The “Bic for Her” ballpoint pen was discontinued in 2016 but the reviews live on on the Amazon website. It’s fair to say that many did not buy the idea of what might be called lady pens, and sarcasm ensued. “I bought these for a woman at work as she couldn’t figure out how to use a man’s pen,’’ one reviewer wrote. “After I helped her open the package, she was super happy.” Another man claimed he borrowed one of the pens and found that he suddenly wanted to talk about kitchens – and feelings. Taking another tack, a woman reviewer cheerfully reported, “I gave these to the men in my office and they all received pay cuts a few weeks later!” (In fairness, some purchasers actually did like the pink and lavender ink, the “sleek pen silhouette and jeweled accents,’’ and “easy glide ink technology.” We are not here to judge.)

The Bic for Her pen lives on in another place: the Museum of Failure, which opens soon in Helsingborg, Sweden. The brainchild of Dr. Samuel West, an organizational psychologist, it debuts with a curated collection of more than 60 products that flopped, all meant to highlight the “risky business of innovation.” “All the literature is obsessively focused on success, but 80 to 90 percent of innovations actually fail,’’ he told The New York Times recently. “Why don’t these failures get the attention they actually deserve?”

The museum will do just that. Among the duds are Harley-Davidson fragrance, the Segway and Google Glass, the super-geeky glasses with a tiny screen on the edge, along with an invasive camera. History is replete with such examples, and the long line of debacles won’t stop. A failure-in-the-making could be the new jeans announced this week by Nordstrom. For a cool $425 the jeans come with fake mud. The product description says the jeans “embody rugged’’ and show “you’re not afraid to get down and dirty.” Who knew earthy Vermonters and Granite Staters were far ahead in fashion trends? And here, the mud is authentic to boot.

West says he was inspired by the Museum of Broken Relationships, in Zagreb, Croatia. Among other items, it displays an axe a woman used to smash her boyfriend’s furniture after they split. A satellite museum opened in Los Angeles last year; included in the curiosities is a wedding dress stuffed in a pickle jar.

Traditional museums inspire with visions of heights that few each, but it seems to us that these alternative museums are in touch with a vital truth: Even in a good life, much goes wrong, hopefully most of it on the minor side. There are misbegotten repairs, ignored directions, miserable vacations, foolish job changes and hideous dinner parties. Humanity — including the highest achievers — shares this in common. We all at times travel the road of broken cars and broken dreams, and now there’s a museum to confirm that we don’t ride alone.

Optimists and life coaches say failures are just steps on the way to success. If that way of thinking makes it easier to reach the top, that’s almost entirely to the good — although we draw the line at rose-colored Google Glasses.