What was the product?
What did you think of it?
Did you use all of your sample?
Was the product ever sold?
In 1991 I was asked to test toothpaste. Some woman was walking door to door in my neighborhood and I was planting flowers in the yard. I agreed. It was a new kind of toothpaste that was supposed to create a protective coating on your teeth. It was called Colgate Gold. And it was literally gold toothpaste, kind of like pale caramel, but it tasted like original yellow Listerine…yuck! When she returned to ask for results, she hinted that everyone was saying the same thing, medicinal. I didn’t finish it. I think it became Colgate Total, because that came out the following year, different name, color, and flavor though.
There’s a research company near me that sends out emails (I signed up for them) to do product testing. Whenever I’d get an email for something that sounded easy (try some dishsoap for $70/hour, try some toothpaste at home for two weeks for $100 dollars etc), I’d always get turned away as soon as the survey found out I worked in ‘retail’ so I eventually opted out of them.
However, I have been doing software and hardware beta testing for probably 10 years for a very well known company. Their NDA is pretty strict and prevents me from saying who it is. They regularly toss people out of the beta program for blabbing about it on the internet. Hell, they’re strict enough about it that even while testing out some software, you can’t even acknowledge that you’ve been in other betas before, even though most of us have worked together before. Many of you here have something in your house that I tested for a few months before it came out
Yes, for a phone keyboard software company. I got paid £20 for about £20 minutes’ work and I was in the area anyway. It was interesting seeing how it worked and it was good to have first hand knowledge of them actually testing their product on real people. I’ve been invited to do it again a couple of times and haven’t been able to go, but will do next time if I can.
I’ve bought the keyboard app since and it actually is really good.
I was a paid participant for a manufacturer’s study of new SUVs. They had mockups of cabins that you would sit in and evaluate, plus other research questionnaires.
I swear, something was wrong with that study. They had, I believe, 6 cabin mockups and I could not tell a bit of size difference at all! I wondered if they did something like make 6 of each cabin size for 6 different research groups, but messed up and gave each place 6 of the same cabin. I was beginning to question my sanity, or my eyesight.
Either that, or it was a psychological study to see if people would say that there was no difference in any of them - like how many people say one is bigger, even though there was absolutely no difference. Otherwise, it made no sense. And they were all the HUGEST interiors I had ever seen. I think a Lincoln Navigator would have fit inside one. (The test was done before the Super Behemoth SUVs came out. Maybe the test was to see “how big can we go?”)
And, depending on what you mean by prototype, I also spent many a hour at the Preview House in Los Angeles, watching and evaluating new TV shows before they aired. That was a lot of fun!
I participated in three research panels. One was for a pastry, one for a resort, and one was for an attorney who was (I think) testing to see how his strategy for presenting (or defending against? I don’t remember) a product-liability lawsuit would be received. I was paid for all three, and two of them had more than one part. I stopped getting calls to do them when I started an actual paying job and had to turn down two opportunities in a row.
Whoops - I forgot to add any details, and I got distracted too long to edit.
I never saw the pastry on the shelves, unless they changed it a lot. I remember that it was overly sweet and the apple flavor was disgusting.
The resort ran one of the ad campaigns that they tested with just a couple of changes. I remember seeing a billboard and a TV ad that included the same imagery I’d seen (and not my favorite one).
I have no idea what came of the lawsuit or even what product it was. Our panel had an overwhelmingly favorable attitude towards the (perhaps hypothetical) person who had been injured, so it might have been settled out of court. Or it might just have been too small a case to hit the news.
I’ve picked up a few rewards (gift cards, generally, and free product) via a couple of internet panels. I’ve tested baby wipes and Emerald nuts Breakfast on the Go. Both products were fine - in fact, I had to hide the Emerald nuts from the kids! - and I definitely used them up. The baby wipe survey sent me two packs of different brand products, unlabeled, to compare. At the time, I had an infant and a 2.5-year-old, and recognized the brands by the shape of the tubs - Pampers and Huggies. Both were fine by me, and hey! Free baby wipes! (And nobody broke out in hives. I think they were introducing a new ingredient in one brand of towelettes, so one pack was probably the control.)
True fact – I’m not just saying this to be coy – yes! Just last week, I got an online survey regarding a product. But the survey came with a “Do Not Reveal” clause, so I can’t talk about it!
Many years ago, I was on a taste-test panel for Jack in the Box, where we all got to sit down and eat sandwiches they were proposing. Fun. Delicious! Some people only took a small bite; me, I ate the whole sandwich!
Twice got picked up at a shopping mall to test new products. Once when I was a kid in the 1970s, my mom and I ended up being sent home with jars of salsa and bags of chips. The jars differed in consistency, from marinara-like to chunky. Being Indiana and the 70s, it was pretty novel for us (and I imagine that novelty was why the manufacturer was doing test-marketing to figure out what would most appeal to a bland midwest palate).
Another was when I was in my 20s, shortly before the introduction of and brief fad for those weird powerful breath mint strips. I got a box of them and was contacted later for my opinions. They came in unlabeled little packets, and I remember the weirdest part of trying them happened on a night where I’d gone to a house-music-heavy dance club. I was dancing, took one of the strips, and was suddenly surrounded by women who thought I had just taken some ecstasy or acid, begging for a strip. I popped one into the mouth of one who seemed to already be tripping. The sudden burst of mint seemed to blow her mind, and she went reeling off the dance floor to collapse into a chair.
Also done a few internet product trials over the years; some new pitcher varieties for Brita, a PDA-like device that was supposed to be an all-in-one health monitor and food tracker, strategy card games…
Many years ago when we first moved to the Bay Area, the local mall had one of those survey places, and we used to go in fairly often when we were eligible because the surveys were kind of fun and they usually paid enough to get most of a fast-food lunch.
The one I remember most is pistachio butter cups (like Reeses, only with pistachio butter instead of peanut butter). They didn’t taste bad, but the off-putter for both of us was that the butter was green. Not a pretty green, either. It looked like chocolate-covered bug paste.
We duly gave our opinion and they duly gave us our tiny compensation. Never saw them on the shelves.
All the others I can remember were for movies. We both hated the pitch for “Horrible Bosses,” but I don’t think we were the right demographic.
This wasn’t a paid thing, just a lucky one. One of the guys in one of my old teams at work had a wife who worked high-up in marketing for Cadbury, and he was always bringing in samples of experimental products for us to test informally (along with regular big packages of normal stuff - he was a popular guy ) I think we knew the Wispa brand was being revived six months or so before it publically was, for example.
) I think we knew the Wispa brand was being revived six months or so before it publically was, for example.