged European Ford models, lasted only four years.

NSU Ro 80
A stylish and advanced car that was plagued by early reliability problems with its revolutionary Wankel engine. The resulting financial crisis lead to the company being acquired by Volkswagen.

Oldsmobile 5.7L diesel engine
Also marketed as the Olds 350 Diesel, it was offered in General Motors automobiles between 1978 and 1985. Because it was a modified gasoline engine rather than a proper diesel design, the unit had a tendency to tear itself apart. So poor was this engine's reliability record that small diesel engines were shunned by U.S. consumers for a generation.

Pontiac Aztek
Controversial styling resulted in just over 27,000 sales per year instead of an expected 50,000 to 70,000. Discontinued in 2005.

Sinclair C5
A battery-powered tricycle designed by Sir Clive Sinclair.

Sterling
This U.S. version of the British Rover 800 suffered from poor build quality, feeble performance and a lack of brand recognition. Sales dropped from 15,000 in 1988 to fewer than 2,000 in 1991.

Subaru SVX
The Subaru SVX was a futuristic car made by Subaru which is the only production car to date to have an all around glass canopy. The car flopped in every market it was sold in due to lack of advertisement, concerns of safety in a rollover, radical styling, and it came in the time when the US was falling in love with the SUV. It was also plagued with known reliability problems due to its heavy weight. Worldwide production of the SVX never topped 40,000 units through a 6 year run.

Suzuki X-90
This 2-seater sporty mini-SUV was not welcomed in the market. Just 7,205 were sold in 3 years, making it among the slowest-selling full-production vehicles in history.

Tucker automobile
Preston Tucker's streamlined automobile with a rear engine and then-innovative safety features. Tucker's attempt to launch a major automobile company failed, either due to conspiracy by the major manufacturers, shady financial maneuvers by Tucker or both. A total of 51 were built.

Vauxhall Firenza HPF
Just 204 built instead of the projected 30,000+. Killed by the fuel crisis, its rarity has at least assured it classic status in modern times.

Volkswagen 412
Volkswagen's last rear-engine, air-cooled car. Although it had interesting and novel technologies at the time (MacPherson struts in front, independent rear suspension; fuel injection; a supplemental heater powered by gasoline), the car was only produced from 1969 until July 1974.

Yugo
This Yugoslavian car was sold in the United States from 1986 to 1990, and was bashed as highly unreliable. It was featured in the movie Dragnet (1988) as a punishment for Dan Aykroyd's character's repeated crashing of his cars, and was referred to as "the latest in Serbo-Croatian technology". Yugo has become to cheapness as Cadillac has become to quality.

Computing flops

Hardware flops

Personal computers

Amiga CDTV
This early multimedia computer was overpriced and suffered from using the obsolete AmigaOS 1.3, when version 2.0 was already available.

Apple Computer flops
The Apple III, Apple Lisa, and arguably the Apple Newton are notable flops. Many of the Lisa's features were later incorporated into the far more successful Apple Macintosh.

Atari Falcon030
The Falcon came right at the time when the PC "Wintel" and the Macintosh computers had eluded the competition of smaller products, such as the Atari ST, the Amiga, or the Amstrad CPC. Virtually no software was written for the Falcon030.

Be, Inc.
Mid-90's personal computer maker/OS vendor founded by former Apple Computer executive Jean-Louis Gassée. Hopes of an acquisition by Apple Computer in order to develop a successor to the Mac OS waned after Apple chose instead to acquire NeXT. After the failed introduction of the BeBox and Apple's decision to acquire NeXT, BeOS was unsuccessfully marketed as a replacement for the then-ubiquitous Microsoft Windows. Ultimately, Palm acquired what remained of the company.

Coleco Adam
A home computer created by toy/video game company Coleco that nearly bankrupted the company.

Commodore Plus/4
In the 1980s, Commodore International became the first company to sell a million home computers. Hoping to repeat the success of its multi-million-selling VIC-20 and C64 computers, it released the Commodore Plus/4 in 1984. It flopped. Commodore went on to achieve success with the Commodore Amiga, but went bankrupt in 1994.

