Art. It can be beautiful, vile; heck, it can practically be anything. But no matter what it is, it all has one morbid thing in common. When the artist dies, the art goes up in value. The same goes for swag. An item given out at a convention one day, could become a collector’s item the next if its company goes out of business. And you’d be surprised how often the swag outlasts the company.

HD-DVD – Good god. Where do you start? The whole point, the whole big selling point of HD-DVD that made it superior to Blu-ray was you could have a movie in both DVD and HD-DVD format on the same disk. Don’t have an HD-DVD player yet? No problem! Go ahead and buy the movies now. They’ll work in your current DVD player, and when you do finally get your long awaited HD-DVD player, you’ll already have a home library ready to go! Did the studio’s do this? Nope! The number one ace they had up their sleeve and they didn’t play it. In fact, even though HD-DVD was cheaper to produce, they still sold it at the same price as Blu-Ray (and still without the backwards compatible DVD content). HD-DVD was supposed to be the technology that was easier to transition to. It had the best, self explanatory name, potential backwards compatibility, the ability to be cheaper, and they used... NONE OF IT (okay, maybe the name). HD-DVD deserved to lose the format war, and sadly not because of the people who designed it, but because of the people licensed it. As with DIVX in the late 90’s (the disc format, not the codec), HD-DVD titles and players can now be found at rock bottom prices everywhere.

Perpetual Entertainment – In the game industry there are few genres that can match the sheer mass of content necessary for a full-blown massively multiplayer online role playing game (mmorpg). Perpetual Entertainment for years had been developing “Gods & Heroes: Rome Rising”. The game’s reception was astounding, winning several “Best of Show” awards at E3 in 2006. That same year, the game also entered its closed beta phase, indicating that it was nearing completion and release. Then in late 2007, without warning, Perpetual ceased all development on “Rome Rising” claiming their desire to focus on the Star Trek MMO that they were developing as well. Then, only weeks later, they announced they were ceasing development on that project too. This might not have been as shocking if it weren’t for the fact that “Rome Rising” was all but finished, ready to enter a market where players would gladly pay $15 a month to play it. Today, “Rome Rising” t-shirts can still be found along with countless pre-order boxes still sitting on the shelves at your local Best Buy.

Pets.com – Remember the super-bowl ad? That should tell you just how much money this company was willing to spend on advertising. And what was at the center of this immense marketing campaign? A sock puppet. Besides its spot during the super-bowl, the Pets.com sock puppet was even a balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Unfortunately, Pets.com was destined to fail. Far too much money was ear-marked from the start for marketing. The hype was built. The company was made public. The stock spiked. The original investors then sold out, and in doing so effectively killed the company. Pets.com never had a chance. It was a exercise in using hype to predictably affect the stock market. Clever, but a shame that a fledgling company that could have been big was killed in the process. Replicas of Pets.com’s cute, little sock puppet can still be found for sale to this day.

 
Kozmo.com – The ability to have anything delivered in under an hour with no delivery fee. Well, maybe not ANYTHING, but Kozmo.com did offer the ability to order batteries, a movie, dinner, and beer all with one call. The problem unfortunately was that Kozmo.com had it wrong. The founders, Joseph Park and Yong Kang believed that the money they saved by not needing store-fronts would more than offset the cost of delivery. This was not the case, however, as the company would shutter in only three years. That was in 2001, and to this day one can still find Kozmo.com courier bags for sale. If you can get your hands on one, they’re actually quite nice (and large).

Netscape – It’s never polite to gloat. Funny? Yes. Wise? Maybe not. But when your competition is Microsoft, it’s definitely not wise. And this is exactly what Netscape did. A veritable “Har-Har!” in Bill Gates face when Netscape’s IPO took off . Only thing was, Microsoft wasn’t even racing them... yet. At the time of Netscape’s release, Microsoft was completely buried in development of Windows 95, a huge leap in their golden goose of an operating system. When Windows 95 was finished though, Microsoft climbed out of the mud to find Netscape still laughing at them. Netscape’s market-share would be completely crushed soon after. In March of 2008, with only a 1% marketshare left, Netscape’s current owner, AOL, ceased all official support thereby sounding the final death knell for Netscape. T-Shirts, iron-on patches, and all sorts of Netscape swag are still easy to find.

Enron – If there’s one company’s name that is synonymous with fraud it’s Enron. It began in the early 1990’s when the UnitedStates government deregulated the sale of electricity. This allowed companies like Enron to explode with growth. Enron would be voted “America’s Most Innovative Company” six times in a row by Fortune Magazine. It would all hit the fan, however, when in 2001 it was revealed that the majority of Enron’s revenue was due to special purpose entities, which allowed many of Enron’s debts and losses to not be reported. Enron would file for bankruptcy, executives would go to jail, and one of the largest accounting firms in the world, Arthur Andersen, would almost be completely dissolved. Enron golf shirts can still be bought today, but the ultimate piece of Enron swag is definitely the large crooked E’s found outside their buildings; one of which sold recently for $40,000.

Webvan – “The Super Market that Delivers!” Good idea. Vons and other markets do it today. So why did it take Webvan over $800,000,000 to get the idea off the ground? The amount of money they had was ludicrous, and because of that they felt no need to be careful with it. Overextending itself, Webvan would collapse in just a few short years. Webvan did leave, however, of the most curious swag items of all, grocery bags. Webvan paper grocery bags can still be found to this day, and for those who keep these types of bags around (we all know someone who does), they’re not only useful, but an item of curiosity.

 
The swag of failed companies represent promotional items turned relics; they stand as a testament to what can go wrong even with the most powerful and well funded of companies. Some people keep these items of swag as a laugh, others as a conversation piece. But the wisest of those collectors keep them as a reminder, a warning to not make the same mistakes and create their own example of the swag outlasting the company.