‘Shark Tank’ review: Simple Sugars, CoolWraps, Drop Stop, and Traditional Fisheries

This week on “Shark Tank,” there was a little bit of everything: products to improve car safety on the road, ways to improve skin care, and even environmental initiatives in order to try and protect the well-being of fish in the ocean. It was a pretty interesting episode, and it ended up coming to a close with what had to be one of the strangest pitches that we’ve ever seen on the show (mostly because the guy was a pretty terrible presenter).

As always, be sure to check out our take on all of the products below, and for your browsing pleasure, we’ve also provided links to all of the individual product places in case you want to pick up a copy.

Drop Stop – As we said in our original preview article, this is a pretty brilliant idea. Everyone drops stuff through the cracks between your cup holder and your seat, and we don’t really believe that Robert Herjavec has never done this. The issue here is just whether or not this is something that people in the mass market are really going to buy, especially people who are slobs and don’t want to spend money.

We were surprised that most everyone went out here except for Kevin O’Leary and Lori Greiner, but even with Kevin still there, he made that sort of awful offer that was really just a royalty that would cut their earnings down by a pretty significant amount. Of course, they went with Lori: they gave up $300,000 for 20% of the company, but this seems reasonable given her connections.

Traditional Fisheries – Remember that episode of “New Girl” that focused on Schmidt’s search for a lionfish? Who knew that these guys were such a nuisance in the ocean? We totally believed everything that these guys pitching their product were throwing at us, since everyone is pretty uninformed these days when it comes to the environment. Unfortunately, that does not really get us anywhere near addressing the problem of just what you are supposed to do to actually convince people to eat it. We don’t think of it as something that would be tasty, and it could talk a lot of time to clean and prepare given the poisonous spines.

We almost feel like this idea would be better as a charity than an actual business, since there’s so much money that it would require just to even get on the ground. It’s great for the ecosystem, but not for this show.

Simple Sugars – Skin care products are not exactly new to the tank, and the first real issue that we have with it is the name. Why? It sounds like candy. In reality, it can help to deal with eczema and psoriasis (though it may not work for everyone) while also helping to exfoliate and soften your skin. Considering the fact that the woman running the business is only 18, it’s remarkable that she managed to achieve everything that she has at such an early age, but there is also a difference between being a niche business and hitting the big time.

The real problem here actually had nothing to do with her drive, passion, or even the product itself. The issue is just that there are not many people who want anything to do with an industry in cosmetics that is extremely competitive. The only chance she therefore had was with Mark Cuban, who liked her for a couple of reasons: he has a child battling eczema, and it probably helped that she mentioned Pittsburgh (which is his hometown). Therefore, she got a deal!

CoolWraps – Basically, it’s a pretty intuitive product … if you have a hair dryer. That’s the only real hassle we see with this product, which makes gift-wrapping easy. This was also the biggest trainwreck presentation out there. He didn’t come across as a great salesman, and it just felt completely dated in that it sat for ten years while he waited for an opportunity to get it off the down.

Eventually, this ended up just being a battle of people wanting to buy the guy out … and he went with Mark Cuban, who somehow managed to get $250,000 for this and even a royalty. We’re still confused about this one.

What do you think about any of these products, and is there anything that you would buy? If you want to see some other highlights from this season, be sure to visit the link here.

Photo: ABC