Enterprise 128
Announced in September 1983, but failed to be produced until May 1985 when its features were not so impressive anymore. It also suffered several name changes: First it was called Enterprise Elan, then Flan, then Samurai and finally just Enterprise.

Go (pen computing corporation)
Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

Hip-e
Announced with great marketing and hype in mid-2004 by the Digital Lifestyles Group, this personal computer, which aimed at teenagers, failed miserably in the market. As a result, all productions and support stopped just one year later. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
IBM PS/2 and IBM PCjr
After the rise of PC clones and compatibles, IBM struggled in the PC market.
Netpliance iOpener and New Internet Computer (NIC)
Despite being created as "Internet appliances", cheaper alternatives for consumers to access the Internet without buying a PC, both the iOpener and NIC were flops. Netpliance went bankrupt in 2001; the company would later change its name to TippingPoint Technologies but was later acquired by 3Com. The Internet appliance would later be named by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

NeXT Computer
Steve Jobs founded NeXT after his 1985 ouster from Apple Computer. The product and company were media darlings, but sold in small numbers. NeXT was ultimately bought out by Apple, and after Steve Jobs took charge of the company, NeXT technology became the foundation of Mac OS X.

Sinclair QL
A somewhat unsuccessful attempt by Sinclair Research to make a 16 bit computer in the mid-1980s.

WebTV (now MSN TV)
Internet delivery via television set and set-top box. Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

Supercomputers

Advanced Scientific Computer supercomputer by TI

Convex C3 mini-supercomputer

Cray-3 gallium arsenide supercomputer

IBM 7030
Also known as "Stretch", the 7030 was IBM's first attempt at building a supercomputer. Its actual performance was less than one third of its original specification. This resulted in IBM drastically dropping the price and losing money on every machine sold.
ILLIAC IV array processor supercomputer

Devices and technology
Bubble memory
Heralded as the next big thing, it was widely expected to all-but-replace every other form of storage. The technology and engineering were sound, and numerous products were actually brought to market, but it was never able to gain any significant cost edge over the rapidly improving technologies it was supposed to displace.

:CueCat barcode scanner
Designed to allow magazine readers to read magazines while seated at their computers, and navigate effortlessly to advertisers' websites by passing the CueCat over barcodes printed in ads that caught their fancy. Thousands were given away free at Radio Shack stores. What killed it was people's utter lack of interest in its functionality.

Compact Floppy 3 Inch floppy disk
With 360k or 720k DD, used mainly in obscure systems like Osborne Computers, Einstien, MSX (in some regions, though 3.5" disks were more common with the platform) and famously Amstrad CPC/PCW range before being outclassed by the now standard Sony 3.5".

Data Play CD replacement disk technology
Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

IBM's Micro Channel Architecture PC bus (MCA)
Solved the problems IBM had itself created with its predecessor, the PC-AT bus. IBM and many industry analysts assumed that the need to be "IBM-compatible" would force other vendors to adopt the MCA, for which IBM charged high licensing fees. In fact customers did not care, and the industry largely ignored the bus. This flop was significant because it was widely interpreted as indicating that IBM no longer controlled the PC architecture and had lost its leadership position.

Iomega Clik! drive
Cited by Jim Louderback as one of the "eight biggest tech flops ever".

INMOS Transputer
This attempt at a different way of computing is now largely forgotten.

Intel iAPX 432 microprocessor
Introduced in 1981 as the next great computer architecture after Intel's x86 line. Considered one of the most complicated microprocessors ever built, it delivered low performance and went nowhere in the market.

Itanium
Intel expected its new server CPU, the Itanium (referred to by detractors as "the Itanic"), to revolutionize the microprocessor industry. In 2001, after 7 years of development and billions of dollars spent, the first Itanium chip proved an utter technical and commercial failure. The Itanium 2, released a year later, improved the chip in some areas. However timid managment at competing companies, scared by the Itanium, abandoned the DEC Alpha and an advanced version of the SPARC, giving Intel less competition; in this sense it may have been a success for Intel.

