What looks wrong
A countertop sculpture that turns proprietary produce packs into cold-pressed juice.
What’s actually going on
Juicero raised on the order of $120 million and sold a connected press — $700, later $400 — that would only squeeze its own bags. In April 2017 Bloomberg reporters showed the bags yielded a similar glass when wrung by hand, sometimes faster. The company said hand-squeezing was messy and offered refunds. It shut down that year. The object is the machine.
Juicero's press was sold as infrastructure: four tons of force, a Wi-Fi check, an app, a subscription bag of chopped produce. Founder talk compared the quest to Steve Jobs. Google's venture arm and other funds put about $120 million behind a juice machine.
On 19 April 2017 Bloomberg published the demo that ended the mystique. The packs, already chopped, could be squeezed by hand. The glass looked like the machine's glass. The hand was sometimes quicker. The Verge and others repeated the test. Juicero's then-CEO said the whole system — press, pack, app — was the product, and that 'hand-squeezed hacks' were a mediocre, messy experience. The company offered refunds.
By September 2017 Juicero had stopped selling the hardware. This is not a story about a person who bought one. It is a story about a design that added DRM, a network check, and a four-figure sculpture to a function the bag already had. Vote the object.
Source: The Verge (citing Bloomberg's hand-squeeze test), 19 April 2017. We quote the public record. A settlement is not always an admission.