In today's odd-but-pretty-enticing news: the traveling Museum of Failure, which "brings together over 159 products and services that were a total flop but also paved the way for other great inventions," is officially opening in New York on March 17 and tickets to the experience are already available right here.
The destination will stay open at 220 36th Street in Industry City through May 9.
Walking through the space will take you about an hour, during which you'll come face-to-face with the toothpaste brand Colgate's (pretty hilarious!) beef lasagna frozen TV dinner, Donald Trump's board game, a Harley Davidson perfume and a bottle of Coca-Cola BlāK (the coffee-flavored coke that launched in 2006), among other products.
Although you'll be surrounded by, well, failure, the organizers hope you will actually feel inspired after visiting the museum, which was created by collector and innovation researcher Dr. Samuel West years ago and has already made stops in cities across the world, including Helsingborg in Sweden, Los Angeles and Minneapolis.
"The whole aim of the museum is to help people recognize that we need to accept failure if we want progress," Dr. West said to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists earlier this year. "And by that I mean any kind of progress, not just consumer products and new devices. The main point is that we have to accept failure, because it usually takes several iterations before we get things right—most experiments fail. And then the second point—which I try to make money off of, with varying degrees of success—is to emphasize that companies in particular have to be better at learning from their failures."
We can personally think of a variety of New York failures that would make for ideal products to be displayed at the exhibit... including the Cronut (sorry, Dominique Ansel!) and our incredibly annoying restaurant reservation system.