Rambus's RDRAM
RDRAM can arguably be considered a flop. Competitors feared that Intel was trying to control the memory market through Rambus, so they joined together to develop DDR SDRAM. DDR SDRAM offered comparable performance to RDRAM and was much less expensive. This forced Intel to abandon exclusive support for RDRAM. As of 2004, Intel has abandoned RDRAM with all new products using DDR SDRAM or DDR2 SDRAM. (RDRAM's successor XDR DRAM is used by the IBM/Sony/Toshiba "Cell" processor.)

Sony HiFD
Intended to replace the 3.5 inch floppy drive, but was prevented from doing so due to an early recall, compatibility problems, and the rise of cheap recordable CDs.

Software flops
Adobe LiveMotion
Adobe's failed animated vector graphics program to compete with Macromedia's Flash

IBM's OS/2
Originally developed as a replacement for DOS, in partnership with Microsoft. Consistently mismanaged by IBM, who failed to market it properly in the mid-1990s against the Microsoft Windows juggernaut, it nevertheless still retains a small number of loyal users.

Microsoft Bob
This "user-friendly" replacement for the Windows 3.1 interface was one of the biggest flops to ever come out of Microsoft.

Internet Dot-Com flops

There are thousands of failed companies from the dot-com tech bubble of the late 1990s. Here are a few of the largest and most famous.

Boo.com
Sold clothing and accessories. After blowing through hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital on a poorly-planned business model, it became the poster-child for mismanaged dot-coms.

eToys
Failed Web toy superstore. Notorious for attempting to sell its customer list in an attempt to ward off bankruptcy, despite its TRUSTe-certified privacy statement promising that "We do not sell, rent, loan or transfer any personal information regarding our customers or their kids to any unrelated third parties. Any information you give us . . . will not be used in ways to which you have not consented." Name was acquired and the site relaunched October 23, 2001 by K-B Toys.

Kozmo.com
Bike messenger delivery service for individuals

Pets.com
An online pet food store that focused more on its brand name than profitability. Most notable for its sock puppet icon.

Webvan
This grocery delivery service spent far too much on infrastucture before it had even turned a profit.

Retail flops
Marks & Spencer
In the late 1990s, the Prada-inspired "gray range" turned Marks & Spencer from darling of the British retail scene to an embarrassment.

Iceland
Iceland, an otherwise successful British supermarket chain, attempted to go up-market by stocking only organic own-labels, a plan that backfired after its core market of low-incomers couldn't afford it.

Ralphs/The GIANT
Ralphs, a Southern California supermarket chain, launched a warehouse club brand in August 1986, but was unable to compete with more established clubs while confusing patrons of their traditional grocery stores.

Old Chicago
A bold concept of a shopping mall and indoor amusement park, Old Chicago opened in suburban Chicago, Illinois in 1975. Plagued by structural faults left over from its hurried construction, fires, and a lack of big-name department stores, the complex shut down only six years later, and was demolished after 11 years.

Port Plaza Mall
An urban, downtown shopping mall, an attempt to make the city of Green Bay, Wisconsin compete with its suburbs in 1977.

The Tricorn Center
Shortly after being built, was voted one of the ugliest buildings in the country. Suffered from severe building design and construction while steadily housing less and less business. Was destroyed in 2004.

Food and drink flops
Bambeanos
Introduced by Colgate-Palmolive in 1975, this snack consisting of roasted and flavored whole soybeans cost US $750,000 to develop and market. The product was withdrawn with under 25,000 cases sold, as it rapidly gained a reputation for causing excessive flatulence. A jury later awarded a half million dollars to the roasting contractor after Colgate's withdrawal.

Buckler
A Dutch brand of non-alcoholic beer sold by Heineken, became a commercial disaster after stand-up comedian Youp van 't Hek stereotyped the Buckler drinker in one of his shows. Heineken later admitted that the beer itself didn't taste good.

Crystal Pepsi
Despite a huge marketing campaign, Crystal Pepsi lasted only one year in the U.S. Like many discontinued products, Crystal Pepsi maintains a small but dedicated following on the Internet. Pepsi Blue and Pepsi Edge were two other unsuccessful products.

