The only thing better than learning from your mistakes may be making money off them. Just ask Elon Musk, who (via Tesla’s store) just released official Cybertruck merchandise based on one of the company’s most infamous (and embarrassing) moments.
For anyone unfamiliar, this $55 smashed window decal pays homage to the first big Cybertruck event during which Tesla’s head designer, Franz von Holzhausen, very visibly cracked the EV’s “bulletproof” windows (twice) with a tepidly-tossed metal ball. If you need a refresher, please watch here.
That moment — now immortalized in an overpriced sticker — was, as we would later learn, kind of a bad omen. Over the course of the four years since that infamous event in 2019, the Cybertruck has gone through a lot permutations — not all of them, uh, good.
Now we know that the base Cybertruck costs about $20,000 more than originally projected, the range for the premium $100,000 Cybertruck (without an expensive battery add-on) is nowhere near as formidable as Musk promised, and the glass... Well, it remains to be seen, but I wouldn’t willingly drive your Cybertruck into the middle of a shootout if I were you.
But if there’s one thing Musk seems to know how to do, it’s seize on a marketing opportunity. See, for example, loads of other tongue-in-cheek products like the “Boring Not-A-Flamethrower” which is an actual flamethrower, the Tesla-branded booty shorts with the words S3XY plastered on the back which was a nod to Tesla’s EV models, the S,3,X, and Y, or the Tesla Tequila.
In this case, Musk seems to have scored another win with its OMFG sticker that fits perfectly over the rear driver’s side window on the Cybertruck. The decal sold out in just hours.
Maybe you think it’s funny, or maybe you think it’s cringe, but either way, Tesla is taking a joke and trying to turn it into a profit. I’ll be honest, though, if you actually buy one of these things, it’s worth considering if the punchline of said joke is actually you.
