These failed because they built all of their hype around "we have a truck selling them in random cities for a couple days" and they weren't interesting enough to buy second market. To be honest, I didn't even realize I could buy them now. Their whole thing was that you CAN'T just buy them online.
This is the same issue Pokemon Go had---they made a really cool product that would go through a period of super high demand followed by an extreme dropoff, but they didn't roll out their product in time---their release window didn't match the window for the traction they actually generated. Pokemon Go was massive when it released for a couple weeks, and they touted a IoT thing to go with the game that made it even more immersive, but that didn't come out until people really stopped caring.
The moral of the story is to know that if you're going to have a huge release, be ready THEN to sell things. Hype is useless if you aren't capitalizing on it.
To be fair, the IoT device wasn't sold by Niantic, it was sold by Nintendo. Nintendo dropped the ball on selling the only thing that was really profitable for them around the Pokemon Go fad since they only receive license fees for the characters I believe.
This is the same issue Pokemon Go had---they made a really cool product that would go through a period of super high demand followed by an extreme dropoff, but they didn't roll out their product in time---their release window didn't match the window for the traction they actually generated. Pokemon Go was massive when it released for a couple weeks, and they touted a IoT thing to go with the game that made it even more immersive, but that didn't come out until people really stopped caring.
The moral of the story is to know that if you're going to have a huge release, be ready THEN to sell things. Hype is useless if you aren't capitalizing on it.