Dasani
Coca-Cola's brand of bottled water was a flop in the UK after it emerged it was essentially just tap water from Sidcup, England, treated to make it more pure but in fact containing high levels of bromate (an ion which can cause tooth decay).

dnL
dnL was offered as the exact opposite of 7up. Despite a large advertising compaign, sales were poor.

McDonald's' Arch Deluxe
The Arch Deluxe was an attempt to market burgers to the adult fast-food consumer. Consumers were turned off by the unconventional ads and the high price; consumer groups were put off by the higher caloric content of the new burger.

McDonalds' Hula Burger
With sagging sales in Catholic areas since meat is not allowed to be consumed on Fridays according to religious guidelines, the Hula Burger was created. It was actually a grilled pineapple, and people said that "They could taste the hula, but not the burger". After a while, it was pulled off, and replaced by the more successful Filet-o-Fish

McDonalds' 1989 and 1994 attempts to serve pizza

New Coke
The Coca-Cola company changed the formula and taste of its flagship product, a universally successful drink whose name was almost synonymous with soft drinks. Introduced in the U.S. on April 23, 1985, it was a marketing and public relations debacle, and the company had to backtrack and return to the older formula. Though there had been plans to roll-out New Coke internationally, its prompt failure prevented this, so New Coke was only ever sold in the U.S. When they went back to the original formula, demand for the classic taste grew to a greater extent than before New Coke, propelling Coca-Cola to a market lead over arch-rival Pepsi – making the situation an unintentional success for Coca-Cola. Many maintain that the flub was intentional and that the heads of Coca-Cola planned the whole thing. [7]

OK Soda
Manufactured and marketed by The Coca-Cola Company, OK Soda was specifically targeted at Generation X with subtle and ironic advertising messages. The product was only released in select test markets, where it did not do well.

Orbitz
This fruit-flavored beverage with little edible balls suspended within suffered from low sales.

Red Fusion
Red Fusion was a soda marketed by Dr. Pepper as a cherry flavoured Dr. Pepper. Despite a large advertising compaign, Red Fusion was completely ignored and Dr. Pepper axed it in less than a year.

Other commercial flops
Betamax VCR system
Sony's proprietary recording technology produced a sharper picture than VHS, but initially could only record for 1 hour. Also by not licencing the Betamax format, much like Apple Computer did with their technology, they were overwhelmed in the marketplace by the many competing, licenced VHS manufacturers.

Digital Compact Cassette
A format introduced by Philips, which lost out to Minidisc and CD-R. A similarly ill-fated attempt to improve on the compact audio cassette was Sony's much earlier Elcaset system.

DIVX
DIVX was a take-off on DVD that required users to pay per viewing. DIVX backer Circuit City, a retail electronics giant, lost about $200 million over the fiasco. (Not to be confused with DivX, the video codec.)

eBook devices
Between 1999 and 2002, a number of companies, notably Gemstar, jockeyed for control of this supposedly vast, lucrative market, believing that consumers would pay hardcover prices for a severely limited number of book titles in DRM-encrypted formats that tied each electronic copy to a unique serialized hardware device. In 2002 the "eBooks are dead" meme became widespread. In 2003, Gemstar pulled the plug on its servers and Barnes and Noble ceased offering eBook content of any kind.

Apple's eWorld online service
Based on America Online's software and designed as a more modern replacement for the aging AppleLink service, eWorld lasted from June 1994 to March 1996. eWorld failed due to its high price, indifferent marketing by Apple and the rising popularity of Internet service providers at the expense of proprietary online services. In September 1995, eWorld had only 115,000 subscribers, compared with AOL's 3.5 million at the time. A promised Windows version never materialized. (Coincidentally, AOL itself had begun as "AppleLink Personal Edition" and was designed as a consumer-oriented alternative to AppleLink.)

