It’s just a bad product.

I didn’t realize there was room in the market for bad products.

Maybe I just thought I lived in a world where bad products just get knocked out by good ones and by the time I come around to buy something, it’s long gone. It’s like bad restaurants, they just don’t last long. Maybe if they’re in a touristy area they’ll survive because the turnover is so huge–and no one would even bother to give it a bad rating. Of course, with Yelp, that’s all too easy now.

It doesn’t stack (with water in it) and it’s difficult to get the ice out.

I don’t know how it got into our house, I certainly didn’t buy it, but there were two ice cube trays that I used. They fit together nicely in the cupboard … as long as you didn’t put any water in them. So I suppose that’s the selling point: they don’t take up much room in your kitchen as long as you’re not actually using them to make ice. Or, I suppose, if you waited until the water froze, then you could stack them.

But if you want to stack them with water in liquid form, you’re out of luck. Because they fit together so perfectly, they also perfectly push out all of the water in the tray. So, side by side it is! But then they’re made of such flimsy plastic that I couldn’t even get the ice out. I practically had to break the plastic to get the ice cubes out.

I’m just not used to bad products anymore. I wasn’t sure they still existed. But I guess they do. So how do they survive? I suppose it’s the same as anything: supply and demand. As long as there are people out there who don’t necessarily care about quality (or function or design or what have you), there will be other people out there to make products for them. Maybe it’s just a market that I don’t know about: bad products.

Maybe it’s a new market niche I should look into …