#3. Coleco Adam (1983)
Photograph: Courtesy, Erik Klein of www.vintage-computer.comIn 1983, toymaker Coleco introduced two revolutionary products: The Adam, a $600 home computer, and the Cabbage Patch Kids, a line of $40 dolls. It's a tossup as to which proved more obnoxious.
The Adam was marketed as the first home computer to come with everything you needed, including a tape drive and a letter-quality printer. The problem? Any media left in the drive would get zapped by a surge of electromagnetic energy when you turned the thing on, erasing all the data on it. And the Adam's power supply was inside the printer, so if the printer was defective (and many were), the computer wouldn't work.
The Cabbage Patch Kids eventually made it into orbit, hitching a ride on the space shuttle in 1985. The Adam never really made it off the ground.
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