‘Shark Tank’ review: KAZAM, Baby’s Badass Burgers, Pink Shutter Photobooths, ‘Track Days’

You have to love dichotomy, right? It is not very often that you see one of the best and one of the worst pitches on the same night, but “Shark Tank” definitely brought this to us and then some on Friday night. There was inspiration, laughter, embarrassment, and Kevin O’Leary calling Barbara Corcoran a “witch” and telling someone to set her on fire. All in all, a pretty ordinary day in the tank.

If you’ve been to a CarterMatt “Shark Tank” review before, you know the drill: We’ve got in here links to all of the individual products below, along with our personal impressions not as a business expert, but someone who loves this show almost as much as Kevin loves money.

Baby’s Badass Burgers – A burger joint featuring attractive people and pounds of meat is a successful gimmick, mostly because it’s been proven to be a success with some other restaurants that shall not be named here. However, we don’t really get the idea of trying to move into a brick-and-mortar restaurant when you are kicking plenty of you-know-what on the road. Food trucks are super-hot right now. Take one of these to a major city, and it’s a million times more convenient for people during the week with little time on their hands.

The problem here was on the strategy more than anything else. We would have went into the tank with more enthusiasm on the trucks, saying you want more of them; then, if it gets successful enough, you launch a restaurant down the line. Cousins Maine Lobster has that figured out perfectly.

“Track Days” – We’ve learned something valuable here: Mark Cuban does not want to invest in a movie. Then again, his ownership in Landmark Theaters probably plays a role in that. His visible laughs during the trailer were also the greatest thing ever.

We can’t get over how bad this pitch was. Seriously. They asked for $5 million, contradicted themselves, and seemed completely lost when it came to their information. If we want to use the racing analogy even further, they were basically spinning around in a circle before wiping out on the ground. We do not understand the business model here; maybe it works, but we don’t really know enough about the film financing business to understand. All we saw here was a cheesy teaser for a movie that only had $11,000 behind it.

KAZAM – When we wrote about this balance bike for children in our preview, we admitted that one of our major concerns was that it didn’t seem like this solved any problem for the consumer. Everyone already knows that training wheels exist to help asomeone ride a bike, and while you can do this at a very early age and learn as you go with this product, it’s more expensive, and you have to know where to look. That’s just a personal thing, and a reason why we wouldn’t personally bite.

We totally understand why there would be an interest from some of the sharks here, especially in comparison to the other two products on the night. What we do not understand (at least for the time being) was the desire to move on to another bike for older kids. We personally hope that Mark Cuban and Barbara Corcoran (who went in for $300,000 for 32%) convince her desperately not to go that route, mostly because what she has right now is the golden ticket.

Pink Shutter Photobooths – The moment that Kevin said one of his favorite lines, we knew that we shared his opinion: There is nothing proprietary about this! Who’s to stop someone from coming in and undercutting the business? The only way you can do this is you’re someone like Nike, and can actually convince some poor fools into paying $30 more to buy a shirt with your logo on it.

We are honestly surprised that these guys got two offers just for what is effectively a glorified photo booth, but Barbara and Mark really went after them. The guys could have potentially had the two working together, but after getting excited to have a pair of sharks, they got greedy. They do still have Barbara in their corner, which is okay … especially considering that we don’t need to have a photo booth in order to have a good time and make memories.

Were there any products this week that you were even remotely interested in buying? If you were disinterested in everything shown off here, you can check out some other highlights at this link.

Photo: ABC