What are your thoughts on the "Edsels" of the audio history?

The Edsel was a good car.  I grew up in Detroit, many families worked for Ford and used employee discounts to purchase them new and most of them couldn’t understand why it didn’t succeed.

Quad Decoders were the hot audio technology when I was in College.  I worked part time in a record store (remember those?) in Ann Arbor and the manager bought one and had a speaker (Advent 2) in each corner of the store.  No college kid could afford that set up, we sold zero Quad records.  I listen to Classical now exclusively and I have many of those same recordings as they have been remixed and issued on the Pentatone label as multi channel SACDs.
I am trying to remember what rock recordings were issued in Quad.
I remember one (I think it was The Who, possibly Tommy) that was mixed with bass in one speaker, lead guitar in another, drums in another...awful.

Yeah, there was nothing wrong with the Edsel. It just wasn't the right style for the moment. Along those lines... I might suggest Pono, which was good I guess, but lacked a market. Or maybe Sony mini-discs.

+1 mijostyn

I had the distinct displeasure of listening to a pair Plasmatronics at a 
"high-end" store.  The salesman was so pleased with himself when the few people in the room slammed their hands over their ears. OMG like ice picks in your brain.  Lobotomy anyone?

Went to a personal residence to audition an amp I was considering, decided against it.  The guy then tried to interest me in the Terk antenna,
hey its only $50 says he. No thanks.  OK OK $35. No thanks. $25 no thanks.........OK just please take this thing out of my house, I just need to tell my wife I sold it.  I took it.  And it worked for me!  It was the one that was about 7 feet tall with spiked feet.   

mahlher:

The first Quad LP's I listened to were by Jeff Beck and Santana.

I was in Hawaii @ the time and they had LP's from the Japanese market (in stores) which were yet to be available on the mainland.

One that I recall was an LP by "The Climax Blues Band" that a friend who owned a record store could not get until almost a year later.

The best "not true Quadrophic" setup I heard was maybe 4 years later (75/76) using a B&O black box (tiny little thing) and a pair of cheap single driver speakers which were once "winged" to a vintage R2R deck.

The B&O setup was much subtler/less distractive than the true Quad systems I'd heard (just added a sense of increased space to the sound).

DeKay