Flexplay and ez-D
Flexplay and ez-D are "self-destructing" DVD-compatible discs, which turn black and become unplayable 48 hours after the package's seal is broken. Disney's Buena Vista announced the product in 2003 with much ballyhoo and test-marketed it in Texas. But even top-tier Disney titles such as "Pirates of the Caribbean" "didn't turn out to be an item that our customers were looking for", according to an chain of groceries in Austin, Texas that dropped the product shortly after introduction. Priced at about $7, the value proposition, compared to a DVD—0.01% of the lifetime at 50% of the cost—was apparently not compelling to consumers.

Iridium
A system of 66 satellites set up for global mobile phone service, Iridium proved to be too expensive for wide use.

Kodak disc cameras (1982–1990)
Although advanced in technology and automated-processing-friendly, its aspheric lenses could not overcome the limitations of the tiny 8x10mm negative, smaller even than the Minox. It was introduced at the same time as easy-to-use, inexpensive 35mm cameras were becoming available. People liked the cameras but hated the pictures, the graininess of which was obvious.

The Millennium Dome
A commercial and public relations disaster, it now lies empty in Greenwich in London. However, it is now being renovated as a sport and concert facility, and will be used as a venue for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Penn Central Transportation
This product of the 1968 merger of the New York Central Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad became bankrupt in 1970 and merged to become part of Conrail, a government corporation, on April 1, 1976.

Persil Power
This laundry detergent catalyst was intended to help remove tough stains from clothes. In addition to not being particularly successful in terms of sales, it proved to have corrosive effects which could easily render clothes unwearable after a few washes (due to the high amounts of manganese used in the powder).

Pregnant Barbie
This was a Barbie toy showing Barbie pregnant. But Barbie wasn't married, so Mattel thought it supported sex before marrige, and it was yanked from toy shelves nationwide.

Railtrack
Set up as the UK's rail infrastructure company as part of railway privatisation, it failed to maintain the railway network to a satisfactory standard and was implicated in a number of high profile disasters, most notably the Hatfield rail crash. The Hatfield crash led to a massive track renewal programme and the high costs led to the collapse of Railtrack's share price. It was forced into special railway administration (a form of administration) on 7 October 2001 and later sold to Network Rail. The parent group, RT Plc, went into liquidation on 18 October 2002.

Schlitz
In the early 1970s a new company president cited market research showing that most beer drinkers couldn't tell one beer from another as a reason to move to a cheaper method of brewing a leading beer. However, drinkers did believe that a beer made more cheaply tasted worse, especially when it had less head than it used to, and by the time the company went back to the old formula in 1979 the damage done was so great it had to be sold to Stroh Brewery Company three years later in the wake of a strike.

Segway HT
The Segway scooter was released among unprecendented hype as being a product that would revolutionize not only transportation, but the world. Investors expected hundreds of thousands of units to be sold, generating billions of dollars in sales in the first year. In reality, the Segway sold around only 10,000 units in its first few years and is still trying to overcome an identity crisis.

Teledesic
Bill Gates was a major investor in this proposed network of hundreds of satellites to provide Internet access.


A failure is just a proven method for how not to succeed.

Christine, wherever you are, please take 'em up!

Have you ever been driving a F-150 through the desert at dawn? Watching the full moon four times bigger as you watch it in the city? It doesn't matter, if you can drive a car you may have your perfect driving moment and you may still be keeping to yourself, because it is kind of a zen experience you don't want to ruin by sharing it with a stranger.

Anyway, I should thank first Stephen King for introducing me to the then unknown pleasures of driving at the tender age of 13. I read his best-seller Christine, and boy did my life change after that. I thought I could relate a lot to Arnie Cunningham, who always had to put up with tons of misery until he found a little happiness and then his life force would be taken from him for good.

But he was driving the perfect car: a red-white '58 Plymouth Fury. Made just for him. Oh, did I tell you before how much I like rock 'n roll? Every time I see a fiftysomething Chevrolet Bel-Air, a Pontiac or an old Studebaker, I remember immediatly:

From the Beach Boys to the Beatles to Jan and Dean and a very long et cetera, driving a cool car and rock 'n roll music belong together. But not anymore. In the name of political correctness and enviromentalism, we have to endure this:

Driving a car won't be as fun as it used to be. Thanks for nothing, GM.

Christine, wherever you are, please take 'em up!