What looks wrong
A blender-Bluetooth-USB picnic cooler that was going to ship first to the people who funded it.
What’s actually going on
Coolest's 2014 Kickstarter took in more than $13 million from about 60,000 backers. Production slipped, some units shipped, others did not, and the company sold coolers on Amazon while backers waited. Oregon's Department of Justice settled in 2017. A 2020 final accounting in The Oregonian found backers who never received a cooler were supposed to get $20 — and most did not even get that.
In 2014 the Coolest Cooler was the face of Kickstarter hardware: a wheeled ice chest with a blender, a speaker, and a USB charger. About 60,000 people put up on the order of $200 each. The campaign cleared $13 million. The estimated ship date was early 2015.
The factory story that followed is now a genre: delays, a blender-motor strike, quiet updates, and then the insult that defined the project — new coolers for sale on Amazon while original backers were still in line. The campaign copy had said Kickstarter backers would get the first ones.
Oregon DOJ investigated and settled in 2017: coolers for Oregon backers and for people who had already complained to the state, a slice of future profits, and a $20 payment to everyone else still empty-handed by mid-2020. The Oregonian's 2020 close-out said the company sent that $20 to about 7,200 of nearly 21,000 people in that group. Kickstarter kept its platform fee. Tone here is Consumerist, not a pile-on of a founder: the grave is the campaign promise versus the object that never showed.
Source: The Oregonian, final accounting of the Coolest Cooler settlement, December 2020. We quote the public record. A settlement is not always an admission.